Gingrich 1997: “There is No Place for Torture”
Let me be perfectly clear: If the life of my mother, father, child, friend, or basically anyone I loved could be saved by doing horrible things to some horrible person, I would do it. In fact, most normal people wouldn’t mind hurting some bad guy to save the lives of good guys.
The question of torture is not whether in some Hollywood-style, almost-never-happening life-or-death scenario, we should use it. Those who view the issue of waterboarding in this absurd light—an interrogation method everyone from Ronald Reagan to the United States military during World War II has rightly called torture—are being completely unreasonable in their general premise.
The most basic question concerning torture is whether, as a general rule, it should be endorsed. The question is whether it actually works as an interrogation tactic, which most experts say it doesn’t. The question is whether or not torture should be an acceptable rule of thumb for any civilized society.
The question is whether or not torture should be the official policy of the United States.
For most of our history, that answer has been an emphatic “no!”
Most of this year’s Republican presidential candidates care little to nothing about such questions because they know little to nothing about history, know or care little to nothing about our conventional Judeo-Christian Western morality, they know even less about the history of the conservative movement, and most seem content to try to look “tough” in front of GOP primary audiences by explicitly endorsing the use of torture, or, excuse me, “enhanced interrogation techniques.” This view on torture extends to these Republican candidates’ extremely anti-conservative views on civil liberties, recklessness concerning the constitutional powers of the Executive branch, and these candidates’ general dismissal of some of the most basic concepts and precepts of American law.
Newt Gingrich—who does know history and yet now refuses to call waterboarding “torture” or to strongly denounce it—nevertheless expressed the traditional conservative view on torture in 1997, after meeting with Chinese President Jiang Zemin. Gingrich’s language here is plain, simple, conservative…
And absolutely right—in the deepest American sense:
“There is no place for abuse in what must be considered the family of man. There is no place for torture and arbitrary detention. There is no place for forced confessions… the roots of American rule of law go back more than 700 years, to the signing of the Magna Carta. The foundation of American values, therefore, is not a passing priority or a temporary trend.”
Today, for most of the GOP presidential field, including Gingrich, this “foundational American value” of opposition to torture has become a mere “passing priority” and “temporary trend.”
God help us.
