Op-ed by Raha Wala.
In 1988, President Reagan led a bipartisan effort to ratify the United Nations Convention Against Torture. Twenty-five years ago today, he told the Senate in a letter that, “Ratification of the Convention by the United States will clearly express United States opposition to torture, an abhorrent practice unfortunately still prevalent in the world today.”
The recent phenomenon of unyielding partisanship and stalemates on Capitol Hill can make it easy to forget that it was once common to put aside partisan differences and work on issues of national concern. From Reagan’s leadership on the Convention Against Torture to the Senate’s overwhelming support in 2005 for the McCain amendment designed to prohibit abusive interrogations, the United States has a strong history of bipartisan opposition to torture.
