America's Anti-Torture Tradition
    By Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
    The Los Angeles Times
    Saturday 17 December 2005
    It is nice that the Bush administration has finally been
pressured into backing a ban on cruel and inhumane treatment of
prisoners. But what remains shocking about this embarrassing and
distasteful national debate is that we had to have it at all. This
administration's newfound enthusiasm for torture has not only damaged
our international reputation, it has shattered one of our proudest
American traditions.
    Every schoolchild knows that Gen. George Washington made
extraordinary efforts to protect America's civilian population from the
ravages of war. Fewer Americans know that Revolutionary War leaders,
including Washington and the Continental Congress, cons idered the
decent treatment of enemy combatants to be one of the principal
strategic preoccupations of the American Revolution.
    "In 1776," wrote historian David Hackett Fischer in
"Washington's Crossing," "American leaders believed it was not enough to
win the war. They also had to win in a way that was consistent with the
values of their society and the principles of their cause. One of their
greatest achievements was to manage the war in a manner that was true to
the expanding humanitarian ideals of the American Revolution."
    The fact that the patriots refused to abandon these
principles, even in the dark times when the war seemed lost, when the
enemy controlled our cities and our ragged army was barefoot and
starving, credits the character of Washington and the founding fathers
and puts to shame the conduct of America's present leadership.
    Fischer writes that leaders in both the Continental Congress
and the Continental Army resolved that the War of Independence would be
conducted with a respect for human rights. This was all the more
extraordinary because these courtesies were not reciprocated by King
George's armies. Indeed, the British conducted a deliberate campaign of
atrocities against American soldiers and civilians. While Americans
extended quarter to combatants as a matter of right and treated their
prisoners with humanity, British regulars and German mercenaries were
threatened by their own officers with severe punishment if they showed
mercy to a surrendering American soldier. Captured Americans were
tortured, starved and cruelly maltreated aboard prison ships.
    Washington decided to behave differently. After capturing
1,000 Hessians in the Battle of Trenton, he ordered that enemy prisoners
be treated with the same rights for which our young nation was fighting.
In an order covering prisoners taken in th e Battle of Princeton,
Washington wrote: "Treat them with humanity, and let them have no reason
to Complain of our Copying the brutal example of the British Army in
their treatment of our unfortunate brethren. Provide everything
necessary for them on the road."
    John Adams argued that humane treatment of prisoners and
deep concern for civilian populations not only reflected the American
Revolution's highest ideals, they were a moral and strategic
requirement. His thoughts on the subject, expressed in a 1777 letter to
his wife, might make a profitable read for Dick Cheney and Donald
Rumsfeld as we endeavor to win hearts and minds in Iraq. Adams wrote: "I
know of no policy, God is my witness, but this Piety, Humanity and
Honesty are the best Policy. Blasphemy, Cruelty and Villainy have
prevailed and may again. But they won't prevail against America, in this
Contest, because I find the more of them are employed, the less they
succeed."
    Even British military leaders involved in the atrocities
recognized their negative effects on the overall war effort. In 1778,
Col. Charles Stuart wrote to his father, the Earl of Bute: "Wherever our
armies have marched, wherever they have encamped, every species of
barbarity has been executed. We planted an irrevocable hatred wherever
we went, which neither time nor measure will be able to eradicate."
    In the end, our founding fathers not only protected our
national values, they defeated a militarily superior enemy. Indeed, it
was their disciplined adherence to those values that helped them win a
hopeless struggle against the best soldiers in Europe.
    In accordance with this proud American tradition, President
Lincoln instituted the first formal code of conduct for the humane
treatment of prisoners of war in 1863. Lincoln's order forbade any form
of torture or cruelty, and i t became the model for the 1929 Geneva
Convention. Dwight Eisenhower made a point to guarantee exemplary
treatment to German POWs in World War II, and Gen. Douglas McArthur
ordered application of the Geneva Convention during the Korean War, even
though the U.S. was not yet a signatory. In the Vietnam War, the United
States extended the convention's protection to Viet Cong prisoners even
though the law did not technically require it.
    Today, our president is again challenged to align the
conduct of a war with the values of our nation. America's treatment of
its prisoners is a test of our faith in our country and the character of
our leaders.


"It is the mark of the untrained mind to take its own processes as valid
for all wo/men, and its own judgements for absolute truth."---Aleister
Crowley

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