Do Americans want to withdraw from the Geneva Conventions?

by Jay McDonough

My heart sank a bit when I read Andrew Sullivan's introductory sentence to his post "The Torture Chorus".

Rasmussen, the Republican polling outfit, does a slew of polls showing the American public eager to leave the Geneva Conventions, leave the UN Convention Against Torture, repeal domestic law and torture terror suspects.

What that would mean, of course, is that a majority of Americans are now willing to bail as a signatory of what was once proudly held as a giant leap forward towards a more civilized, a more decent and fair way to conduct warfare.  One could argue it was easy for the U.S. to sign the Geneva treaties.  It was, after all, for the most part mirroring U.S. policy towards the treatment of prisoners, but the treaties provided some welcome assurance that U.S. service men and women would not be abused or, worse, tortured if they were captured themselves by a foreign force.

I followed Sullivan's link and was at least a wee bit relieved that he had been, I presume intentionally, somewhat hyperbolic.  Sure enough there is a Rasmussen poll quizzing Americans on their feelings about using waterboarding and "other aggressive interrogation techniques" on Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, the young Nigerian terrorist who attempted to blow up a Northwest Airlines jet on Christmas day.  Perhaps not unexpectedly, a majority of those polled, 58%, approved of interrogators using whatever tools they felt necessary to get information from Abdulmatallab. 

But the Rasmussen survey does not poll, as Sullivan suggests, whether Americans believe the U.S. should abandon it's treaties and laws and engage in interrogation methods deemed illegal under those accords. 

Maybe it's a fine point.  But I just believe, I have to believe, that when Americans are asked whether the U.S. should leave the Geneva covenants and now overturn U.S. laws that forbade the use of torture, there would be another answer.  (In fact a 2006 poll did just that and, in that case, found 58% of Americans wanting the U.S. to abide by the Geneva dictates.) 

We don't allow crime victims to decide the criminals sentence.  The emotions are so raw and the victims too personally offended to deliver a fair and rational decision.  It's why we want a jury, after hearing all the facts of the case, to decide the appropriate punishment in a rational and informed manner.

I have to believe Americans just haven't had the opportunity to hear a fair discussion on U.S. interrogation methods and how close they do or don't butt up to what we've always defined as torture.  Instead, we've been bombarded by hucksters, terrified that their own complicity will be found out and now acting like children caught after breaking a window; squirming, accusing another, justifying, and obfuscating.  And just like the window breaking kid, they're terrified that the facts might come out and reveal the truth. 

Want to have a true assessment of how Americans feel about torture and the Geneva Convention?  I'm all for it.  But there needs to be some fair dialog about what is against the law and what's legal.  There needs to be some honest assessment about what information has been obtained via the  use of torture, both in terms of real and bogus intelligence.  There needs to be some education about what the U.S. is obligated to by international and domestic law.  There needs to be an objective appraisal of the implications our use of these interrogation techniques on the recruitment of radical jihadists.  And, finally, there has to be some real soul searching on American's parts about the kind of nation we choose to be.

Then take a poll.