‘Extraordinary rendition’ a new departure
We are no longer simply enduring the shabby failure of the ill-conceived Blair/Bush crusade against terrorism; there are few who now admit to sharing their belief that ideas can be destroyed with a cluster bomb. There are fewer still who believe that European citizens are safer now than we were three years ago.
But this is new territory. It is no longer the hypocrisy of denouncing Syria, for example, as a sponsor of terrorism while handing over prisoners to its government. Those who have been abducted are sent, often accompanied by western security agents, specifically to be tortured. Western security services are now using torture.
Repugnant morally, we have had a long-banished crime reintroduced into our society. And in common with the whole sorry mess in Iraq nothing has been achieved. A person will say anything if they undergo enough pain. An innocent man will tell the torturers that he is a terrorist, or Father Christmas, or President of the United States, if he thinks that is what his torturer wants to hear.
And he will name other innocent people because those are the only names he knows. Torture, like cluster bombs, does not make us safer.
Blair and Bush, in their grubby, sordid and secretive collaboration, have rendered more than individuals to the torturers of the Middle East; in three short years they have rendered our societies morally bankrupt.
If a British citizen may be kidnapped and tortured with the assistance of the British security forces, what does citizenship now mean?
And what aspiration can a citizen of the Middle East now have for democracy - the British Labour Party used to be taunted as the ‘strikers’ friend’.
Tony Blair has never given anyone such opportunity, but is he now the ‘torturers’ friend?
Jerry Pepin
Ballynunry
The Rower
Co Kilkenny
