The Connect U.S. Fund has launched a new two-year initiative to help shape debate during the upcoming Presidential transition.  As part of this effort, they’ve asked leading thinkers and advocates to talk about what should be the top two or three foreign policy priorities for the next President.  They’ve also kindly allowed us to cross-post the responses here.

Today, we’ll hear from Elisa Massimino.  You can find the previous posts here.  Thanks again to Heather Hamilton and Eric Schwartz for making the cross-postings happen.

Tonight, many Americans will tune in to watch Senator McCain and Senator Obama face off in the final presidential debate before the 2008 election. With just twenty days left in the campaign, the candidates are relentlessly focused on highlighting their differences. But the fury of this final round of sparring should not drown out the sound of a particular silence: there is no debate going on between the candidates about whether the United States should continue to allow the torture of prisoners in U.S. custody. Last month, in the first debate between the two parties’ nominees, Senator Obama and Senator McCain agreed that the United States must end the use of torture, which has stained our national honor and undermined the ability of the United States to lead.

Restoring our nation’s commitment to the rule of law must be a top priority for the next president of the United States. What the next president says will be important in this effort. In the early primary debates, both nominees condemned torture rather than extol the supposed heroism of 24’s fictional Jack Bauer or call for a doubling of the size of Guantánamo, as some of their opponents did. Hearing more from the two candidates tonight about the particulars of how they plan to restore the rule of law would be instructive. But, because of the way the current administration has sought to distort, obscure and evade the clear language of the law, words alone — from the candidates now or from the new president in January — will not be enough. After all, President Bush has repeatedly asserted that “we do not torture,” meanwhile privately authorizing conduct like waterboarding that our own military has long considered to be war crimes. It will be the actions of the next administration that will either confirm Vice President Cheney’s assertion of a “new normal,” or will prove him wrong.

The next president should prioritize a return to the rule of law in two key areas: enforcing the prohibitions on torture and other cruelty; and abandoning the failed experiment at Guantánamo in favor of the proven effectiveness of our federal criminal justice system. Taking these steps will go a long way toward restoring the essential moral authority of the United States as a leader for human rights and will strengthen national security by contributing to a more effective counterterrorism strategy.

The next president will have a window of opportunity to signal to the American people and the rest of the world that the policies of the last seven years were an aberration and that the United States is serious about restoring the rule of law, upholding our Constitution and respecting the international rules our country played such a central role in formulating.

Here’s the 12-step program to get us back on the straight and narrow:

• Renounce torture and official cruelty, ideally in the inaugural address.
• Enforce existing bans on torture and cruel treatment.
• Repudiate and rescind all orders, memoranda and legal opinions authorizing cruel treatment or secret detention.
• Release publicly all documents authorizing cruel treatment, secret detention, or rendition.
• End secret prisons and the practice of holding “ghost prisoners.”
• Put a moratorium on extraordinary renditions and direct the National Security Advisor to undertake a 90-day review to assess the use of diplomatic assurances and issue new regulations to ensure we are not sending people to places where they are likely to be tortured.
• Announce the intention to empty the Guantánamo detention facility within one year.
• Suspend pending military commission proceedings and terminate Combatant Status Review Tribunals and Administrative Review Boards.
• Direct the Attorney General to review Guantánamo cases for federal court prosecution.
• Direct the Secretary of State to perform individualized risk assessments and review remaining cases for transfer to prosecution, repatriation, or resettlement.
• Direct the Attorney General to identify secure U.S. detention facilities capable of housing detainees identified for federal court prosecution.
• Establish a bipartisan commission to investigate U.S. government detention and interrogation operations, assess the strategic impact of these operations, identify lessons learned, and make recommendations to avoid future abuses.

The misguided embrace of indefinite detention, torture and deeply flawed military commissions has greatly damaged the reputation of the United States, fueled terrorist recruitment and undermined international cooperation in counterterrorism operations. Repairing our reputation as a nation committed to the rule of law will require bold action. That must start with finally closing the detention facility in Guantánamo and demonstrating — in deed, not just in word—an unequivocal commitment to treating all prisoners humanely.

Elisa Massimino is the Chief Executive Officer and Executive Director of Human Rights First (formerly the Lawyers Committee for Human Rights). Elisa is the organization’s chief advocacy strategist, an expert on a range of international human rights issues and a national authority on US compliance with human rights law. She testifies frequently before Congress, writes extensively for legal and popular publications, and serves as one of the organization’s primary spokespeople with the media. She is Human Rights First’s point of contact with U.S. government leaders, international diplomats, and human rights opinion leaders and decision makers.

Related posts

• What’s Missing at DNC: Torture, Guantanamo. . .and Cheney
• Twenty Questions for the Debate Tonight
• The Manchurian President
• Powell, Obama, and Torture
• Obama, Messaging, and Dean Wormer

So far we’ve seen dozens of speakers at the Democratic National Convention.  They’ve attacked Bush and McCain.  They’ve touted solutions to energy and climate change.  They’ve talked about Supreme Court justices and choice.  They’ve talked getting out of Iraq, and winning the war against the resurgent Taliban in Afghanistan.  A few have even mentioned, in passing, that the United States needs to rebuild its relationship with allies, once agan leading rather than dictating to the rest of the world.

But there is one set of issues that we haven’t heard about yet — not once in two days of banal blathering.

Call it the destruction of American values.  It includes a number of things.

Like torture.

Guantanamo.

Abu Ghraib.

Indefinite detention of American citizens.

Denial of habeas corpus.

Waterboarding.

Rendition.

Black sites.

It’s as if the books by Jane Meyer, Jack Goldsmith, Philippe Sands, and so many others have gone right down the memory hole.

Where’s the anger at this desecration of everything America supposedly stands for?  Where’s the condemnation of the Bush Administration’s trashing of the Constitution?  Where are the demands that these things stop, and stop immediately?

And where are the attacks on the man who most needs to answer for his role in not just allowing, but promoting these abominations?  Where is the condemnation and vilification of Dick Cheney?

There isn’t a politician more unpopular in America today.  More importantly, there isn’t anyone more responsible for the trashing of America’s reputation in the world.

Yet after two days, we’ve heard nothing about him or his comprehensive attack on human rights and civil liberties.  Nothing about his single-minded shredding of the Bill of Rights, Geneva Conventions, and Convention against Torture.  Nothing about waterboarding, sleep deprivation, the use of dogs, or forced confinement.  Nothing about the fact that our allies now believe that this Administration has committed war crimes.

We’ve heard plenty about windmills and wages, but nothing about Cheney’s conscious destruction of American values.

In less than a week, Dick Cheney will take the Darth Vader world tour to the Republican National Convention in St. Paul.  In his primetime speech, he will call Democrats weak, inept, and unwilling to face down “evil.”

If the Democrats fail to call him out on his own evil this week, he’ll be right.

Are Democrats afraid?  Are they unwilling to confront Bush, Cheney, and McCain on foreign policy?   Are they afraid of John McCain because he keeps reminding people on every possible occasion that he was a POW?

There’s a simple way to handle this.  All the Democrats have to say is that the Bush Administration believes that it doesn’t torture.  Then talk about all the things that they now do that the North Vietnamese did to John McCain.  And then point out that according to George Bush and Dick Cheney, John McCain wasn’t tortured. And then say how dare they implement polices once used against our brave servicemen and women.  And also make sure that people know that John McCain actually sanctions torture, as long as it’s committed by the CIA.

It’s the truth.  It reminds Americans of what we stand for without dragging them through the muck and horror of the past seven years.  It also has the advantage of putting both McCain and the Bushies on the defensive.

We’ve heard that Obama-Biden will be different, that they will no longer concede the high ground on foreign policy issues to the Republicans.  But if they never mention torture, Guantanamo, or any of the other terrors that Cheney, Addington, Yoo and company have inflicted on America and the world, then they are just as fearful and timorous as past candidates.

And next week, the Republicans will have free reign to make them look like apologists and traitors.

And in November, Barack Obama will lose.

Related posts

• Obama, Messaging, and Dean Wormer
• Powell, Obama, and Torture
• Ambassador for All War Crimes except Our Own
• Prosecuting Those Responsible for War Crimes
• Was McCain Tortured? Ask Dick Cheney