Gourevitch on Torture
A well-argued short item by Philip Gourevitch in The New Yorker: Interrogating Torture. It makes the case that so far, we’ve held the lowly Abu Ghraib foot soldiers to be responsible for their actions, while letting those who created and implemented the policies they were following get off scott free.
Which is wrong.
May 4th, 2009 at 11:32 am
The same standards of law should apply to the powerful, if not more so. The more power someone has, the more responsible we want them to be. Letting the grunts take the fall for some of the most powerful people in the world is grossly immoral.
We need to live up to the standards we claim to have.
May 4th, 2009 at 12:49 pm
It actually makes me want to vomit. Some of the bastards that drew up and authorized these policies actually received presedential medals while the foot solider who carried out orders takes all the heat.
Talk about rot in hell…
May 4th, 2009 at 9:11 pm
Brilliant article.
Those who defend torture on the mistaken grounds that it works better than alternatives are also missing the point: torture is a heinous crime & such crimes are not absolvable.