President George W. Bush has drawn a great deal of flak from Democrats and some human rights groups for having vetoed a bill aimed at banning the CIA from using ‘coercive interrogation’ methods to elicit information from suspected terrorists, according to an AP dispatch in this newspaper today. Of these ‘coercive methods’ (euphemism for torture), only ‘waterboarding’ (or simulated drowning) has been highlighted in the western media. But, waterboarding pales into insignificance like bungee jumping in comparison to the dastardly methods that the US military has been using at places like Abu Ghraib.

Some US lawmakers are tearing their hair and beating their liberal chests claiming that President Bush has missed an opportunity to put the kibosh on the so-called torture debate and repair America’s badly dented human rights credentials. President Bush’s detractors point out that the bill he shot down had the blessings of 43 retired generals, secretaries of state and national security advisors. They say Bush’s veto has sullied America’s reputation around the world.

Torture is savage and must be condemned in all its manifestations. Anyone who endorses that bestial way of interrogating suspects has no moral right to oppose terrorism. But, we believe, President Bush is being less hypocritical than others of the US establishment on this score. His critics are making a song and dance about his decision, having done precious little to prevent the CIA from using torture earlier. What President Bush has sanctioned is not a process to begin but something that has been happening since the establishment of the CIA. And it is not only torture that the CIA must be stopped from committing. Mum’s the word on the part of President Bush’s rivals as to the powers that the outfit was given in the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks to carry out assassinations overseas to protect the US interests. The CIA has also had heads of state of other countries assassinated, especially in the Latin America and replaced their regimes with criminal juntas. What befell Salvador Allende is a case in point. Among the other illegal operations that the CIA is responsible for is the use of BCCI to fund terrorists including Osma bin Laden (when he was America’s blue-eyed terrorist). Worse, some member of the US Senate went all out to derail the Kerry probe into the BCCI scandal, didn’t they?

The reason President Bush has given for his veto is that ‘it is important for the CIA to have a separate and classified interrogation programme for suspected terrorists who possess critical information about possible plots against the United States’. He is of the view that the programme has ‘helped stop plots against a Marine camp in Djibouti and the US consulate in Karachi and plans to fly passenger planes into the Los Angeles Tower or London’s Heathrow Airport and city buildings’.

While torture and other bestial methods that the CIA and the US military are using purportedly to defend America must be condemned, there can be no argument about America’s right to protect herself against terror attacks.

But, is it only the US and its closest allies like the UK that have a right to self-defence and preemptive strikes? What about other nations? Shouldn’t poor Sri Lanka’s own version of the World Trade Centre—a humble looking building visible from the US Embassy in Colombo—her citizens, property, territorial integrity etc., be protected in a similar manner? An attempt to bring down Colombo’s twin towers had been made years before the 9/11 terror attacks in New York!

It is mind-boggling why the US, whose President doesn’t mind even torture being used to protect her interests, has stopped military assistance to Sri Lanka? Allegations of torture have been levelled against Sri Lanka and some of them are not baseless but torture hasn’t ever been sanctioned by the Executive in this country, has it?

Interestingly, the US bill to ban torture lacked overwhelming support in both chambers, the vote being 222-199 and 51-45 in the House and the Senate respectively. And if the US lawmakers are really opposed to torture, they will have to muster the required two-thirds majority to turn back President Bush’s veto. It is rather unlikely that they will be able to do so! Therefore, the CIA will continue to enjoy the freedom it has so far had to use torture to make suspects ‘squeal’.

It will be interesting to know the reaction of the champions of human rights in this country, in whose campaigns the US has evinced a keen interest, to President Bush’s veto at issue. They deserve support of one and all to protect human rights but they, we hope, will have the courage to be critical of the human rights records of their sponsors as well, especially at a time when they are hauling the government of Sri Lanka over the coals—quite rightly so—for the premature departure of the International Independent Group of Eminent Persons (IIGEP). Those eminent persons, who have left Sri Lanka in an apparent huff over some human rights issues, too, ought to tell the world what they think of America’s ill-fated anti-torture bill and the presidential veto which is tantamount to the advocacy of R2T or Right to Torture! All human rights gods have feet of clay, eh?

What all this boils down to is that the West still believes might is right, whatever their envoys may say for the consumption of the gullible in the developing world and however hard they may pretend to be promoting human rights on this planet. According to the global north, human rights must stop where its national security or economic interests begin.

President Bush’s message is loud and clear: The world ought to know better than to ruffle the Eagle’s feathers!

Stacy Smith’s poetic gem, From an Eagle’s View, comes to one’s mind:

If you were an eagle you would wonder no more,

For it can see things you have never seen before.

Next time you look into the sky of blue,

Think of what it’s like from an eagle’s view.

So, as for every issue, the world must learn to think of what it’s like from the Eagle’s view.