Gary Hart: All Publications, Events and Press

No Torture. No Exceptions.

Ron Tang — Sat, 01 Mar 2008 00:00:00 -0500

The Treaty of Westphalia, which ended the Thirty Years War in 1648, effectively established an entity that most of us today take for granted: the nation-state. In the nation-state, it is the duty of the state to protect the nation and of the nation to remain loyal to the state. When security threats to the nation arise, the state must defend against them, and, in times of danger, liberty is often at odds with security. For authoritarian states, such tension is easily resolved: err on the side of security.

The tradeoff becomes more problematic in constitutional democracies such as the United States. To be sure, our Founders were concerned about security (they wanted to "provide for the common defense," and so on), but they devoted much greater attention in their debate and draftsmanship to the matter of personal liberty -- the protection of the individual from the intrusion of the state. One can only imagine the dismay the Founders would have felt if confronted with the arguments of Bush administration officials such as John Yoo and David Addington, who assert that our government has not only the right, but also the duty, to torture American citizens if it feels the nation to be at risk.

Since it is primarily noncitizens who have been subjected to "enhanced interrogation," however, two more issues arise: one is the practical problem of reciprocity, how other nations treat Americans they take prisoner; the other is the ethical and moral issue of what is right in our dealings with foreign enemies.

Not even the most obtuse partisan (including obtuse partisans with law degrees) could plausibly argue that the United States alone is at liberty to suspend international rules and suffer no consequences -- that we can torture non-Americans captured in combat yet somehow avoid having American captives tortured in return. Since no one can make such an argument, then it follows that adherents of our policy of torture tacitly accept that American prisoners will be tortured in return. And that, I suppose they would say, is just too bad.

Only a willfully ignorant administration would trash international treaties and traditional alliances in the interest of security expediency. There is an obvious price to be paid for such actions, and it is not just that our soldiers are endangered. Everyday Americans, those possessing Jeffersonian "common sense and good judgment," have virtually from birth believed that we hold ourselves to a high moral standard, that the ideals and principles of our Declaration and our Constitution define who we are. If we abandon those ideals and principles, then our sense of ourselves will be false, and we will be seen as great hypocrites. That is why we have always adhered to international law and convention, particularly the Geneva Conventions, and why we must do so once again. To sacrifice our great principles for an ounce of security is to pay too high a price. Torture is not an instrument in the arsenal of this democracy, nor should it ever be.

Hart is one of the thirty five contributors to the cover story "No Torture. No Exceptions." in the Jan./Feb./Mar. issue of The Washington Monthly.

My Peak Moment

adminn — Fri, 28 Dec 2007 14:48:00 -0500

Looking back well over two decades ago, it is impossible to isolate a defining moment in a dark-horse, long-shot, improbable presidential campaign in the nation's first primary. There were so many months of travel, so many hands to shake, so many questions to answer in so many living rooms and restaurants across New Hampshire that the temptation is to treat it all as a long-ago blur of memory.

Yet events and circumstances do still stand out these many years later: the good humor and hospitality of Connie and Maria at the Merrimack Restaurant in Manchester; campaigning at town dumps on Saturday mornings; the pleasure of saying thanks to people at plant gates at 5 a.m. the day after the primary; and, of course, the axe-throw.

Visiting the annual woodsmen conclave in Berlin about a week before the primary provided a chance to show that I wasn't just another stuffed-shirt politician in a suit and tie. My key organizers, Jeannie Shaheen and Sue Casey, understood me well enough to know that I might do something a little out of the ordinary if, in checkered shirt, Levis, and boots, I was given half a chance. And, unlike the many months before, here we were with a sizable, though not yet overwhelming, press corps.

The log-sawing and other exhibits looked like too much work for a weary politician, even a Western outdoorsy one; but here was a new challenge -- a full-length, double-bit axe and a 3-foot target 20 yards away. Let's give it a try. Honesty requires the full report to state that the first try bounced off the target. Little harm done. The cameras, thank goodness, weren't ready. But when it was clear that a second try was to be undertaken, up came the cameras and the note pads and off went the axe.

Consider, if you will, the eternity that transpired for a would-be president, while the axe left his hand and, in elaborate slow motion, made one flip, then revolved yet another 360 degrees, and, in absolute silence, the sharpened bit met the very center of the target ... and stuck there. Life, at least for a candidate, held no greater drama. The arms of victory were thrust in the air. The small crowd of onlookers cheered. Reporters looked at each other in stupefied wonder. What had they just seen?

For the triumphant, axe-throwing candidate, what they had just seen was an act of destiny, and the election of the next president of the United States.

Euphoria, of course, lasts but a moment and the act of destiny reached only to the marathon of primaries to follow New Hampshire and not to the White House. Political life by this time should have held no surprises for the axe-throwing victor in the New Hampshire primary, but he would read with wonder accounts of the 1984 Democratic nomination process for years thereafter that essentially held that he "peaked in New Hampshire." That would be true as far as axes were concerned. No axes or targets were provided him thereafter.

But New Hampshire certified him as a serious contender for his party's nomination and opened the door to 25 or more primary and caucus victories, including seven of nine "super Tuesday" states and virtually all the West, including California, and 1,200 delegates to the national convention.

It is possible to be victorious in New Hampshire and have it lead to little else. In my case it led to a great deal else, and I was happy for being able to ratify the judgment of New Hampshire voters that I deserved national consideration.

Extravagant campaign costs, calendar front-loading, and special-interest endorsements have all but closed the window on so-called "dark horse" candidates, those from smaller states with little national notoriety and little money but who may, just rarely, represent the new voice and ideas, the generational transition, required of a great nation in a time of great change. Only a New Hampshire, a human-scale state composed of those with open doors and open minds, and the itch to buck the conventional political wisdom, can provide that slim but critical chance. We cannot afford to lose it.

Tilting Toward Annapolis: U.S. Foreign Policy and the Middle East

Communications — Tue, 13 Nov 2007 15:00:00 -0500

A New America Event
11/13/2007 - 3:00pm

On November 13, Patrick Doherty and the American Strategy Program hosted the Hon. Gary Hart and Daniel Levy in the third of a series of briefings on the run-up to the upcoming Middle East peace conference in Annapolis, MD. Gary Hart represented Colorado in the United States Senate from 1975 to 1987, where he served on the Armed Services Committee and specialized in nuclear arms control, among many other topics. Sen. Hart is a distinguished fellow at the New America… more

The Shield and the Cloak

Communications — Fri, 03 Mar 2006 11:00:00 -0500

A New America Event
03/02/2006 - 12:00pm

With his usual candor, former Senator Gary Hart (D-CO) addressed the issues of security and military strategy -- the same issues he adopted while serving on Capitol Hill and which he explores in his new book The Shield and the Cloak: The Security of the Commons. His provocative remarks, delivered before a packed audience, offered a sobering assessment of America's security climate and a number of proposals to improve it.

Senator Hart -- noting that our Cold War-era military is… more

U.S. Grand Strategy

Communications — Wed, 20 Oct 2004 12:00:00 -0400

A New America Event
10/20/2004 - 12:00pm

In his book The Fourth Power, Gary Hart demonstrates the linkage between a principled foreign policy and national security in the age of terror. He argues that when U.S. sanctions on the world stage are inconsistent with established democratic values, America is made more vulnerable. Stating that policies that erode America's image weaken our fight in the war of ideas, Hart argues there may be no more important arena going forward.