Convention against Torture

22 January 2009 Charles J. Brown
04:38 pm

The New Executive Orders: Guantanamo, Torture, Detainees

It’s not up on YouTube yet, but the NYT has the video of Obama signing the Executive Orders on Guantanamo, changing interrogation rules to conform with the army field manual, and disposition of detainees. You can watch it here.

The basics:

1. U.S. policy will no longer ignore our core principles.

2. Guantanamo will be closed within one year.

3. The U.S. will comply with its treaty obligations including the Geneva Convention and the Convention against Torture.

4. Anyone detained by the United States will be interrogated according to rules established by the Army Field Manual (which is what the human rights community wanted included in the Military Commissions Act).

5. The administration is establishing an inter-agency task force to recommend on how to handle those detainees that cannot be released and provide guidance and advice to both the military and the Administration on how to handle detainees in the future.

6. The case of Ali Saleh al Marri is currently before the Supreme Court. The Administration is asking the Court to postpone consideration of the case until it can determine whether it wishes to continue to be a party to the case.

This is huge. This is everything and more than the human rights community hoped would happen in the first 90 days of the Administration, much less the first few days. With these actions, President Obama has obliterated much of the very actions that caused such ill will around the world, and pulled the rug out from underneath those who argue that the United States was a force for harm in the world.

It is a day to cheer, but not to celebrate. The Bush Administration’s policies caused great harm not only to our reputation but also our national security. There are hundreds if not thousands of terrorist aspirants who joined the ranks of al Qaeda and other groups as a result of Abu Ghraib, Guantanamo, and other such abuses. Sooner or later, one of them will participate in an attack against the United States, its interests, or its allies.

That is the real legacy of Bush — not the supposed 2,668 days he supposedly (single-handedly?) prevented another terrorist attack. (And let’s not even talk about the fact that had he paid more attention, he just might of prevented 9/11 — with a strong emphasis on might.) Many of those who hate us do so not because they hate us or our freedom (as Bush so liked to say) but rather because they saw a huge gap between our rhetoric and our practices. With today’s actions, that gap begins to close, but it cannot prevent the harm that will be caused by the previous Administration’s acts.

In addition, much remains to be done in terms of implementation, and it will take more than a few signatures to rebuild completely our international reputation. And sooner or later, word will come out of someone exceeding the Army Field Manual; when that happens, it will be important to ensure that the Obama Administration responds quickly and appropriately.

And perhaps most important of all, this is an executive action, not a fundamental change. A future Administration could very well decide to reverse these EOs as quickly and efficiently as Obama did to Bush’s policies. Preventing that may in the end be the real challenge, one far greater than ending a few abhorrent policies: how do we change the culture so that we no longer celebrate evils committed in the name of the public good.

To put it another way, how do we exorcise the ghost of Jack Bauer?

That is a question I hope to address in the coming weeks. In the meantime, know hope. This is the change we wanted, and change we can believe in.

UPDATE: Google docs beats White House.gov (h/t Yglesias).

UPDATE 2: All but the al-Marri order are now up on Whitehouse.gov