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 Editorials | At Issue | December 2005 
Where Is the Democracy?
 Jean-Marcel Bouguereau - Le Nouvel Observateur
| | Dana Brown, of Ithaca, NY and a member of the American group 'Witness Against Torture', prays in front of banners that read 'Stop the torture, close the U.S. Naval Base and free the prisoners' outside the Cuban military zone surrounding the U.S. Naval Base in Guantanamo, Cuba December 11, 2005. (Scott Langley/Reuters) |
Has the United States outsourced torture with regard to certain of its prisoners suspected of terrorism? Can the greatest democracy in the world, the one that has appointed itself the messianic objective of bringing the benefits of democracy to the whole world, trample the principles of law and of habeas corpus which, specifically, were supposed to be the basis of its moral superiority over all dictatorships, both ideological and religious?
It's that moral superiority which, at the end of the nineteen-eighties, allowed it, through the contagion of its principles, to overcome Communist Totalitarianism. In the face of Islamic Totalitarianism, the United States appears to have forgotten this lesson.
Condoleezza Rice's embarrassed statements on the occasion of her European trip about those accusations of torture and the maintenance of secret prisons that have been advanced against the United States for weeks were far from being convincing, even if several European Ministers declared themselves "satisfied" with her explanations concerning the use of European airports by CIA airplanes.
Taking cover behind defense secrecy, she limited herself to explaining that the United States had respected "the procedures," a way of saying that these countries had been advised about the strange flights that served to transport presumed Islamists. Of course, the Secretary of State reiterated that her country does not practice "torture and does not allow its agents to practice it." But the problem is that the final destinations of these planes were countries, notably Arab countries, where the practice of torture is current, countries not too fastidious about interrogation methods.
What has become of those detainees described as "ghost detainees," twenty-six of whose names have just been published by Human Rights Watch - detainees held in secret in hidden locations outside the United States? Detainees imprisoned for an indefinite duration and in isolation, without legal rights or the right of access to a lawyer. Where is the democracy in that? The example of Guantánamo is hardly encouraging: many testimonies have shown that acts of torture and mistreatment have been committed on this American base installed on the island of Cuba. All in the name of the fight against terrorism, of course.
Jean-Marcel Bouguereau is Editor-in-Chief at the Nouvel Observateur and an editorialist for the République des Pyrénées, for which this article was written. |
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