Power  /  Retrieval

Prosecuting Torture

Walter Jones and the unintended consequences of the War Crimes Act of 1996.
AP Photo/Andrew Harnik

Elected as part of the conservative Republican wave of 1994, Walter Jones represented North Carolina’s third congressional district, which is home to Camp Lejeune, Air Station Cherry Point, and many retired military personnel. He attracted little national attention until the Iraq War when his contempt for French opposition to the conflict prompted him to rename French fries and French toast as “freedom fries” and “freedom toast.”

Two years later Jones again made headlines when he publicly renounced his earlier support for the war and questioned the fraudulent justifications offered for the conflict. He regretted that war fever in 2003 had overwhelmed his commitment to the principle, codified in the War Powers Act, that the president is constitutionally required to consult with Congress before sending troops into war. The 2001 congressional authorization for the use of military force, Jones worried, had given President George W. Bush and his successors a blank check for endless war. Now the balance of power had shifted in favor of the executive branch and congressional oversight of the military had been drastically curtailed. Jones’s opposition to American military intervention persisted beyond the Bush presidency—he was a relentless critic of the policies of the Obama and Trump administrations in Afghanistan, Libya, Syria, and Yemen.

Jones’s compassion for soldiers and veterans was the link between his opposition to an endless War on Terror and his sponsorship of the War Crimes Act of 1996. He proposed the act after meeting a retired Navy pilot who had been imprisoned and tortured during the Vietnam War. Intended to provide him and other veterans with the means to prosecute their abusers, the law criminalized breaches of the Geneva Conventions such as mutilation, torture, and “humiliating and degrading treatment.” The Department of Defense enthusiastically supported the proposed law on the assumption that American military personnel were unlikely to be prosecuted under the law because the United States followed the conventions. Meanwhile, the law would provide a remedy for future American troops who were captured and abused while serving overseas. Jones and the large bipartisan congressional majority that voted for the law never anticipated that it might be applied to American torturers.