A Long Walk Home Begins
The Senate Armed Services Committee today released the declassified version of its investigation into the treatment of detainees in U.S. custody since the start of the so-called “War on Terror.” You can read the whole report here.
What they found, in a bipartisan report, is striking and horrifying. In essence, the United States government adopted techniques used to train our own personnel to resist torture as interrogation tools. The truth is, the preceding sentence obscures the point: the United States adopted torture as an interrogation tool.
The work of the Armed Services Committee was done late last year, but the declassification process took this long and so they were scooped, if you will, by the release of the Justice Department memos which provided the convoluted legal rationale for the use of torture.
Many have criticized the release of these documents for compromising America’s national security. I can’t help but disagree. I believe their release will help restore the rule of law to a land where our ideals are a source of strength, not weakness.
In 2007, Bruce Springsteen sang of a “Long Walk Home.” In that song he observed
You know that flag flying over the courthouse
Means certain things are set in stone
Who we are, what we’ll do and what we won’t. . . . It’s gonna be a long walk home. . . . .
That flag should mean again that we won’t torture. The release of these documents is an important first step in that long walk.
