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Kali Wright-Smith, Reconciling the Past: Torture's Place in US Policy, International Studies Review, Volume 15, Issue 4, December 2013, Pages 600–604, https://doi.org/10.1111/misr.12066
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Can a country confront its past and change the norms that guide its policy decisions? The controversy surrounding the United States' detention and interrogation policies during the War on Terror has provided ample opportunity to engage this question and discuss what these policies mean to US security, values, and legitimacy. The “enhanced” interrogation techniques championed by the George W. Bush administration, the use of offshore detention sites, and the establishment of military commissions attracted media and scholarly attention and spurred vigorous debate over the legality and morality of US policy (Danner 2004; Sands 2008; Wittes 2008). As we gain some distance from the immediate post-9/11 period, researchers are now able to analyze how abusive tactics came to be a tool of the US government and compare the policies of the Bush and Obama administrations.
Two recent books on US abuse of detainees delve into the policies that began under the Bush administration and reverberated into the Obama years in order to extract some lessons about how we arrived at these policies, how these policies have shaped the politics and culture of the United States, and how we should move forward. David P. Forsythe's The Politics of Prisoner Abuse: The United States and Enemy Prisoners After 9/11 and Alfred W. McCoy's Torture and Impunity: The U.S. Doctrine of Coercive Interrogation draw upon an abundant body of research from the pre- and post-Bush administration periods to provide comprehensive analyses of law, torture, and post-9/11 policy. As the authors construct windows into the creation and implementation of detainee policy, they present incisive, thorough critiques of Bush administration actions and the nagging impunity that has followed. In asking how detainee policy was constructed, they also grapple with the more difficult question of whether the United States can confront the role of torture in its policy and commit itself to a more transparent approach guided by moral and legal norms.
