Amnesty

Right after the attacks of September 11, 2001, Dick Cheney went on Meet the Press and made this rather famous statement: “We’ll have to work on the dark side, if you will.”

Jane Mayer’s The Dark Side (Doubleday, 2008), takes its title from that statement. I have just begun reading the book, subtitled The Inside Story of How the War on Terror Turned into a War on American Ideals. Though I’ve only read the first 20 pages or so, already I’ve come across some information I should have known (my emphasis):

While there was nothing new about torture, its authorization by Bush Administration lawyers represented a dramatic break with the past. As early as the Revolutionary War, General George Washington vowed that, unlike the British, who tortured enemy captives, this new country in the New World would distinguish itself by its humanity. In fighting to liberate the world from Communish, Fascism, and Nazism, and working to ameliorate global ignorance and poverty, America had done more than any nation on earth to abolish torture and other violations of human rights.

Yet, almost precisely on the sixtieth anniversary of the famous war crimes tribunal’s judgment at Nuremberg, which established what seemed like an immutable principle, that legalisms and technicalities could not substitute for individual moral choice and conscience, America became the first nation ever to authorize violations of the Geneva Conventions. These international treaties, many of which were hammered out by American lawyers in the wake of the harrowing Nazi atrocities of World War II, set an absolute, minimum baseline for the humane treatment of all categories of prisoners taken in almost all manner of international conflicts. …America had long played a special role as the world’s most ardent champion of these fundamental rights; it was not just a signatory but also the custodian of the Geneva Conventions, the original signed copies of which resided in a vault at the State Department. [pp. 8-9]

When asked about the Bush Administration’s position on torture, Arthur Schlesinger is quoted as saying, “No position taken has done more damage to the American reputation in the world—ever.”

But though the torture memos may be the most egregious, they are not the only example of ways in which the U.S. has fallen off its pedestal as world leader in human rights. As Adam Liptik pointed out in the New York Times a few weeks ago, the world’s nations are no longer looking to the U.S. Supreme Court for guidance in matters of legal precedent:

…American legal influence is waning. Even as a debate continues in the court over whether its decisions should ever cite foreign law, a diminishing number of foreign courts seem to pay attention to the writings of American justices.

�One of our great exports used to be constitutional law,� said Anne-Marie Slaughter, the dean of the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs at Princeton. �We are losing one of the greatest bully pulpits we have ever had.�

From 1990 through 2002, for instance, the Canadian Supreme Court cited decisions of the United States Supreme Court about a dozen times a year, an analysis by The New York Times found. In the six years since, the annual citation rate has fallen by half, to about six.

Australian state supreme courts cited American decisions 208 times in 1995, according to a recent study by Russell Smyth, an Australian economist. By 2005, the number had fallen to 72.

The story is similar around the globe, legal experts say, particularly in cases involving human rights. These days, foreign courts in developed democracies often cite the rulings of the European Court of Human Rights in cases concerning equality, liberty and prohibitions against cruel treatment, said Harold Hongju Koh, the dean of the Yale Law School. In those areas, Dean Koh said, �they tend not to look to the rulings of the U.S. Supreme Court.�

Amnesty International promises to keep up the fight for human rights no matter which of our two candidates is elected president. Here is an e-mail statement I received from them yesterday:

Though Americans are engrossed in the final weeks of a tight presidential contest of historic importance, we cannot lose sight of the epic human rights challenges before us�life and death issues that transcend politics.

No matter who moves into the White House in January, one thing is crystal clear. We cannot depend on a new administration in Washington to swiftly reverse the human rights abuses being carried out in our name. We are the agents of change that will make it happen.

Amnesty is holding their fall membership drive. If you join by September 30, your membership donation will be doubled by an anonymous donor. You can join here.

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