The Army is preparing to update its interrogation manual to bar such harsh techniques and to incorporate safeguards to prevent such misconduct at military prison camps, The New York Times reports today [so says The Boston Globe], quoting Army officials. The officials said that such practices as stripping prisoners, keeping them in stressful positions for long periods, and using dogs to intimidate inmates would be prohibited. ....
Meanwhile, the Army has tried or administratively punished about 125 soldiers for abusing detainees in Iraq or Afghanistan since 2002, including seven reservists who appeared in the Abu Ghraib pictures. None of the Abu Ghraib defendants are ranked higher than staff sergeant, even though several asserted that they were acting on superiors' orders.
The result of opposition to the wrongs of our leaders sometimes seems small and of little note, especially since so much still is broken. The year anniversary of the release of the infamous photos has resulted in mixed results. The clear prohibition of certain behaviors is a sign that something good has come out of the efforts of human rights groups and others to underline a basic point -- our nation has a duty to uphold certain standards, even when working with people who we feel wish our demise.*
The sin of hubris, however, remains. I use the term "sin" advisably, a sort of nod to the so-called "people of faith" that our leaders have decided to slavishly appeal to of late (more accurately known as "people of certain faiths that make up the base of the Republican Party"). After all, an updated legal memoranda that cut back on the free reign allegedly given to the executive made sure to add that nothing authorized in the past exactly broke any rules. And, no one from above suffered: as Al Franken rightly noted (with justified disgust), our leaders rather blame the rank and file. Apparently, they were just too heartless to know what was right. [Bullshit, but that seems to be the implication.]
I'd add that something else that is not right is petty ex post facto applications of the rules so that "people of faith" are punished for practicing their religion. The NYT pointed out the stories of a few hard working sorts that were suddenly penalized after 9/11 for wearing certain head garb. Not anything that covers their face or hides their appearance, such as a case a year or two ago involving a woman who did not want to show her face in a driver license photo. Stuff like (especially in NYC) pointlessly antagonizes Muslims.
Or, perhaps, these "people of faith" (yeah, I find the latest rhetoric spoken in their name nauseating because who really is being spoken of are a subclass; faith per se is not respected ... only certain faith ... this is blatantly hypocritically) do not count?
Anyway, another example of the small amount of success that opposition to power sometimes wrought is the decision by House Republicans to do away with the weakening of the House Ethic rules. The changes, like those in the Senate that suddenly found religion in quick judicial nominees once political fortunes were altered, were blatantly opportunistic. "We are in power now, for real, so don't mess with us!" Stepping a bit too far (and having a leader in DeLay with a bit of a "bad odor" to quote one conservative reference), however, forces a certain tempering of the uses of power.
Small victories help keep the fight going. Big continuing wrongs do as well.
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* See, for example, the final chapter of Enemy Aliens: Double Standards and Constitutional Freedoms in the War on Terrorism by David Cole. Cole underlines that constitutional rights apply to "persons," that is, human beings. [And, he has Supreme Court case law to back it up.]
This coincides with the rise of "human rights" law, the post-WWII answer to the "natural law" that inspired many of our constitutional provisions. Natural law argues that there are certain rights that we have thanks to our humanity -- they were handed down by the Creator, and the state cannot rightly deprive us of them. Human rights law is a secular sort of natural law, one that amounts to quite the same thing.
[As addressed before, the growth of a human rights stream of thought in "international law" coincided with increased respect in the United States of its contours. The two can mix, if we truly respect the potential already present in our law.]