Why virulent militarists are debating torture

Two opposing camps of murderous aggressors in the U.S. capitalist establishment are having a fierce argument over President George W. Bush’s proposals to both legalize torture and kangaroo military courts and overturn rules of evidence.

Three pro-Pentagon Republican leaders in the Senate—John Warner of Vir ginia, John McCain of Arizona and Lin dsey Gra ham of South Carolina—along with significant sections of the U.S. military are engaged in a bitter conflict with the administration over whether the U.S. government should revise its obligations under the Geneva Convention to allow torture by the CIA, to deny the right of detainees to see evidence against them, and to establish secret military tribunals, among other things.

Civil liberties groups and humanitarian organizations have rightfully long opposed Bush’s drive to alter the U.S. government interpretation of the Geneva Convention and the U.S. War Crimes Act to allow torture and deprive captives of the U.S. military of their basic legal rights. Progressive voices have been raised everywhere against this new push by the Bush-Cheney-Rumsfeld group.

CCR legal victories

The Center for Constitutional Rights fought long and hard in civilian courts to defend the rights of detainees at Guan tanamo, challenging the legality of their detention (Rasul v. Bush) and demanding that the Geneva Convention be held applicable to prisoners taken as so-called “enemy combatants” by the U.S. military (Hamdan v. Rumsfeld). Both these legal victories were won at the Supreme Court level after several years of arduous legal struggle at the federal district and appeals court levels.

The political background to these legal victories is the deteriorating military and political situation for Washington in Iraq and Afghanistan and the rise of the worldwide anti-war movement. Along with the persistent growth of the resistance in Iraq came the exposure of U.S. military torture at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq and at Bagh ram Air Force Base in Afghanistan. There was also a growing world scandal over the U.S. torture of prisoners, illegal military tribunals and indefinite detention with no recourse at Guantanamo.

But this contention between two militarist factions of the ruling class in the present Senate debate is not over concern about torture or human rights as a matter of principle. The struggle is really over how best to protect the interests of U.S. imperialism. While the Bush proposals are more reactionary than the alternate proposals by the three senators, the Warner/McCain/Graham bill is said to have many dangerous concessions, even before any compromise is worked out with Bush.

The Supreme Court had ruled that the Geneva Convention barring torture applies to prisoners of an agency of the U.S. government. Bush and Vice Pre sident Dick Cheney are trying to reverse this ruling and the one on the right of defendants to see evidence against them.

Bush wants to reinterpret the Geneva convention so that only “extreme violations” of the convention would be illegal. This wording would allow practices that the CIA has been using and that Bush wants them to be able to keep. Examples are: keeping prisoners naked in a “cold room” at 50 degrees and dousing them with cold water; having them stand in extreme stress positions for up to 40 hours; subjecting them to ear-splitting noise; prolonged sleep deprivation, and other measures that cause both physical agony and mental duress.

McCain, Warner and Graham won a battle against Bush and Cheney last year when legislation was passed in Congress declaring that the language of Common Article 3 of the convention outlawing “cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment” of prisoners in U.S. custody has the force of law. As the crisis in Iraq and Afghanistan gets deeper and the elections approach, Bush and Cheney are reviving the debate.

Senators speak for military

All three senators who oppose Bush have been staunch supporters of the war and occupation of Iraq.

McCain, who is known mostly as a prisoner of war during the Vietnam War, is more than just an Air Force pilot. He is the son of Adm. John McCain, commander of the Pacific Fleet during the Vietnam era.

Graham is a former military lawyer with deep connections to the Pentagon brass.

The New York Times of Sept. 20 wrote of Warner: “With a long history of ties to the military, Mr. Warner, 79, has a reputation as an accurate gauge to views that senior officers are reluctant to express in public.”

“Mr. Warner,” continued the Times, “like his two colleagues, has a network of high-ranking current and retired military officers who provide regular guidance and support. While he has been consulting them privately, some of them are expected to weigh in publicly in the days ahead.”

Indeed, two former heads of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, generals Colin Powell and John W. Vessey, have written letters opposing the Bush proposals.

In a letter to McCain, Powell wrote that “the world is beginning to doubt the moral basis of our fight against terrorism.” He followed that up with an interview published in the Washington Post of Sept. 19, in which he said that “If you just look at how we are perceived in the world and the kind of criticism we have taken over Guantanamo, Abu Ghraib and renditions, whether we believe it or not, people are now starting to question whether we’re following our own high standards.”

Warner expressed similar thoughts, according to the New York Times of Sept. 17. The struggle was about more than a few prisoners at Guantanamo, he said. “It’s about how America’s to be perceived in the world, how we’re going to win the war on terror.”

Twenty-five generals and admirals sent a public letter to the Senate Armed Services Committee expressing similar fears.

The chief lawyers from all four branches of the military, under extreme pressure, signed a grudging letter of partial approval of the Bush proposal, but each expressed disagreement in different ways.

Why the military is fearful

What comes across in this struggle is that major sections of the military, whose responsibility is to carry out the wars of U.S. imperialism, are fearful that if the U.S. government openly becomes the first imperialist power in 60 years to sack the Geneva Convention on torture and other basic legal guarantees, it will further undermine the political position of Washington and make the Pentagon’s job of conquest that much more difficult.

Unlike Bush, Cheney and Rumsfeld, who are encased in their right-wing bubble in Washington, the generals and admirals face resistance in Iraq and Afghan istan and smoldering rebellion across the Middle East, Asia and Latin America. They are more keenly aware of the contradiction between simultaneously shouting slogans—as Bush just did once again at the United Nations—about “making a war to spread democracy” and at the same time openly advocating the eradication of fundamental legal rights and legalization of the right to torture.

The opposition of sections of the military grows out of the increasing political and military weakness of U.S. imperialism.

This struggle can be viewed as an attempt by a solid section of the ruling class to slow down the rightward trend being pushed by the Bush administration. And it can also be regarded as a second act in the “revolt of the generals” against Rumsfeld, Bush and Cheney. The first act came when half a dozen high-ranking generals, active duty and retired, called for Rumsfeld’s resignation earlier this year.

There have been rumblings in the military about needing more troops on the ground in both Iraq and Afghanistan. There is a tone of desperation in recent military assessments of the resistance, the civil conflict, the shortage of forces in Anbar province and Baghdad as well as in Afghanistan. The Bush administration has remained firmly committed to the Rumsfeld doctrine of trying to fight wars with lots of technology but limited forces on the ground.

U.S. record of covert torture

To be sure, this struggle is not about generals and admirals being opposed to torture.

For decades the U.S. military has run the School of the Americas at Fort Ben ning, Ga. It became so notorious it has been renamed the Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation. This school, where thousands of protesters descend every year, has trained generations of torturers for the militaries in Latin America—from Guatemala to Nicaragua to Uruguay, Argentina, Brazil and Chile, among others. The U.S. military also funds brutal death squad torturers and murderers in Colombia.

Washington funds the Israeli military, which has tortured thousands of Pales tinian prisoners for two generations. Wash ington set up the KCIA in South Korea. It operated under the jurisdiction of the U.S. military and routinely carried out torture of people suspected of being sympathetic to the north or to socialism. The U.S. set up the Savak, the Shah of Iran’s secret police, which notoriously engaged in torture against the left and the Islamic opposition.

And the U.S. military shows no compunction when it comes to slaughtering civilians with the most brutal kinds of weapons—napalm, phosphorous bombs, cluster bombs—all in violation of the laws of war and international convention.

Warner, McCain and Graham speak for this brutal military establishment. As such, it is laughable to think that they are concerned with the fate of the victims of torture. They are primarily concerned with the political and ultimately the military consequences for the empire of a shift from covert support for torture to open, governmental advocacy of it.

The military is still reeling from the Abu Ghraib scandal. Every place they go in Europe and the Middle East, they are gril led about the torture chambers at Guan tanamo.

While the U.S. high command and diplomatic corps have worked mightily to try to convince the world that the horrors of Abu Ghraib were not U.S. policy, but just “a few bad apples,” the chief executive of U.S. imperialism in the White House is struggling to codify torture as official policy!

In addition, the military fears that if Washington sets a legal standard allowing torture and secret military courts, this will invite retaliation against U.S. forces. And there is deep concern that should the Bush proposals go through, this will be prima facie evidence of violations of the Geneva Convention and U.S. officials would be subject worldwide to war crimes charges.

It is said that at the beginning of the Iraqi resistance the higher ranks of the U.S. officer corps were made to watch the film “Battle of Algiers” about the struggle of the Algerian people against French colonialism, which was victorious after eight long years of brutal urban warfare.

The French military became infamous during that war for its torture of prisoners. In spite of the overwhelming military “strength” of the French, the torturers lost. The Algerian masses won. This is what the U.S. military is worried about.

It is important to know that 28 Demo cratic Party members of the House Armed Services Committee voted with Republi cans for the Bush proposal. They were afraid to be called soft on the phony “war on terror.” None of them have pointed out that the Warner/McCain/Graham bill would allow as many as 450 prisoners to be permanently detained. It would also make allowances for Bush’s “alternative techniques”—including hypo thermia, sleep deprivation and threats of violence against detainees and their families. This is the “moderate” bill, before any compromise is negotiated with Bush.

The anti-war movement and all progressive forces must continue to carry on a genuine anti-war, anti-imperialist struggle against the Bush administration’s torture tactics and kangaroo courts. Militar ist opponents of the legalization of torture will find ways to allow it in secret while opposing it in public for political purposes. There must be an independent struggle and mass mobilization to stop these inhuman violations of the most basic rights.