Last week, in testimony before the Senate Armed Services Committee, Attorney General Alberto Gonzales sought to defend the Bush administration’s position on the treatment and adjudication of detainees. Gonzales argued that provisions of the Geneva Conventions which prohibit “outrages upon personal dignity, and in particular humiliating and degrading treatment,� are “inherently vague.� Much to the consternation of members of the committee, the Attorney General remained evasive about both the use and definition of such treatment, as reported in the New York Times:
[S]enators said Congress should not endorse any treatment it would not want used on American soldiers.
“We must remain a nation that is different from, and above, our enemies,� said Senator John McCain, Republican of Arizona.
The differences between the administration and the Senate were most pronounced when Mr. McCain asked Mr. Gonzales whether statements obtained through “illegal and inhumane treatment� should be admissible. Mr. Gonzales paused for almost a minute before responding.
“The concern that I would have about such a prohibition is, what does it mean?� he said. “How do you define it? I think if we could all reach agreement about the definition of cruel and inhumane and degrading treatment, then perhaps I could give you an answer.� [full text]
So what does it mean when the nation’s chief lawyer cannot—or will not—render an opinion about what constitutes “cruel and inhumane and degrading treatment� and how such might be used? What does such cluelessness, however feigned or real, say about the Attorney General’s understanding of and respect for the law, in particular the 8th Amendment’s prohibition against “cruel and unusual punishments� and similar prohibitions established by the Geneva Conventions? What message does it send to other officials who look to the AG for guidance and who must daily enforce the law and dispense justice? Perhaps the following article by Rachel Shteir, published earlier this week in The Guardian, provides some answer to this latter question:
Had Mel Gibson been arrested for drink-driving in Tennessee instead of California, things might have gone differently for him. Last January, a “shame law” for driving under the influence came into effect in the southern state. Gibson could have found himself picking up litter while wearing a bright-orange jump suit emblazoned with the words: “I am a drunk driver.”
In a society where committing what used to be considered a shameful act can get you a spot on American Idol, it is odd to learn that shame punishment – or “public punishment,” or “creative punishment” – is experiencing a renaissance in the US. Call it the new shame.
Tennessee is ground zero for shame punishment, having produced not just the state law but also judges who believe that shame is the best deterrent for petty crime. These include James McKenzie, who makes shoplifters stand outside Wal-Mart with signs that say “I am a thief put here by order of Judge McKenzie”; and Joe Brown, who graduated from dispensing shame punishment in Memphis to his own nationwide TV show. But it’s not just Tennessee – throughout the country, overwhelmed judges are using shame to curb the enormous number of petty offenders.
The new shame takes a number of guises: in addition to wearing posterboards, which offenders make themselves, they give apology speeches to injured parties and put up signs in front of their homes identifying themselves as “violent felons”; shoplifters buy ads in local newspapers and put their photos in them. Judge Brown’s most controversial use of shame punishment was allowing victims to sneak into burglars’ homes and steal something back in a kind of larcenous quid pro quo.
The grandfather of the new shame is from Texas, George Bush’s home state. Judge – now Congressman – Ted Poe was inspired to launch shame punishment in the late 1990s in Houston, when a rich kid getting his MBA shoplifted from a Wal-Mart. “He thought he could do anything,” Poe told me. “But shame punishment changed his attitude. Plus the store manager said that no one stole during the week that he was standing outside the store with the sign.”
According to Poe, of people who received shame punishment, 9% violated probation – far fewer than the national average of 50%. And shame punishment experienced a victory when, in 2004, an appeal court overturned Shawn Gementera’s challenge to a decision ordering him to stand outside a post office with a sign saying he was a mail thief.
But shame is no panacea. In Tennessee, no sooner was the shame law passed than law-enforcement officials complained that shame took a lot more work than just throwing people in jail. And psychologists argue that shame punishments may actually do damage to offenders’ sometimes fragile psyches.
Despite the fact that, as some have observed, shame punishment links the US with repressive regimes, the most important problem is that it fails to address the social problems that cause people to commit crimes – even petty ones – in the first place. Standing outside a post office wearing a sign saying “I stole mail, this is my punishment” did nothing to help Gementera kick his methamphetamine habit, which was why he was stealing in the first place.
Americans are great at a lot of things, but sometimes we are not all that great at empathising with others. We expect people to get themselves together, to pull themselves up by their bootstraps; we sometimes expect public disgrace to compensate for social injustice. Sometimes we would simply rather solve things with a spectacle.
Kmareka.com 
As a Marine veteran, I boil over the prisoner abuses on many levels. Few who have worn the uniform support it and know the pandorra’s box it opens.
Inequality exists whenever we take it for granted and do not challenge it.
When one witnesses the excesses of our president’s executive authority that lays bare the risk of reciprocal human rights violations against our citizens and choses to do nothing (s)he tramples on the rights of the few and the weakest among us who were considered when our Constitution was drafted and amended.
Consider the first who pushed for rights for people of color and for women, when it was not vogue to do so.
Democracy is NOT a spectator sport and timidity will be exploited and a majority silenced by a ruthless and powerful few by playing on public fear or inaction.
This becomes the turning point of our democracy and devalues those fallen who have fought to preserve it.
Gee, I thought the topic might be the attempt to kill hundreds, perhaps thousands, of innocent people today, many of them Americans.
Instead you discuss more of what you believe to be shameful America behavior. That’s the real shame today gentlemen.
You also forgot to include the impressive byline for the author of the Guardian article:
“Rachel Shteir is writing a book on shoplifting and is author of Striptease: the Untold History of the Girlie Show.”
The urge to save humanity is almost always a false face for the urge to rule it.”
~ H.L. Mencken
If we’re going to get serious, perhaps we can start talking about how much this war is costing us: in prestige, in honor, in blood–the blood of other people’s kids–and, yes, money.
We’re pushing half-a-trillion right now. And, oddly, the Reps who started this ill-gotten misadventure on very flimsy pretexts want to cut taxes on the wealthy while strutting around like a “war president.”
So, if we want to get serious, let’s start talking about that.
So if there are any supporters of the bush regime around, perhaps they might get serious and address this issue?
And, odd, how we haven’t had a terror alert in 2 years, and now, 3 months before the election, the day after a supporter of the war gets defeated, we go right to code red.
Now, who’s not serious?
In the absence of it’s adherence, there is no Constitution. If no Constitution, the America you speak of does not exist. Using the name to shamelessly hide behind is a strawman. Let’s acknoledge we have a bigger order to fill and wisdom must be balanced with might.
It’s not team USA, it’s Americans with lives to lead who want a government that represents them and remembers courage and hope, not fear is what allowed us to prevail over nuclear USSR and it better be what exists to meet up with China and nations like India and Pakistan.
klaus, are you suggesting the terrorist plot is actually a fabrication, and has something to do with Lamont’s primary win in Connecticut?
You see klaus, when you make ridiculous assertions like this, no one takes you seriously. There are people who want to kill us simply for being Americans, for our love of freedom, and for our support of Judeo-Christian values. They were successful on September 11th. Thanks in large part to the work of President Bush and his administration, we have not been subjected to any more terrorist attacks here in the US. Preventing horrific disasters like the one unfolding this week has been a particular success. Can you give the President credit for his work to keep us safe from terrorist attack?
Yes, war is expensive. I would much prefer to keep our tax dollars here at home, and spend them on education, infrastructure, and perhaps even larger tax cuts. But unfortunately the rest of the world doesn’t cooperate. Left unchecked, the terrorists will grow stronger, and become a far more dangerous threat. Israelis know this better than most. They have continued one-sided concessions and now face an emboldened enemy who will not compromise on its tenet that Israel must be completely destroyed.
Iraq is a difficult situation. One on which good people may disagree. The conditions that led to war have been repeated ad nauseum, but I feel strongly that Saddam Hussein was a threat to the region, and to the United States. His support for terrorism in the region and his unwillingness to live up to the accords agreed upon after the first Gulf War left us no choice. Establishing democracy in the region has been and will continue to be a difficult endeavor, especially with shrill voices in the media and in government condemning every move, ignoring successes and celebrating every setback.
Paying for a war is also a bitter pill. But our constitution mandates the federal government responsible for the defense of our nation and our people. Whether it was either of the World Wars, or the Cold War, we spent the money as investments in our freedom and democracy.
I understand your frustration with tax cuts klaus. And you undoubtedly will sing the song of Bush only caring about the wealthy. But since the Bush tax cuts, revenue has dramatically increased. Tax cuts as a vehicle to stimulating an economy have proven successful, and were the center of the Bush doctrine that got him elected and reelected, even while fighting the war in Iraq.
Carl, I’m not sure the point of your post and to whom it is directed. But I will say that it took more than “courage and hope� to win the Cold War. I remember. It took might, a strong defense, financial investment, and the understanding that America was right and communism was wrong. President Reagan made sure of it.
I’m sorry, David, but I do not believe the Geneva Convention was meant to apply to stateless terrorists who would never, under any circumstances, respect its provisions anyway.
Great work by the UK police just thwarted a plot that sought to murder 4,000 of our citizens. Do you really think it would trouble me if harsh treatment outlawed by that convention (created to apply to civilized nations) was used to elicit information from one of the conspirators that resulted in disrupting a plot that saved 4,000 lives? I don’t think so.
That’s not to say that I agree with our inarticulate Attorney General. Unfortunately, these stateless pan-arabic fanatics have created an entirely new paradigm of worldwide terror that will have to be addressed with a less civilized response. It’s not just the survival of the State of Israel that’s at stake.
I’m sorry, David, but I do not believe the Geneva Convention was meant to apply to stateless terrorists who would never, under any circumstances, respect its provisions anyway.
Great work by the UK police just thwarted a plot that sought to murder 4,000 of our citizens. Do you really think it would trouble me if harsh treatment outlawed by that convention (created to apply to civilized nations) was used to elicit information from one of the conspirators that resulted in disrupting a plot that saved 4,000 lives? I don’t think so.
That’s not to say that I agree with our inarticulate Attorney General. Unfortunately, these stateless pan-arabic fanatics have created an entirely new paradigm of worldwide terror that will have to be addressed with a less civilized response. It’s not just the survival of the State of Israel that’s at stake.
Iraq is a difficult situation. One on which good people may disagree. The conditions that led to war have been repeated ad nauseum, but I feel strongly that Saddam Hussein was a threat to the region, and to the United States. His support for terrorism in the region and his unwillingness to live up to the accords agreed upon after the first Gulf War left us no choice.
How can any objective person today say that Saddam Hussein was a threat to the region, and to the U.S.? If anything, Iraq with Hussein in power was a stabilizing force in the region. As most know, Saddam was not a fundamentalist. He ran the region’s only secular government, and was the perfect foil for Iran’s influence in the region.
Paying for a war is also a bitter pill. But our constitution mandates the federal government responsible for the defense of our nation and our people.
Funny, but doesn’t our constituion also place the power of declaring war to the Congress. Have we declared war? How can we have troops in a country for over 3 years, and not have a declaration of war. Or spend $250 billion?
Yes, war is a bitter pill to swallow. But fighting a war that is just makes it more palatable. This country was misled and lied to about Iraq. The troops never belonged there in the first place, and we are now hamstrung to deal with actual dangers to this country coming from Iran.
Tax cuts as a vehicle to stimulating an economy have proven successful, and were the center of the Bush doctrine that got him elected and reelected, even while fighting the war in Iraq.
Tax cuts during a time of war are a smoke screen. They do nothing to help the economy, and are hurting us in the long run.
Isn’t this interesting? A few months ago, it seemed like the war was absolutely crucial, that the people we’re fighting posed more of a threat to us than Nazi Germany or the USSR. Now, it’s something people may disagree on. Sort of the way people disagreed about WWII, I suppose.
And paying for the war is a bitter pill. Which is why giving yet more tax breaks to the rich is just flat irresponsible. Tax rates on the rich are the lowest they’ve been since…the 1920s? And you suggested that we cut the estate tax to benefit a few hundred very wealthy families, AND pay for the war.
And yet, you have no realistic suggestions about corresponding spending reductions. Hint: cutting every social program won’t even come close. And you can’t cut Social Security without a reduction in the payroll tax, so that’s a zero-sum game.
And I love how you claim that the 2003 cuts created more revenue. But what about the 2001 cuts? Revenue fell after those. So why did it work the second time, and not the first? And why are real revenues are still lower than in 2000? Hint: you may need to learn the difference between real revenues vs and nominal. Real (adjusted for inflation) revenues are still lower than in 2000.
Oh, and the 2003 cut was supposed to create 5.5 M jobs. That hasn’t happened, either.
And I never said the plot was a hoax. I just said it was interesting that the last terror alert was a week or two before the 2004 election. There have been zero since then. And now that election season is coming, they suddenly reappear.
Finally, what with this London plot, the Toronto plot, and the Miami plot that were all foiled, and the successful bombings in Madrid, Bali, London, etc, are you still supporting the flypaper argument for the war? You know, fight them there, to prevent more attacks? Kind of seems like maybe that isn’t working now, doesn’t it?
Could that be because Iraq had little to do with terrorist organizations outside of those operating in Israel? And that attempt by Bush and Cheney to link 9/11 and Iraq was a load of hooey? That the war in Iraq is really a diversion from the war on terror?
btw: this latest plot and the plots in Miami and Toronto were tripped up by police tactics. Not military ones. Maybe that might be a tad more effective?
And I do sing the song about Bush only caring for the wealthy. What has he done for the middle class? Median incomes have fallen since he’s been in office, yet the incomes of the top 1%, .1% and .01% are skyrocketing. And any miniscule gain I got on fed tax has been more than gobbled up by Mr Laffey.
Did you realize that, nationwide, property taxes have gone up an average of 10%, just between 2001 and 2003? That’s because the fed gov’t has cut back on local support, meaning that cities and towns have to pick up the slack. So the wealthy get huge breaks, and my taxes go up. And, did you realize that someone earning primarily dividend income worth millions of dollars pays a lower tax rate than I do?