Connie Bruck’s piece on Senator Dianne Feinstein tracks the often morally irreconcilable positions she has held on human-rights violations committed by U.S. intelligence services and the military (“The Inside War,” June 22nd). In spite of her inconsistent stances, Feinstein has done a commendable job of fighting for greater transparency concerning the C.I.A. torture program under the George W. Bush Administration. Unfortunately, it seems unlikely that the people who authorized and engaged in torture under the U.S. flag will be held accountable. A more urgent problem is that neither President Obama’s 2009 executive order nor the Senate’s re-cent passage of the McCain-Feinstein amendment to the National Defense Authorization Act has completely closed torture loopholes. The 2006 Army Field Manual—in effect, the guiding standard for interrogations—lies outside the norms of international law and practice. Beyond the manual’s permission to create and manipulate phobias and engender hopelessness and helplessness its Appendix M allows for the extended use of solitary confinement and sleep deprivation in cases involving “unlawful combatants.” The American public may not find these tactics as shocking as waterboarding and rectal feeding, but the United Nations and human-rights organizations such as Amnesty International describe them as torture or cruel, inhuman, and degrading treatment. Many victims are known to suffer chronic trauma or psychosis, or to become suicidal. The McCain-Feinstein amendment codifies a ban on some of the more lurid interrogation methods, but, between the lines, official authorization of torture remains.
President, Psychologists for Social Responsibility
The “inside war” that Bruck describes is about values—and whether certain national leaders in the United States have any. When Senator Feinstein looks askance at torture, she is reminding us of the obligation of States under the U.N. Charter (Article 55), the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (Article 5), and the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (Article 7) that “no one may be subjected to cruel or degrading treatment or punishment.” Aside from the fact that confessions extracted via torture are questionable, the U.S. should consider its standing in the world. To call torture an “enhanced technique” is to make a mockery of both language and justice.__
For more than twenty years, I have lived in Chapel Hill, near the University of North Carolina, where, as Margaret Talbot writes, three Muslim students were killed this past winter (“The Story of a Hate Crime,” June 22nd). I am a professor at U.N.C.’s School of Medicine. Just after September 11, 2001, I was invited to give a lecture in Saudi Arabia and was given traditional Muslim outfits for a man and a woman as souvenirs. On Halloween night, which is a very large celebration here in Chapel Hill, my wife and I decided—very naïvely—to dress as Muslims and go out downtown. We were berated with Islamophobic insults and told to go back home. Being Hispanic, my wife and I are used to being treated with mistrust, but that night made us aware of the serious problems that Muslims face in our country. As the killing of young Muslims shows, even in our most liberal and intellectual towns we still have a long way to go.
Mauricio Castillo, M.D.