Hague Torture Inquiry

Hague should address human cost of bombing, not just torture

29 May 2010 The government's inquiry into alleged collusion in torture is merited but 'accepted' methods of war result in more casualties

William Hague's recently announced inquiry into the UK government's alleged collusion in torture is a move that few observers will find surprising. It serves to draw a clear line between Hague's foreign office and that of his predecessor, David Miliband, as Clive Stafford Smith noted on Cif recently. It also addresses one of the main grievances associated with the old Labour government, which is the perception they sidelined their moral convictions to appease the US in policies relating to the "war on abstract nouns" (as some wits have named it).

The inquiry is a political move, but the negative cost of the "war on terror" can be measured in moral terms as well as politically. It remains to be seen whether Hague's inquiry will address that in any meaningful way. Personally, I think not.

In his 2005 book The End of Faith, Sam Harris argues that torture is less immoral than aerial bombing, on the basis that bombs kill and maim hundreds of civilians, whereas torture only affects a few people strongly suspected of being terrorists, or of being in possession of vital intelligence. It is also non-lethal, and temporary. He asks: "What, after all, is 'collateral damage' but the inadvertent torture of innocent men, women and children?" Continued

Failed Policies alone brought on the criminal terrorist mentality to retaliate, foreign, or perceived wrong policies, domestic. Wars on terror, with destructive bombing, torture, rendition, incarceration and much much more, "accepted collateral damage, innocent civilians", including the language used, create the growth in hatreds in the surviving that greatly expands that criminal terror mentality and want for retaliation and blowback!

All this, especially, comes out of Wars of Choice!