President Obama’s failure to prosecute Bush-era torturers created an impunity that has encouraged some Republican presidential candidates to tout new plans for more torture if they reach the White House, a grotesque example of “American exceptionalism,” as Nat Parry explains.
By Nat Parry
Troubling comments within the Republican presidential field over whether to reinstate torture and implement other war crimes have been drawing criticism lately, with the 2008 Republican presidential nominee, Arizona Senator John McCain, even feeling compelled to weigh in last week by calling out the “loose talk” in the Republican primaries.
On Feb. 9, McCain took to the Senate floor to condemn remarks by his Republican colleagues regarding the use of torture, saying that “these statements must not go unanswered because they mislead the American people about the realities of interrogation, how to gather intelligence, what it takes to defend our security and at the most fundamental level, what we are fighting for as a nation and what kind of nation we are.”
Barack Obama, then President-elect, and President George W. Bush at the White House during the 2008 transition.
McCain’s remarks were a welcome breath of sanity in a Republican presidential race that has recently been dominated by discourse that sounds much like a warped competition to see who would be the most brutal and lawless in the treatment of suspected terrorists. The televised debate on Feb. 6, for example, featured candidates Marco Rubio, Ted Cruz and Donald Trump vying for the “tough guy” vote, each expressing varied levels of support for waterboarding and other discredited “enhanced interrogation techniques.”
While Cruz said he would support waterboarding in limited circumstances, Trump pledged to not only reintroduce the technique in a widespread way, but also introduce even more draconian torture practices if elected: “I would bring back waterboarding, and I would bring back a hell of a lot worse than waterboarding,” he said.
Rubio also reiterated his support for waterboarding, saying that terrorism cases should not be held to the same humane legal standards of traditional law…