by Angie Myers
A-Myers.9@onu.edu
The Golden Rule: Do unto others as you would have done unto you.
And although it’s easier said than done, it’s an international philosophy that most try to live by.
Assistant Professor of Law Michael Lewis is applying this rule to torture. It may sound like an oxymoron, but it’s true.
Lewis is currently working on an article about interrogation techniques. The current regulations at the national and international levels for these techniques, according to Lewis, are not definitive enough.
The issue of defining torture has most recently come into the limelight thanks to the war in Iraq.
One end of the torture argument includes nothing physically or psychologically “extreme.” The problem with this argument is how do you, then, define “extreme?”
On the other end of the spectrum, there are others who feel almost anything is fair game. After all, these are our enemies and we need to get as much information out of them as possible. The problem with this argument is that anyone is willing to say just about anything, whether it is true or not, if they are coerced enough.
New Definition
Lewis is more of a moderate in the issue. He said you may not be getting the most factual information no matter how you get it out of the captive.
“In the military, we never take information we hear the first time and run with it,” he said. Lewis flew F-14’s for the U.S. Navy in Operation Desert Shield, conducted strike planning for Desert Storm, and was deployed to the Persian Gulf to enforce the no-fly zone over Iraq. He graduated a Topgun in 1992.
He said there are checks and balance systems used in order to ensure the accuracy of the information received.
The question that the military asks now, according to Lewis, is: What would we want done to our people?
Lewis said, “It’s a nice goal, but that’s not reality. We know that our people aren’t going to be treated that way, so why are we using it as a standard to treat others?”
Rather than asking this version of the golden rule, Lewis is making the argument for a different one.
“Whatever you do to your own people in training, in a non-punitive setting, is what you’re allowed to do in interrogation,” Lewis said would be his definition. “The idea is that you don’t do things to your own people that are going to hurt them in the long run.”
The purpose of the article is not for Lewis to take a stand on either end. It is simply to come up with a solution to defining torture that most people can agree with.
The goal for Lewis is to create a standard that is “morally defensible and easily drawn.” He wanted to find a creative way to use existing standards, rules, or definitions, so there is less confusion and more results.
On an international level, Lewis’ biggest concern is convincing those in other countries to abide by this rule.
In international law, Lewis said there is no true enforcement body. Therefore, it is next to impossible to simply recommend what others should do and have them comply.
“The problem is that if you’re trying to change policy, you do it by aligning the self interest of the person’s behavior you want to modify with the end result. How do I make the capture not want to torture the captive? When there is no real threat of prosecution, it does nothing to really change their self interest.”
His definition is unique in the sense that “not only is it clear and reasonably unchanging, it’s something that is likely to be more effectively enforced and considered than these very, very wishy-washy pain-and-suffering-type standards,” Lewis said.
Waterboarding
The biggest controversy in interrogation techniques, today, is waterboarding. This is a method used by all branches of the military in which an individual is tied down flat and water is constantly poured over their face through a rag. This is meant to simulate drowning and has proven to be a very effective technique.
Though rarely used, it has almost no effect on the captive physically. Lewis said we should be more concerned with sleep deprivation and other seemingly minor techniques. According to him, these have much more of an effect on the captive long term.
However, waterboarding seems to be the focus of the American people when the argument of torture arises. One of Lewis’ major frustrations with this is that many people make claims that this technique is wrong, but they don’t offer a definitive line to what is right.
His new definition, he is confident, will solve most of these problems. After all, what many people don’t realize is that all branches of the military in the U.S. use this technique in training our soldiers.
SERE, or Survival, Evasion, Resistance, and Escape, is a military program that all trainees must pass through. At the camp, they are trained in the Code of Conduct, survival skills, evading capture, recovery and dealing with captivity.
Lewis remembers his weeks at camp. He said he was not one of the ones who was waterboarded, but he has seen it done and has spoken to several people who went through it. He said, long term, they are just fine.
Publication
The article should be done by August. He will then submit it to over 100 different law review publishers and hope for the best.
Last year, he submitted an article regarding the procedures used in Guatemala, specifically in the case of Hamdan v. Rumsfeld in which the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that military commissions set up by the Bush administration to try detainees at the Bay lacked the authority to do so under several Geneva Conventions.
Lewis’ article received around seven positive responses out of the 100 publishing companies. Taking his best offer, he chose the University of Richmond Law Review.
This is the second year Lewis has been at Ohio Northern University College of Law. He said he’s enjoying every minute of it.