In March, a Reuters poll found that 63 percent of Americans believe torture can be justified “against suspected terrorists to obtain information about terrorism.” Broken down by party, 53 percent of Democrats and 82 percent of Republicans said torture is “often” or “sometimes” justified.
The poll received extra attention at the time because Donald Trump had vowed in February that if elected he would reinstate the kind of torture – including “a hell of a lot worse than waterboarding” – that President Obama had banned by executive order in January 2009. That order, 13491, revoked George W. Bush’s 2007 order, 13440, which asserted that “unlawful enemy combatants,” including but not limited to al-Qaida and the Taliban, were not entitled to the prisoner-of-war protections of the Third Geneva Convention.
The debate over whether the United States should engage in torture often focuses on morality and efficacy: “Is it right?” and “Does it work?”
We are confident that the answer to both questions is “No.”
But a team of researchers at Harvard’s Carr Center for Human Rights Policy has asked an equally important question: What were the strategic costs of Bush-era “enhanced” interrogation techniques?
Writing in Foreign Affairs, Douglas Johnson, Alberto Mora and Averell Schmidt of the Carr Center said, “We’ve found that Washington’s use of torture greatly damaged national security.”
The abuse of detainees at Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo, they wrote, continues to be a powerful recruiting tool for extremists. They also found that the revelation of certain American interrogation methods deeply damaged relationships with European allies, created lasting legal repercussions for American officials, undermined diplomacy efforts, and created a guidebook – and justification – for other governments to commit similar abuses.
“Reinstating torture,” they wrote (with Trump and his supporters clearly in mind), “would be a costly mistake.”
In New Hampshire, torture has not been among the hot issues in the Senate race, but national security has, and so we reached out to Democrat Maggie Hassan and Republicans Jim Rubens and Kelly Ayotte to ask about the use of torture and Trump’s position on the matter.
Hassan spokesman Aaron Jacobs said: “Military and national security experts have made it clear that torture doesn’t work and doesn’t make us safer. And it’s also inconsistent with our values.”
Rubens said: “Such techniques are known to extract false statements, which are of no intelligence value. Second, we hold ourselves to a higher human rights standard than ISIS and, by adhering to this higher standard, we make it more likely that any captured American soldiers or civilians will be humanely treated.”
And Ayotte said: “Torture violates our laws, undercuts our values and undermines our interests. With growing and evolving threats, lawful interrogations are essential to the collection of intelligence that we need to prevent potential attacks and keep Americans safe – but the use of torture in those interrogations is unacceptable.”
Taken at face value, there is not a lot of daylight between the three candidates’ positions. Hassan and Rubens point out what many have found – that torture doesn’t work – and all three cite the moral implications.
But based on Ayotte’s push to keep some interrogation methods secret, her deliberate use of the term “lawful interrogation” and her opposition to Obama’s 2009 executive order, we have some concerns about her definition of “torture.” That said, we do believe she doesn’t see eye-to-eye with Trump on methods that, as Sen. John McCain said, “stained our national honor . . . for our short-term security needs.”
As for those who believe Trump’s tough-guy approach is the correct one, we urge you to consider the lingering national security damage caused by Bush-era methods of torture – and vote accordingly.