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I think people at my book club must secretly groan when they see me there, because I'm always bringing along cheery histories of genocide and international wrongdoing instead of, say, the latest Margaret Atwood. Having read Philip Gourevitch and Alison des Forges earlier this year, I'm looking forward to eventually getting started on Gerard Prunier's epic Africa's World War: Congo, the Rwandan Genocide, and the Making of a Continental Catastrophe. (I nearly offered Hotel Rwanda in Yuletide this year, but was too afraid of what prompt I might get. Besides, what I'm really interested in is the woefully underreported story of Captain Mbaye Diagne, the Senagalese UNAMIR military observer who saved a huge number of civilians -- in defiance of the UNAMIR mandate -- before being killed by a RPF mortar.)
But at the moment I'm currently absolutely absorbed in Jane Mayer's The Dark Side: The Inside Story of How the War on Terror Turned into a War on American Ideals. I have a lot of time for Mayer, who writes for the New Yorker (you can find her reporting on the War on Terror here). Like Gourevitch's The Ballad of Abu Ghraib (known in Australia as 'Standard Operating Procedure'), it deals with the US government's practice of illegally rendering, detaining and torturing terror suspects -- and the top-down policies that prompted and supported these activities. Whereas Gourevitch looked at how these policies affected the low-level soldiers asked to implement them, Mayer looks in detail at the Bush Administration's politically-driven development of top-level policy. It is a stunning book: thorough, well-researched and gripping like a political thriller. I can't recommend it enough.
It's also timely that I'm reading it now. Khalid Sheik Mohammed will finally be given a civilian trial, which makes me breathe a sigh of relief that Obama may actually be committed to his election promise of closing Guantanamo (but what about the "seventy-five prisoners deemed too dangerous to release but cannot be prosecuted because of evidentiary issues and limits on the use of classified material"?). Am I glad that 22 CIA operatives and a US Air Force officer were convicted by Italian courts of kidnapping Osama Moustafa Hassan Nasr? Fuck yeah, I am. Am I glad that British courts overruled the UK government's attempts to suppress CIA-derived evidence that the US rendered and tortured British citizen Binyam Mohamed? HELL YES.
Those of you who know me know that torture is the one subject that makes me incoherent with rage, but the case of Binyam Mohamed-- it nearly takes it to another level. How can anyone argue with a straight face that revealing torture evidence is jeopardising the safety of Americans? Let's break it down a bit. Is the US government worried about revealing intelligence methodology? Well, in this case the methodology -- torture, and the details thereof -- is fairly well known by now. Is it worried about revealing intelligence sources? The source here is Mohamed himself. What about still actionable intelligence obtained from Mohamed? You mean like the false confessions that people make when having their fingernails ripped out? (And what about the cases where rendered individuals were unequivocally proved innocent-- by definition they have no actionable intelligence, only fabrications.) Is it worried about inflaming a wave of revenge attacks? It's not the reveal that causes that; it's the fact there was FUCKING TORTURE IN THE FIRST PLACE.
Until reading 'The Dark Side', I'd forgotten this excerpt from Nate Fick's 'One Bullet Away':
Lindh ('Detainee 001') joined the Taliban to fight the Northern Alliance in Afghanistan. He had no connection to al-Qaeda himself, nor had he any intention of participating in a suicide attack against Americans. After his capture he was held for two weeks at Camp Rhino, next door to Espera's sleeping hole, where he was kept blindfolded, naked and duct-taped to a stretcher in a pitch-black, freezing shipping container. US doctors refused to remove a recent bullet in his leg due to fear of contaminating the 'chain of custody of evidence'. He was eventually moved to the USS Peleliu, Fick and Espera's ship, where he was denied legal counsel or ICRC access, abused, and coerced into signing a confession that he was a member of al-Qaeda. His rights were systematically violated. But one thing that Lindh did get was his day in court. More than a year and half after his capture, the government dropped nine out of ten charges against him for fear that evidence of his mistreatment would be made public. After Lindh, there were no more federal trials for terror suspects. Until now.
It's amazing how I keep meeting people who reel out the 'terrorist and the ticking bomb' scenario and tell me sincerely that torture can be justified. What they don't seem to understand is that in that scenario, the terrorist has always already won.
But at the moment I'm currently absolutely absorbed in Jane Mayer's The Dark Side: The Inside Story of How the War on Terror Turned into a War on American Ideals. I have a lot of time for Mayer, who writes for the New Yorker (you can find her reporting on the War on Terror here). Like Gourevitch's The Ballad of Abu Ghraib (known in Australia as 'Standard Operating Procedure'), it deals with the US government's practice of illegally rendering, detaining and torturing terror suspects -- and the top-down policies that prompted and supported these activities. Whereas Gourevitch looked at how these policies affected the low-level soldiers asked to implement them, Mayer looks in detail at the Bush Administration's politically-driven development of top-level policy. It is a stunning book: thorough, well-researched and gripping like a political thriller. I can't recommend it enough.
It's also timely that I'm reading it now. Khalid Sheik Mohammed will finally be given a civilian trial, which makes me breathe a sigh of relief that Obama may actually be committed to his election promise of closing Guantanamo (but what about the "seventy-five prisoners deemed too dangerous to release but cannot be prosecuted because of evidentiary issues and limits on the use of classified material"?). Am I glad that 22 CIA operatives and a US Air Force officer were convicted by Italian courts of kidnapping Osama Moustafa Hassan Nasr? Fuck yeah, I am. Am I glad that British courts overruled the UK government's attempts to suppress CIA-derived evidence that the US rendered and tortured British citizen Binyam Mohamed? HELL YES.
Those of you who know me know that torture is the one subject that makes me incoherent with rage, but the case of Binyam Mohamed-- it nearly takes it to another level. How can anyone argue with a straight face that revealing torture evidence is jeopardising the safety of Americans? Let's break it down a bit. Is the US government worried about revealing intelligence methodology? Well, in this case the methodology -- torture, and the details thereof -- is fairly well known by now. Is it worried about revealing intelligence sources? The source here is Mohamed himself. What about still actionable intelligence obtained from Mohamed? You mean like the false confessions that people make when having their fingernails ripped out? (And what about the cases where rendered individuals were unequivocally proved innocent-- by definition they have no actionable intelligence, only fabrications.) Is it worried about inflaming a wave of revenge attacks? It's not the reveal that causes that; it's the fact there was FUCKING TORTURE IN THE FIRST PLACE.
Until reading 'The Dark Side', I'd forgotten this excerpt from Nate Fick's 'One Bullet Away':
... I slid into the hole, and Espera caught me up on the night's discussion.
"Sir, we're talking about Lindh. These guys"-- he nodded at the other Marines in the hole-- "think he's a freedom fighter."
John Walker Lindh, the so-called American Taliban, had been captured the week before at Qala-i-Jangi prison in northern Afghanistan. Now he was imprisoned in a metal container a few hundred yards from Espera's hole.
"And what do you think?" I asked Espera.
"Traitor. And the most vicious kind. He turned his back on the society that raised him, that gave him the freedom and idealism to follow his beliefs."
"But what was his crime?" I goaded Espera, happy to play devil's advocate. "Other than being in the wrong place at the wrong time?"
"Joining the Taliban. Claiming to be a member of al-Qaeda. Shit, sir, if that ain't enough for you, his buddies killed a Marine!" Mike Spann, a CIA officer and former Marine captain, had been killed shortly after interrogating Lindh. "If my grandma killed a Marine, she'd be on my shitlist."
Espera turned serious again. "We're young Americans out here doing what our nation's democratically elected leaders told us to do. And he's fighting against us. Why's that so hard to figure out? And already the press is bitching about how he's being treated. He's warm. He's protected. He eats three meals each day and sleeps all night. Do I have that? Do my men have that?"
"Their freedom to voice stupid opinions is part of what we're fighting for," I said.
Lindh ('Detainee 001') joined the Taliban to fight the Northern Alliance in Afghanistan. He had no connection to al-Qaeda himself, nor had he any intention of participating in a suicide attack against Americans. After his capture he was held for two weeks at Camp Rhino, next door to Espera's sleeping hole, where he was kept blindfolded, naked and duct-taped to a stretcher in a pitch-black, freezing shipping container. US doctors refused to remove a recent bullet in his leg due to fear of contaminating the 'chain of custody of evidence'. He was eventually moved to the USS Peleliu, Fick and Espera's ship, where he was denied legal counsel or ICRC access, abused, and coerced into signing a confession that he was a member of al-Qaeda. His rights were systematically violated. But one thing that Lindh did get was his day in court. More than a year and half after his capture, the government dropped nine out of ten charges against him for fear that evidence of his mistreatment would be made public. After Lindh, there were no more federal trials for terror suspects. Until now.
It's amazing how I keep meeting people who reel out the 'terrorist and the ticking bomb' scenario and tell me sincerely that torture can be justified. What they don't seem to understand is that in that scenario, the terrorist has always already won.
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From:
I liked Kristian Williams' American Methods, on the topic of American Torture - he's a friend of mine, true, but his books are well-researched and well-written.
http://www.kristianwilliams.com/about/
From:
Thanks for the rec, will totally check out!