AMERICA is in the grip of a passionate debate. The outcome will be of vital interest not only to Americans themselves, but to all those, whether friendly or hostile, who have dealings with the United States one way or another, and perhaps especially to Arabs and Israelis. The key issue of the debate is this: How should a democratic society treat its enemies? More particularly, can torture of alleged terrorists be justified in the name of national security? Or does adherence to the rule of law set limits which cannot – and must not – be breached? The debate is not new. It raged during the Bush administration and has been re-ignited ever since President Barack Obama took office last January. But it broke resoundingly into the open on May 21, capturing the attention of the whole country, when Obama and his bitterest opponent, former Vice-President Dick Cheney, both delivered major speeches on the subject – each defending radically opposing points of view. Obama gave his speech at the National Archives, while Cheney chose as his venue the American Enterprise Institute, a conservative think-tank where he was among like-minded hawks. Obama says he wants to clean up what he calls the ‘legal mess' inherited from the Bush administration, whereas Cheney vigorously defends Bush's record – even to the extent that he has embarrassed middle-of-the-road Republicans who, as they are concerned about their future electoral prospects, would rather the Bush years were forgotten. Not for nothing was Cheney considered the ‘grey eminence' of George W Bush's administration. So real was his influence over an ignorant and incompetent president that he was thought to head what was, in effect, ‘a separate government' of neo-cons and other hardliners, who cooked intelligence to lead America into the disastrous war in Iraq, subverted civil liberties, and set about the horrific business of torturing detainees at Abu Ghraib, Guant?namo and other such disgraceful places. Whereas Bush has remained silent since leaving office, Cheney has been extremely vocal. He has in fact emerged as the unofficial leader of a demoralized Republican party. A leading neo-con, William Kristol, editor of the Weekly Standard, has praised him as ‘the Most Valuable Republican of the first four months of the Obama administration.' The debate which has gripped America is about a specific issue – what to do about the detention centre at Guant?namo in Cuba – but it is also, more generally, about how to strike a balance between national security and individual freedoms. On Guant?namo, Obama has said he will close it down by next January. But the Senate voted, by 90 votes to 6, not to approve an $80m appropriation to pay for its closure. Before it grants the money, it wants the White House to come up with a realistic plan to dispose of the 240 remaining inmates. Obama has not yet outlined such a comprehensive plan. Some detainees, he says, will be released. Some will be transferred to other countries. Some will be tried in US criminal courts. One such is Ahmad Khalfan Ghailani, captured in July 2004, transferred to Guant?namo in September 2008. He will be tried in New York for conspiracy for involvement in the bombing of the US embassies in Kenya and Tanzania in 1998. Some detainees will be tried by ‘military commissions' (although these will be reformed versions of the Bush administration's ‘flawed' military tribunals, with greater rights for defendants. No evidence will be admissible if it has been obtained by ‘cruel, inhuman or degrading interrogation methods.' Some, allegedly dangerous, terrorists – this is the difficult part – may be transferred to maximum security prisons on the US mainland where, if they cannot be successfully prosecuted because evidence against them is tainted, they will be held indefinitely without trial as enemy combatants. Obama says that detainees subject to such preventive detention will be held under a new legal framework, but this has caused champions of civil liberties to accuse the President of betraying his own high ideals by carrying forward some of the Bush-era abusive methods. Obama is therefore facing attack from both Right and Left. The Right has attacked him for dismantling the security apparatus of Bush's ‘war on terror,' and specifically for banning torture, described euphemistically as ‘enhanced interrogation techniques.' The Left has attacked him for keeping Bush's military tribunals (even if reformed); for refusing to prosecute the Bush lawyers who drafted the memos reclassifying torture as legal; and for refusing to publish torture photos, because of the fear that they would arouse anti-American sentiment. In fact, many terrible images have already been published showing naked prisoners shackled in ‘stress positions,' or smeared in excrement and blood. It is worth setting side by side extracts from Obama's and Cheney's speeches. Here is Obama in the National Archives: “The documents that we hold in this very hall – the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution, the Bill of Rights – these are not simply words written into aging parchment. They are the foundations of liberty and justice in this country, and a light that shines for all who seek freedom, fairness, equality, and dignity around the world... “I know some have argued that brutal methods like water-boarding were necessary to keep us safe. I could not disagree more. As Commander-in-Chief, I see the intelligence, I bear responsibility for keeping this country safe, and I reject the assertion that these are the most effective means of interrogation. They did not advance our war and counter-terrorism efforts – they undermined them, and that is why I ended them once and for all... “I believe with every fibre of my being that in the long run we ... cannot keep this country safe unless we enlist the power of our most fundamental values... We uphold our most cherished values not only because doing so is right, but because it strengthens our country and keeps us safe. Time and again, our values have been our best national security asset...” Cheney, in contrast, specifically defended the use of torture: “I was and remain a strong proponent of our enhanced interrogation program,' he declared. ‘The interrogations were used on hardened terrorists after other efforts failed. They were legal, essential, justified, successful, and the right thing to do. The intelligence officers who questioned the terrorists can be proud of their work and proud of the results, because they prevented the violent death of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands, of innocent people... “To completely rule out enhanced interrogation methods in the future is unwise in the extreme. It is recklessness cloaked in righteousness, and would make the American people less safe.” As has been widely reported, Abu Zubaydah, a senior Al-Qaeda member, was water-boarded 83 times in August 2002, and Khalid Sheikh Muhammad, said to be “the principal architect of the 9/11 attacks,” was water-boarded no fewer than 183 times in March 2003, perhaps because Cheney and others may have hoped he would reveal information linking Saddam Hussein to Al-Qaeda, and thereby justify the attack on Iraq. At stake in the debate is America's reputation and its moral authority, squandered in the Bush years. It will be watched closely by Israel, now engaged in a battle of wills with Obama over settlements and Palestinian statehood. Although a self-declared ‘democracy', Israel does not hesitate to murder political opponents, torture detainees, and hold thousands of Palestinians in secret prisons without trial. It cannot be indifferent to the outcome of the American debate.
