America's strategically debilitating torture posture.

HOW CRUELLY IRONIC is it that a former kangaroo skinner turned terrorist wannabe would have his fate determined by the United States military equivalent of a kangaroo court? That is what happened in the recently concluded military commission hearing of Australian David Hicks, a Taliban acolyte held at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, for the past five years.

As part of a back-room plea agreement, Hicks pleaded guilty to "providing material support for terrorism" (an after-the-fact charge conveniently not covered by the Geneva Conventions) in return for serving a nine-month sentence in an Australian prison. Hicks agreed not to communicate with the media for a year about his capture or treatment; accepted statements that he was an unlawful enemy combatant who had been lawfully captured and never illegally treated in U.S. custody; waived any right to appeal; and promised to forego legal redress against the United States.

The Hicks episode is further damning confirmation that U.S. detention and interrogation policy itself is, and throughout the misguided war on terror has been, hostage to politically motivated lawyers--military and civilian--behaving badly at the behest of legalistically minded political tacticians. The travesty is that nobody in authority in Washington has shown any demonstrable inclination to deal strategically with an issue--torture--that, when the history is written, may well prove to have been the single most profound contributor to America's strategic debilitation.

THE EVIDENCE

Lest there be any doubt of our strategically myopic approach to torture, consider the lengths to which the administration of President George W. Bush has gone to proclaim its hunt for putative terrorists and consorts as "war," rather than law enforcement that might necessarily be encumbered by the inconveniences of the rule of law.

Paradoxically, consider the logical and semantic contortions behind denying this so-called war's detainees--non-uniformed irregulars who don't represent a state signatory to established international conventions--prisoner-of-war status. Rather, these individuals are labeled unlawful or illegal enemy combatants (designations not codified in international law), whose rights to due process and humane treatment are thereby deemed dubious at best.

Consider why Guantanamo, as well as other extraterritorial--and arguably extralegal--sites (Abu Ghraib, Bagram, and assorted secret locations around the world), under the sovereign jurisdiction of other states, would be selected for incarcerating detainees in the first place.

Consider the intentional injection of euphemism into the argot of interrogation--"enhanced interrogation techniques" "custodial interviews," "stress positions"--and the legal circumvention embodied in such questionable practices as extraordinary rendition, black sites, and ghost detainees.

Consider why Bush administration lawyers would seek in court to prevent terrorism suspects held in secret CIA facilities from revealing--even to their lawyers--details of the "alternative interrogation methods" used to get them to talk.

Consider the strenuous White House opposition to Senator John McCain's 2005 anti-torture amendment, which provided that "no individual in the custody or under the physical control of the United States Government, regardless of nationality or physical location, shall be subject to cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment or punishment."

Consider the White House's reluctant acquiescence to the McCain amendment only after the inclusion of provisions to (a) exempt U.S. interrogators acting under orders from prosecution for torture, and (b) preclude federal courts from exercising review authority over executive detention matters.

Consider that the president, in signing the McCain measure into law, stipulated in an accompanying signing statement that the executive branch would construe the measure only

   ... in a manner consistent with the constitutional authority of the
   President to supervise the unitary executive branch and as
   Commander in Chief and consistent with the constitutional limits on
   judicial power, which will assist in achieving the shared objective
   of the Congress and the President of protecting the American people
   from further terrorist attacks.

Consider the Pentagon's ensuing nine-month delay in publishing the already nearly complete Army field manual prescribed by the McCain amendment as the common standard for the humane treatment of detainees--due to resistance from the State Department and Capitol Hill over the military's original plans to (a) classify prescribed interrogation techniques and (b) maintain separate interrogation methods for lawful and unlawful combatants. Consider the legalistic pettifogging and semantic parsing painfully in evidence in the oral testimony of the oversized U.S. delegation--twenty-six senior representatives from the Departments of State, Defense, Justice, and Homeland Security, but not the CIA--and the voluminous 185-page U.S. written submission to the May 2006 UN Committee Against Torture session in Geneva, which sought to assess U.S. compliance (or noncompliance) with the Convention Against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment.

More importantly, consider the final written determinations of the UN Committee in response, including thirty-seven expressed "concerns" four associated "regrets," and the telling acknowledgement that the U.S. report, due November 19, 2001, wasn't received until May 6, 2005. The committee expressed particular concern over such matters as: the U.S. contentions that the provisions of the Torture Convention don't apply to overseas armed conflict or to territory outside U.S. jurisdiction; the failures of U.S. authorities to prosecute U.S. personnel involved in extraterritorial acts of torture, to hold commanders accountable for torture committed by subordinates, to register all detainees, and to enact domestic legislation implementing the provisions of the Convention; involvement in enforced disappearances, renditions to countries known to practice torture, and the establishment of facilities not accessible to the Red Cross; and the legislative exclusion of federal courts from reviewing habeas corpus petitions and other claims from detainees.

Finally, consider the hurried pre-election passage, by a still-Republican Congress, of the Military Commissions Act of 2006. The act was prompted by the Supreme Court's earlier Hamdan v. Rumsfeld ruling, which had adjudged presidentially prescribed military tribunals a violation of domestic and international law. The act gave the president authority to establish such tribunals to "try alien unlawful enemy combatants engaged in hostilities against the United States for violations of the laws of war and other offenses tri-able by military commission." More importantly, it forbade these "alien unlawful enemy combatants" from invoking the Geneva Conventions as a source of rights and denied them any right to file habeas corpus petitions in civilian courts.

These and other considerations represent a politically motivated, legalistic obsessiveness in the Bush administration's approach to torture that is totally antithetical to the larger strategic concerns that ought to govern the thinking of U.S. officialdom.

THE STRATEGIC IMPERATIVE

What difference would dealing strategically with torture make?

First, being strategic calls for consciously adopting and internalizing a coherent set of guiding assumptions and beliefs for dealing with the world. Such a "philosophy of global conduct" enjoins us to ask and answer many questions we otherwise might ignore or take for granted. Should moral considerations, for example, occupy a place of any particular importance in our strategic calculus? Does the application of the Golden Rule in dealing with perceived threats and enemies--treating them as we would want to be treated--strengthen or weaken us? Are such guiding precepts as principled consistency and disciplined restraint, if practiced, likely sources of enhanced or diminished security? Should justice and the requirement for truth it demands be sought in redressing and countering evil and evildoers? As the self-proclaimed sole superpower in the world, do we have an obligation to lead by example, to set and follow standards of conduct that transcend established international norms? Or do arguably dire circumstances necessitate playing down to the level of the competition and mirroring the most unsavory behavior of our adversaries?

Second, being strategic entails effectively marrying ends and means--ensuring the adequacy and appropriateness of the tools and methods we employ to achieve the aims we ought to pursue. At one level, we must ask the age-old philosophical question: whether certain ends--especially those (like preventing terrorism) that fall well short of survival--are important enough to justify extreme, otherwise repugnant means (like torture). At a grander level, we must recognize that for a democratic great power, there are three overarching strategic ends: providing assured security, preventing crisis, and preserving civil society. The attendant question this raises is whether torture serves or undermines these ends--especially where it repeatedly shows itself to feed resentment-filled desires for revenge, aggravate violence and militarism, heighten divisiveness among stakeholders, and subvert values we espouse and claim to represent.

Third, in the postmodern media age, being strategic is about effectively managing perceptions. Unlike the manipulative deception of spin and public relations we are constantly subjected to, the name of this game is a more sophisticated appreciation of imagery and symbolism in defining the reality we and others see. This is where credibility and legitimacy come face to face with hypocrisy and arrogance. It is where we confront the realization that, in the cosmic pecking order of international politics, we are constantly judging others and being judged by them to determine who stands--and deserves to stand--where. What makes a great power great, in fact, is not mere possessions or reach, but normative behavior and standing. For a United States that sanctimoniously and incessantly preaches peace, human rights, equality, justice, and the rule of law to others, there is little choice but for America's deeds to speak, uncharacteristically, louder than its words.

Fourth, being strategic involves effectively exercising power to get what we want, to bend others--friend and foe alike--to our will. The coercive use of sticks and the persuasive use of carrots--the former to exploit fear, the latter desire--are only too familiar to us. Too rarely, though, do we practice or even appreciate the intrinsic value of inspirational power--an admittedly esoteric but singularly enduring and inexpensive outgrowth of respect, the stuff of true moral authority. To inspire is to lead by example, to practice what we preach, to eschew inhumane and dehumanizing conduct that contradicts our stated values and self-image, to set new, idealistic standards that others must realistically emulate.

By failing completely to address such considerations to date, the Bush administration, abetted by a complicit national security establishment, has mortgaged America's reputation and landed the United States in the debtor's prison of international public opinion. We have only just begun to realize the long-term strategic price of our self-inflicted disrepute. For those who would argue that there is no moral equivalence between the United States today and the forces of evil we have been programmed to believe we face, recall these words of W.H. Auden:

   Evil is unspectacular and always human, And shares our bed and eats
   at our own table ...

Gregory D. Foster is a professor at the Industrial College of the Armed Forces, National Defense University in Washington, DC, where he has previously served as George C. Marshall Professor and J. Carlton Ward Distinguished Professor and Director of Research. The views expressed here are his own.