The Foreign Service Journal, September 2007

that in the eyes of many people around the world, America has lost the moral high ground in the battle to curb it. The invasion of Iraq and the bloodshed it has unleashed are part of the reason. But a major cause lies in the litany of abuses that have become synonymous with the Bush administration’s approach to fighting ter- rorism: Guantánamo, Abu Ghraib, “disappearances” in secret CIA detention facilities, unlawful renditions to governments that torture, substandard military commis- sions, indefinite detention without trial by labeling sus- pects “enemy combatants.” These examples of America flouting basic international human rights and humanitar- ian law help explain why so many people around the world now want nothing more to do with the administra- tion’s “war on terrorism.” The administration is not oblivious to the plummeting esteem in which the United States is held. But it seems to believe that this is a modest price to pay for making America safer. What critics denounce as lawless, it seems to presume, history will vindicate as necessary and effec- tive measures. But what if the opposite is true? What if, despite the fortunate lack of another terrorist attack on U.S. soil since 2001, the Bush approach is actually making things worse? Quite apart from questions of legality and moral- ity, what if the approach is intensifying the terrorist threat, making the likelihood of future attacks even greater? To evaluate this possibility, one must analyze the administration’s policies for fighting terrorism, the consequences of those policies, and the alternatives that might have been pursued. Redefining Torture The heart of the administration’s approach to curbing terrorism is the attempt to extract information from sus- pects through torture and other coercive interrogation. “High-value” suspects have been sent for interrogation to secret CIA-run detention facilities where they have been held in isolation, dependent entirely on their jailors. Classic “disappearance” victims, they have been denied access to lawyers, family members, even the Internation- al Committee of the Red Cross. In many cases, the U.S. government did not even acknowledge holding them. Although President Bush announced the temporary closing of these secret CIA facilities in September 2006 and the transfer of 14 detainees to acknowledged and more accessible detention in Guantánamo, Human Rights Watch’s investigations show that at least 38 detainees believed to have been held in CIA custody have not been accounted for. And since March, accord- ing to the administration’s own announcements, at least four new detainees have been delivered to Guantánamo from undisclosed locations. Without any external scrutiny or independent over- sight, “disappearance” victims have historically faced great risk to their physical integrity. The victims of the Bush administration have been no exception. One aim of their isolation was to permit the deployment of the tough interrogation techniques that the president has trumpet- ed. These, we now understand, include practices such as waterboarding (mock execution by drowning) that under any reasonable definition amount to torture. Pres. Bush routinely reassured us that the United States does not use torture, but those pronouncements were of limited value because the infamous Justice Department memo of August 2002 largely defined tor- ture out of existence by declaring that it required pain as intense as “death, organ failure, or serious impairment of body functions.” Under that definition, even pulling out fingernails or chopping off ears might not be torture. In the face of public outrage, the administration has repudi- ated this definition, but it has yet to offer any detailed alternative. Moreover, international law prohibits not only torture but also “cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment.” The prohibition on all such practices is absolute, allowing no exception even in time of war or public emergency. However, the Bush administration concocted a theory that permitted the use of cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment so long as the victim was a foreigner held out- side the United States. (Hence the need for the secret offshore CIA detention facilities.) That unprecedented reading of the law remained official policy until December 2005, when Senator John McCain, R-Ariz., won approval by a vote of 90 to 9 for his amendment to the Detainee Treatment Act repudiating it. Since then, the Pentagon, it seems, has largely taken itself out of the coercive-interrogation business by adopt- ing a new Army Field Manual on Intelligence Interroga- tion in September 2006. As far as the military is con- cerned, this manual repudiates most of the unlawful Bush F O C U S S E P T E M B E R 2 0 0 7 / F O R E I G N S E R V I C E J O U R N A L 27 Kenneth Roth is the executive director of Human Rights Watch (www.hrw.org) .