JUNE 26 is an important day. It is a time when the world commemorates International Day in Support of Victims of Torture.
It is also the moment American presidents tell the world that "the United States stands unequivocally against this barbaric act" and then go on to commit the most violent forms of torture known to mankind.
We suggest the United Nations rename it the "International Day in Support of Hypocrisy". Starting with former US president George W. Bush, the developer of the torture real estate, Guantanamo Bay, a seeming legal black hole where neither US law nor international law is willing to step in.
Never mind if legal scholarship tells us that there is no such thing as legal black holes. It is either caught by the US or Cuban municipal law, or international law. Law abhors a vacuum. Or it can be made to do so.
But American fiction is powerful make-believe. Here is one from Bush on June 26, 2005: "The United States reaffirms its commitment to the worldwide elimination of torture. Freedom from torture is an inalienable human right, and we are committed to building a world where human rights are respected and protected by the rule of law."
Bush was perhaps pretending that the Arab and Muslim prisoners in Guantanamo and elsewhere preferred the chains or that they welcomed humiliation and servitude. US President Joe Biden is as fork-tongued as Bush.
The US, he said, in his international day message, remained committed to eradicating torture throughout the world. And we soon find this Biden's version of "throughout the world" to be a rather small place.
It is Russia, Ukraine, Mali, Burkina Faso, the Central African Republic and Myanmar. Noticeably missing are Afghanistan, Iraq, Guantanamo and all torture playgrounds of the US. To Biden, any instance of torture is one too many.
We agree. We won't have it any other way. To Biden again, torture remains a moral stain on the world's collective conscience. We agree again.
There are two ways to remove the moral stain, if the US is sincere, that is. The US must lead by example in both. Firstly, it should end "any instance of torture" before it becomes one too many.
Secondly, it must hold all the US officials involved in ordering and executing acts of torture accountable. It can start with Guantanamo.
The US, a nation given to too much euphemism, may call what happened there "enhanced interrogation", but it was torture pure and simple. How else can one describe being hung naked from a ceiling and doused with iced water to keep the prisoner awake for days?
Or waterboarding, a torture tactic so cruel that Central Intelligence Agency operatives were said to have been moved to tears? Or being locked in a tiny cubical box in an embryonic position? And they are no secret either.
Court documents and Senate reports tell of these unspeakable acts. So does "How America Tortures", a report by the Centre for Policy and Research at the Seton Hall Law School.
Speaking of the torture in Ukraine, Mali, Burkina Faso, the Central African Republic and Myanmar, Biden said "each of these examples tears at our humanity".
What the US did in Guantanamo and elsewhere tears at humanity, too. Torture is inhuman practice, no matter who commits it.