PFP letter on torture published by Washington Post
12 June 2004
PFP letter on torture published by Washington Post
The Washington Post
The Principles Gap
Saturday, June 12, 2004; Page A19
Regarding the June 9 editorial “Legalizing Torture”:
Your criticism of the Bush administration’s torture memoranda is convincing on all but one claim. “For decades the U.S. government has waged diplomatic campaigns against such outlaw governments — from the military juntas in Argentina and Chile to the current autocracies in Islamic countries such as Algeria and Uzbekistan — that claim torture is justified when used to combat terrorism.”
Richard Nixon and Henry Kissinger were instrumental in putting Chile’s murderous dictator, Augusto Pinochet, in power. The torture he subjected his countrymen to was in considerable part the result of American policy.
As for Uzbekistan, Human Rights Watch recently reported a “campaign of religious persecution [that] has resulted in the arrest, torture, public degradation and incarceration in grossly inhumane conditions of an estimated 7,000 people.” We funded that dictatorship too.
There is a fast-growing gap between our principles and our policies that the American people must address without delay.
– Michael F. Brown
Washington
The writer is executive director of Partners for Peace, a nonprofit organization working for a just peace in the Middle East.
_______
The unedited version of the letter sent to the Post follows below.
Re: “Legalizing Torture”
The Post’s criticism of the Bush administration’s torture memoranda is powerful and convincing on all but one claim: “For decades the U.S. government has waged diplomatic campaigns against such outlaw governments — from the military juntas in Argentina and Chile to the current autocracies in Islamic countries such as Algeria and Uzbekistan — that claim torture is justified when used to combat terrorism.”
This is revisionist nonsense. Richard Nixon and Henry Kissinger were instrumental in putting in power Chile’s murderous dictator, Augusto Pinochet. The torture he subjected his countrymen to was in considerable part the result of American policy.
As for Uzbekistan, Human Rights Watch recently reported a “campaign of religious persecution [that] has resulted in the arrest, torture, public degradation and incarceration in grossly inhumane conditions of an estimated 7,000 people.” We funded that dictatorship too.
The disclosures of recent days are certainly appalling. But the only thing new is that now we are seemingly engaged in practices we once contracted out.
There is a fast-growing gap between our principles and our policies that the American people must address without delay. Left to the sadistic wordsmithing of the current crowd in office we will abandon the rule of law and leave ourselves thoroughly disgraced in the eyes of the world — and our own.
We have much to take pride in as Americans. But when we fail, and reduce ourselves to the syntax and word-parsing of the world’s most vile regimes, we dishonor ourselves and our great nation.
One remedy — and it is only a partial one — is to insist on an absolutely thorough investigation into the Bush administration and its wretched embrace of torture. We must get beyond the painful dissembling and obfuscating of men such as Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz and Attorney General John Ashcroft and to the truth of the matter.
Michael F. Brown
Executive Director
Partners for Peace
