[Mb-civic] Out of a Bad Spy Novel - Eugene Robinson - Washington Post Op-Ed

[William Swiggard]

Out of a Bad Spy Novel

By Eugene Robinson
Friday, November 4, 2005; Page A23

The men from the pages of a bad spy novel throw people they don't like 
into secret prisons that officially do not exist, snug little dungeons 
hidden away in undisclosed countries. These spy-novel men keep to the 
shadows; if a ray of sunlight happens to fall upon one of their lairs, 
they scurry away to some other dark corner. They make their "high-value" 
prisoners simply disappear -- no charges, no hearings, no exit.

They tell us that we shouldn't worry, that every one of these prisoners 
is evil beyond redemption. And, anyway, what prisoners?
   

To interrogate these prisoners who don't exist, the spy-novel men use 
practices that international agreements classify as torture. Again, they 
tell us not to worry. They produce legal opinions, written by lawyers 
from the pages of a bad spy novel, proving definitively that torture is 
not, in fact, torture. Besides, the spy-novel men outsource the really 
messy business to cooperative regimes for which the word "qualms" has no 
meaning.

The spy-novel men have not lost all self-awareness. They know this 
Kafkaesque system would never survive public scrutiny. So they go to any 
lengths to keep their dirty work hidden. They fear exposure more than 
they fear anything in the world.

It's not 1965, and these men are not Soviet or East German spymasters 
playing the role of villains in the Cold War. It's 2005, and the 
spy-novel men are American officials whose un-American treatment of 
prisoners in the war on terrorism has shamed our nation.

As reporter Dana Priest revealed in The Post this week, the Bush 
administration has held dozens of al Qaeda prisoners in secret prisons, 
with no regard to due process. It was a "small circle of White House and 
Justice Department lawyers and officials" who approved this archipelago 
of "black-site" detention centers, The Post reported.

These CIA-run prisons have been operated in eight countries, The Post 
said -- Afghanistan, Thailand, the Guantanamo Bay naval base in Cuba and 
"several democracies in Eastern Europe." Officials prevailed upon The 
Post not to disclose the names of the European countries, citing 
national security concerns. The real reason, no doubt, was that if 
citizens of those countries knew their governments were hosting secret 
American prisons, they would surely object.

That's what happened in Thailand two years ago when the public found out 
about a secret CIA prison where two top-level al Qaeda officials were 
being interrogated. As soon as the prison came to light, Thai officials 
told the CIA to shut it down and move the prisoners somewhere else. 
Already, in the wake of The Post's report, European Union officials are 
questioning member states to learn whether they have allowed the CIA to 
set up "black-site" prisons on their soil.

 From earlier reports on interrogation practices, we know how the 
prisoners are being treated. The John le Carre wannabes in the 
administration are fighting tooth and nail against a move by Sen. John 
McCain and other responsible leaders on Capitol Hill to require the 
military and the CIA to bar cruel and inhuman treatment of prisoners.

Why does it matter how we treat a bunch of Islamic radicals who are 
sworn to bring death and destruction to the United States? It matters 
because the United States draws its strength and its moral authority in 
the world from its ideals. We preach about due process, we preach about 
the rule of law, we preach about humane treatment -- and now we're 
ignoring our own pronouncements.

But there's more at stake than American standing in the world. Our 
ideals are the heart and soul of this nation. We are not an ancient 
nation united by language or blood. Our ideals, rather than ethnicity or 
even territory, hold us together and make us a nation. When we betray 
those ideals, we weaken America.

Would it be so risky to do the right thing -- to bring al Qaeda 
operatives into American courtrooms and give them proper trials? There 
might be a risk, but this is a country that routinely accepts risks as 
the price of upholding its ideals. For example, we tolerate thousands of 
deaths by gunfire every year as the cost of respecting the right to bear 
arms. Most other nations would consider our homicide rate an 
unacceptable holocaust. We're not like most other nations.

I so wish all this were just a bad spy novel, but it's not. You couldn't 
get this book published, because it's just not credible. This isn't the 
way the American government behaves.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/11/03/AR2005110301732.html
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