April 8th 2008
Clinton, Obama, and McCain: where do they stand on torture?
In the New York Times yesterday (April 7, 2008), the Chief Executive of (the admirable) Physicians for Human Rights, Frank Donaghue, writes:
“The continuing effort to exempt the president [of the United States] from anti-torture law, among other revelations, shows that the [US] government’s calculated policy of torture originated at the highest levels of the administration.”
We already knew that the White House sanctioned torture. What we now need to know about the next president is: will you do the same? Will you back the kind of behaviour you so condemn in your enemies?
And let’s be clear. This is not exclusively a US issue. As the country that backed an illegal war, and is a guilty party in the deaths of hundreds of thousands of Iraqi civilians, the UK must answer this question as well.
Doctors, as Physicians for Human Rights so rightly shows, have a vital role in our democracies by asking these kinds of questions; by asking whether our political leaders measure up to widely held societal values that respect human life.
These are questions that we as doctors need to ask firmly over the next 8 months. Richard Horton
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