>From the Huffington Post, an excellent essay on what the whole issue of torture and waterboarding means to the U.S. and the world in the 2st Century, particularly in the context of this election cycle.
http://tinyurl.com/24nved An excerpt: America is currently caught in a battle between the competing rhetorics of homeland tribalism and of humanity grounded in our shared monotheistic faith. Given our singular military and cultural power in today's world, no less than the future of 250 years of human rights development rests on how this internal American battle is resolved. Americans sense that this is a fateful election for our republic; they may not realize how important it is for the world as a whole. We are playing our own part in a continuing struggle that first led to a Declaration of Independence and then empowered those who fought for human rights around the world. The world is beginning to view our country not as a hope and home for the free but through the lens that shot the infamous photos of Amercian soldiers brutalizing and humiliating Iraqi prisoners at Abu Ghraib. As one top U.S. General in the Multi National Force in Iraq recently told me: We have turned around 180 degrees to show respect for any of the detainees in our care: respect for the culture, for the religion and for the history of the place where our compounds are. But what those few did [at Abu Ghraib] will probably be the images best remembered of this war for a hundred years from now. Reputation, like life itself, is a complex affair that is difficult to sustain but simply to destroy. Mr. Bush has further reduced the moral reputation of the presidency and the country by allowing waterboarding and other harsh interrogation methods. These violate the basic principles upon which the American Republic was founded regarding the sanctity of the individual -- principles that have served as the template for all subsequent elaborations of human rights around the globe. Shortly before the end of the Civil War, a private in the 1st New York artillery wrote in a letter home that the sacrifice of his friends who "died fighting against cruelty and oppression" had been worth the terrible price of what would be America's bloodiest war. A captain in 47th Ohio wrote to his ten-year old son that his absence from home to fight the battles of our country would be meaningless unless "the children growing up will be worthy of the rights that I trust will be left for them." Jefferson and Lincoln believed that the rights for which our nation fought were the rights of humanity -- that the "sacred purpose" for which our nation came into being was to secure those rights for all, even for those who are against us. We should ask no less of our political leaders and appointees.
