Cornell Clayton
Cornell Clayton

In the wake of harrowing revelations about the CIA’s secret torture program, Cornell Clayton, professor of politics, philosophy, and public affairs and director of the Thomas S. Foley Institute for Public Policy and Public Service at WSU, critiques disturbing reactions. “The tragedy,” Clayton says, “isn’t that torture failed. It’s that Americans resorted to it.

“Nations are not individuals or even extensions of individuals. A nation is its values and what it stands for. This is especially true of America, which has never been defined by a shared ethnic or religious identity, but only by our common ideals. Chief among these is the belief in human rights, the rule of law, and the dignity of the individual. Torture is an affront to these ideals.

“Those who insist that brutal terrorists who kill innocent civilians forfeit the right to humane treatment miss the point. It is not about who they are, but who we are. America is an exceptional nation because it embraces – often imperfectly – exceptional values. We lose if we abandon those values.”

Read Clayton’s entire guest opinion in the Spokesman-Review