[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 151 (2005), Part 22]
[Senate]
[Page 30946]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]



[[Page 30946]]

                    SENATE--Friday, December 30, 2005

       ROBERT F. KENNEDY, JR., ON AMERICA'S ANTITORTURE TRADITION

 Mr. KENNEDY. Mr. President, the Los Angeles Times of December 
17, carried an important op-ed article, ``American's anti-torture 
tradition,'' by my nephew, Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.
  Bobby is senior attorney for the Natural Resource Defense Council, 
and is also chief prosecuting attorney for Hudson Riverkeeper and 
president of the Waterkeeper Alliance. In addition, he is clinical 
professor and supervising attorney at the Environmental Litigation 
Clinic at Pace University Law School in White Plains, NY.
  In the article, Bobby recounts the story of GEN George Washington's 
courageous decision during the Revolutionary War to insist that his 
soldier's treat British forces and prisoners humanely, even though 
American civilians and prisoners were treated brutally by the British. 
Indeed, as a British officer wrote at the time, ``Wherever our armies 
have marched, wherever they have encamped, every species of barbarity 
has been executed. We planted an irrevocable hatred wherever we went, 
which neither time nor measure will be able to eradicate.''
  Our early leaders understood that our values are our greatest asset, 
and our own generation must never forget that fundamental principle.
  I believe that Bobby's article will be of interest to all of us in 
Congress who care about this basic issue, and I ask that it be printed 
in the Record.
  The article follows:

              [From the Los Angeles Times, Dec. 17, 2005]

                    America's Anti-Torture Tradition

                      (By Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.)

       It is nice that the Bush administration has finally been 
     pressured into backing a ban on cruel and inhumane treatment 
     of prisoners. But what remains shocking about this 
     embarrassing and distasteful national debate is that we had 
     to have it at all. This administration's newfound enthusiasm 
     for torture has not only damaged our international 
     reputation, it has shattered one of our proudest American 
     traditions.
       Every schoolchild knows that Gen. George Washington made 
     extraorindary efforts to protect America's civilian 
     population from the ravages of war. Fewer Americans know that 
     Revolutionary War leaders, including Washington and the 
     Continental Congress, considered the decent treatment of 
     enemy combatants to be one of the principal strategic 
     preoccupations of the American Revolution.
       ``In 1776,'' wrote historian David Hackett Fischer in 
     ``Washington's Crossing,'' ``American leaders believed it was 
     not enough to win the war. They also had to win in a way that 
     was consistent with the values of their society and the 
     principles of their cause. One of their greatest achievement 
     . . . was to manage the war in a manner that was true to the 
     expanding humanitarian ideals of the American Revolution.''
       The fact that the patriots refused to abandon these 
     principles, even in the dark times when the war seemed lost, 
     when the enemy controlled our cities and our ragged army was 
     barefoot and starving, credits the character of Washington 
     and the founding fathers and puts to shame the conduct of 
     America's present leadership.
       Fischer writes that leaders in both the Continental 
     Congress and the Continental Army resolved that the War of 
     Independence would be conducted with a respect for human 
     rights. This was all the more extraordinary because these 
     courtesies were not reciprocated by King George's armies. 
     Indeed, the British conducted a deliberate campaign of 
     atrocities against American soldiers and civilians. While 
     Americans extended quarter to combatants as a matter of right 
     and treated their prisoners with humanity, British regulars 
     and German mercenaries were threatened by their own officers 
     with severe punishment if they showed mercy to a surrendering 
     American soldier. Captured Americans were tortured, starved 
     and cruelly maltreated aboard prison ships.
       Washington decided to behave differently. After capturing 
     1,000 Hessians in the Battle of Trenton, he ordered that 
     enemy prisoners be treated with the same rights for which our 
     young nation was fighting. In an order covering prisoners 
     taken in the Battle of Princeton, Washington wrote: ``Treat 
     them with humanity, and let them have no reason to Complain 
     of our Copying the brutal example of the British Army in 
     their treatment of our unfortunate brethren. . . . Provide 
     everything necessary for them on the road.''
       John Adams argued that humane treatment of prisoners and 
     deep concern for civilian populations not only reflected the 
     American Revolution's highest ideals, they were a moral and 
     strategic requirement. His thoughts on the subject, expressed 
     in a 1777 letter to his wife, might make a profitable read 
     for Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld as we endeavor to win 
     hearts and minds in Iraq. Adams wrote: ``I know of no policy, 
     God is my witness, but this--Piety, Humanity and Honesty are 
     the best Policy. Blasphemy, Cruelty and Villainy have 
     prevailed and may again. But they won't prevail against 
     America, in this Contest, because I find the more of them are 
     employed, the less they succeed.''
       Even British military leaders involved in the atrocities 
     recognized their negative effects on the overall war effort. 
     In 1778, Col. Charles Stuart wrote to his father, the Earl of 
     Bute: ``Wherever our armies have marched, wherever they have 
     encamped, every species of barbarity has been executed. We 
     planted an irrevocable hatred wherever we went, which neither 
     time nor measure will be able to eradicate.''
       In the end, our founding fathers not only protected our 
     national values, they defeated a militarily superior enemy. 
     Indeed, it was their disciplined adherence to those values 
     that helped them win a hopeless struggle against the best 
     soldiers in Europe.
       In accordance with this proud American tradition, President 
     Lincoln instituted the first formal code of conduct for the 
     humane treatment of prisoners of war in 1863. Lincoln's order 
     forbade any form of torture or cruelty, and it became the 
     model for the 1929 Geneva Convention. Dwight Eisenhower made 
     a point to guarantee exemplary treatment to German POWs in 
     WorId War II, and Gen. Douglas McArthur ordered application 
     of the Geneva Convention during the Korean War, even though 
     the U.S. was not yet a signatory. In the Vietnam War, the 
     United States extended the convention's protection to Viet 
     Cong prisoners even though the law did not technically 
     require it.
       Today, our president is again challenged to align the 
     conduct of a war with the values of our nation. America's 
     treatment of its prisoners is a test of our faith in our 
     country and the character of our leaders.