{"id":582,"date":"2026-07-12T05:09:37","date_gmt":"2026-07-12T05:09:37","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/atlaslivingmedia.com\/?p=582"},"modified":"2026-07-12T05:09:37","modified_gmt":"2026-07-12T05:09:37","slug":"we-used-to-convict-american-torturers-so-why-not-today","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/atlaslivingmedia.com\/?p=582","title":{"rendered":"We Used to Convict American Torturers, So Why Not Today?"},"content":{"rendered":"<article>\n<div>\n<div>\n<article>\n<header>\n<div>\n<ul>\n<li>Politics<\/li>\n<li>February 23, 2015<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<h1>We Used to Convict American Torturers, So Why Not Today?<\/h1>\n<h1>We Used to Convict American Torturers, So Why Not Today?<\/h1>\n<h2>The United States in the twenty-first century has not even attained the relatively enlightened moral standards of the war in the Philippines.<\/h2>\n<\/div>\n<\/header>\n<section>\n<time>February 23, 2015<\/time><\/p>\n<div>\n<p>Of the many worthy candidates for the year in which the United States of America conclusively fell from grace, I have always had a fondness for 1899. That was the year war-mad imperialists launched a crusade to take over Spain\u2019s colony in the Philippines. \u201cThe development of the islands cannot be successfully done while the Filipinos are there,\u201d argued the <em>San Francisco Argonaut<\/em>, quoted in <em>The Nation<\/em> in 1902. \u201cTherefore the more of them killed the better.\u201d\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n<p>Echoes, of course, of Vietnam\u2014but also, in a different way, of our current age of endless and boundless war. \u201cWhenever a small force of Americans undertakes an expedition,\u201d <em>The Nation<\/em> observed in 1900, \u201cthe woods and hills become alive with enemies.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>The Americans\u2019 response was indiscriminate slaughter. In his 1939 memoir, <em>Fighting Words<\/em>, <em>The Nation<\/em>\u2019s former editor and publisher Oswald Garrison Villard\u2014a co-founder of the Anti-Imperialist League\u2014wrote that on April 14, 1902, he \u201clunched\u201d with President Theodore Roosevelt and told him about some of worst reports of American abuses in the Philippines. \u201cThe very next day he issued an order calling on the military for a most rigorous investigation,\u201d Villard recalled. \u201cSome of the phrases in that order had a remarkably familiar sound, as I had used them in my talk with him.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>But Roosevelt\u2019s secretary of state, Elihu Root, responded with a report asserting that US troops\u2019 behavior was \u201cworthy only of praise, and reflecting credit on the American people.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Still, as the historian Paul Kramer wrote in <em>The New Yorker <\/em>in 2008, \u201cfurther revelations from the islands\u201d forced a broader debate on the issue of torture: a Senate committee convened to investigate the issue, and American troops were repeatedly brought before courts-martial to answer for charges of torturing and wantonly killing Filipinos en masse.<\/p>\n<p>Even those processes were undermined: the Senate committee was led by the jingoist Henry Cabot Lodge, who suppressed the records of the courts-martial, which generally handed down sentences of absurd leniency, given the crimes, when the accused were convicted at all.<\/p>\n<p>In March of 1903 <em>The Nation<\/em> ran an editorial note on its first page calling for the release of records from the trials of soldiers for committing \u201cbarbarous practices.\u201d It castigated the War Department for suppressing the information:<\/p>\n<blockquote>\n<p>The course of the Department touching this particular branch of its business has been marked by concealment and duplicity. There is not a more shameful page in our history. Nothing so much needs turning inside out as the court-martial records, unless it be an exposure of the cases of barbarity that were never tried. Of the latter, nothing will be known positively until the last trump sounds.<\/p>\n<p>Read more <a href=\"https:\/\/atlaslivingmedia.com\/?p=579\">When Will Cancer Stop Being \u201cOur Fault\u201d?<\/a><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p>The release of the Senate\u2019s torture report in December was treated as the sounding of the last trumpet in our more recent dalliance with the water cure and other \u201cbarbarous practices\u201d borrowed from the past. But so far from the comparatively elevated standards of 1903 are we today that the only American prosecuted in relation to the US torture program has been the whistleblower, John Kiriakou, who told us about it.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWhere Americans actively defend torture, or sanction it through their silence,\u201d Paul Kramer wrote in January, \u201cit is their willingness to assimilate the pain of others into their senses of safety, prosperity and power that stretches the darkest thread between past and present.\u201d<\/p>\n<p><p>The damage of torture is contagious. In the same March 1903 issue, <em>The Nation <\/em>reported that Roosevelt was standing by his pledge to make appointments to federal offices without regard for race. Applauding Roosevelt\u2019s stance in face of opposition even from his own party, <em>The Nation <\/em>mocked the president\u2019s na\u00efve assumption that the Party of Lincoln ought to be as committed to racial equality in 1903 as in the days of Emancipation and Reconstruction. The takeover of the Republican Party by warmongers, <em>The Nation<\/em> argued, bore unforeseen consequences. \u201cOur treatment of an inferior race across the sea has encouraged certain men to believe that an inferior race may be oppressed in our own land,\u201d the editors noted. \u201cWhat the astonished President sees is only our injustice abroad returning to plague us at home.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>* * *<\/p>\n<p><em>Curious about how we covered something? E-mail me at rkreitner at thenation dot com. Subscribers to <\/em>The Nation<em> can access our fully searchable digital archive, which contains thousands of historic articles, essays and reviews, letters to the editor and editorials dating back to July 6, 1865.<\/em>\n<\/p>\n<\/p>\n<\/p>\n<\/p>\n<\/p>\n<\/p>\n<\/p>\n<p>Read more <a href=\"https:\/\/atlaslivingmedia.com\/?p=580\">When Will Cancer Stop Being \u201cOur Fault\u201d?<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/section>\n<footer>\n<ul>\n<li>\n<p>                Submit a correction<\/p>\n<\/li>\n<li>\n<p>                Send a letter to the editor<\/p>\n<\/li>\n<li>\n<p>                Reprints &amp; permissions<\/p>\n<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<div>\n<p><span> Richard Kreitner<svg>\n<\/svg><br \/>\n<\/span>Richard Kreitner is a contributing writer and the author of <em>Break It Up: Secession, Division, and the Secret History of America\u2019s Imperfect Union<\/em>. His writings are at richardkreitner.com.<\/p>\n<p>Read more <a href=\"https:\/\/atlaslivingmedia.com\/?p=577\">The Graham Platner Fiasco Proves Messiah Politics Is No Alternative to a Failed Establishment<\/a><\/p>\n<p><\/p>\n<p><span> Back Issues<\/span>Guided tours through the archive of America\u2019s oldest weekly.\n<\/p>\n<p>\n<\/div>\n<p><input\/><br \/>\n<input\/><br \/>\n<\/footer>\n<\/article>\n<p>Ad Policy<br \/>\n<!-- <a class=\"inifiniteLoader\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"\/images\/new_infi_loader.gif\" alt=\"\" \/><\/a> -->\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/article>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The Nation Magazine<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":581,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-582","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v27.6 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/product\/yoast-seo-wordpress\/ -->\n<title>We Used to Convict American Torturers, So Why Not Today? 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