People say all is fair in love and war. While this may appear true to anyone who has ever been heartbroken, it is not true of war. Anyone who has ever been to war can tell you of the horrors, and no one should pretend that men, when faced with death, would not do almost anything to live. War is cruel, it is divisive, and it is messy, but it is not without rules. The Geneva Conventions have established a guideline which the world must follow, a doctrine of rules to protect humanity from itself during times of war. Presidential candidate Donald Trump however appears to view this doctrine as nothing more than something that impedes our wartime efforts.
For the second time during this campaign Mr. Trump has called for a broadening of laws regarding torture. In the past Mr. Trump has called for things more advance than waterboarding and in one of the most shocking statement made on the campaign trail he stated that we have to “take out terrorist’ families.” His initial statements about the use of more waterboarding during interrogations of terrorist suspects required an almost immediate back-pedal on his part. The very next day he reassured voters that he had no intentions of ordering anything illegal in regards to interrogations. Mr. Trump doesn’t wish to order anything illegal because he’s now openly advocating that we lift or “broaden” some of the laws surrounding advanced interrogation techniques. Torture, that is what we are talking about, is explicitly spelled out as a war crime in the Geneva Convention, and now Mr. Trump appears to be readily willing to label himself a war criminal.
This may sound like a harsh criticism, after all Donald Trump is talking about gaining information from foreign terrorists to save American lives. This is something that on the surface may appear a like a good idea to someone, but only if that someone has never given it more than a minute of thought. Human beings, even the most awful of them, have fundamental rights. The United States grants prisoners, even those who are not citizens, the protections of the constitution. To violate the rights of terrorists in one case appears a slippery slope especially when talked about by a man who appears ready to turn democracy into a dictatorship.
Who will be responsible for making the judgment on when torture is and is not appropriate? Whose moral compass do we put our faith in to make those kinds of decisions? Torture may be used to save lives. For example the “ticking time bomb” scenario where a known terrorist has explicitly stated that he placed a bomb counting down to detonation but refuses to say where that bomb is located. This is the scenario most people might envision when they think of torture scenes, but the fact is that even in the slim cases where the only logical arguments for torture could be made it still should not be used.
Arguments are still made over the effectiveness of gaining information through torture, but whether or not it’s effective the majority of the time it is the morally wrong choice. We are currently combating ISIS and global jihad, but in many ways this is a war of ideas as much as it is a war of munitions. From an objective standpoint the United States stands on the moral high ground. We don’t torture and execute hostages on camera, we don’t massacre innocent people for differing beliefs, and we don’t rape and subjugate women. Donald Trump has argued that if ISIS does not follow our rules we should play by theirs. I cannot disagree more strongly with him on anything.
Even if we in effect hamstring ourselves in this fight, we cannot allow ourselves to fall to the levels of ISIS. To level the playing field would worsen us as a society. We must hold ourselves up to a higher standard, because we cannot claim to be any better than our enemies if we allow ourselves to use their reprehensible actions in our fight against them. If ISIS uses children as human shields in their fight should the United States be open to trying that? If they use a suicide bomber to attack civilians in a shopping center should America strap a bomb to a soldier’s chest? These are obviously easy questions to say no to, but what Mr. Trump fails to realize is that torture isn’t as different as he might hope.
This may have been a throw away statement for Mr. Trump, but it certainly shouldn’t be for anyone who was listening. The idea that a frontrunner in the presidential race would advocate criminal action should not be taken lightly. Mr. Trump may back-pedal this statement again, but I believe we have glimpsed something which should not be ignored. There is a very real possibility that Mr. Trump will capture the republican nomination. This is a man poised to grab the bucket of water and the washcloth and head down to Guantanamo bay personally. Is this the type of person we need as commander-in-chief?