We Don't Torture (Hal Cohen)

  Don’t talk to me about keeping me safer.  I’ll take my chances.

  Hal Cohen -- World News Trust

  May 24, 2009 -- In America, as in most English speaking nations, the Ten Commandments are identified with the phrase, “Thou Shalt Not.”  The Hebrew version in my copy of The Pentateuch (the Five Books of Moses) is a much more emphatic “No!”  No other God, No Kill, No Adultery, No Covet, etc.  This doesn’t exactly leave much room for wiggling.  I was recently impressed by Shepard Smith’s recent outburst “We are America!  We don’t F---ing torture!  I don’t mention this lightly or as an academic exercise -- what makes America the great beacon of liberty that it is, is the idea that there are things we do not, cannot, do.

  The phrase, “We are a nation of laws, not of men,” gets bandied about often.  What it means, however, deserves more attention than it usually gets.  Humans can, and inevitably will, make mistakes.  Sometimes, the laws we pass are wrong.  However, we have agreed to live by the laws that exist.  It is the contract that we make with each other.  When we believe a law is wrong, we sometimes feel the need to break it in order to change it, but we abide by the consequences of such lawlessness.

  Supreme among all our laws, is the Constitution of the United States of America.  Every law we enact, every treaty into which we enter, every policy we pursue must adhere to the principles laid out in The Constitution or they will be declared null and void.  Every elected official in Washington, D.C., takes an oath of office containing the phrase “preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution of the United States.”  Note that the oath doesn’t say defend the United States, but rather the Constitution.  The construct is deliberate.  Without the Constitution, we are not America.

  I once printed a copy of it out, downloaded from the Library of Congress.  Using the default font, it took 15 pages, 8 ½ x 11 to print.  Those fifteen pages are my missile shield.  They are my defense against terrorism.  You can rip up my printout.  You can kill me.  You can destroy my building, even my city, and yet the ideals in that document will endure.  For me, the rules of the Constitution are as unequivocal as the Ten Commandments.

  Terrorism is defined as manipulation through fear.  The Constitution wins out for me because no matter how scared I felt in the wake of September 11, and it is September 11, not 9/11, I was more fearful of us agreeing to abrogate the Constitution to feel safer.  I steadfastly refuse to do so.  Warrantless wiretaps, indefinite detentions, provisions of the Patriot Act, pre-emptive war on the say-so of the President, these are far greater evils than anything Osama Bin Laden can dream up.

  Don’t talk to me about keeping me safe, either.  I’ll take my chances.  In fact, if I could, I would gladly trade my life for the 3,000 lives lost that tragic day, if I get the Constitution back.  There is an amendment specifically banning cruel and unusual punishment.  The Geneva Conventions, and the Convention on Torture are duly ratified treaties that have the force of law.  Waterboarding is torture.  We are America.  We do not torture.  We did.  The people who decided to break those laws out of conscience must now abide by the consequences of their actions.

  Hal Cohen is editor and publisher of Mollynyc.com