Robert F. Kennedy Jr.: America's anti-torture tradition

[rumpel]

December 17, 2005
America's anti-torture tradition
By Robert F. Kennedy Jr., ROBERT F. KENNEDY JR. is an environmental lawyer and a professor at Pace University Law School.

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, considered 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.

http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/commentary/la-oe-kennedy17dec17,0,4133669.story?coll=la-news-comment-opinions

[CountAllVotes]

1. RFK, Jr. = an true American hero

:kick: for RFK, Jr.!! :D