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 Greetings! You are reading an article from The Mudville Gazette. To reach the front page, with all the latest news and views, click the logo above or "main" below. Thanks for stopping by! January 9, 2005 Torture TalkBy GreyhawkIt's relieving to hear many conservatives dissent from the kind of torture that the U.S. has practised these past few years in the war on terror. But there are two critical myths that keep being repeated. Let me enumerate them. First - and this is a minor point - I think any attempt to address this as a left/right issue is an unfortunate attempt to ensure that valid (and valuable) discussion is dispensed with, and consider the "conservative" reference as another such effort. At last count "conservatives" outnumber "liberals" in this country by about 3 million votes - game over if you want to play by those rules. I don't. Andrew Sullivan offers an incendiary passage to be sure - some may call that the heart of blogging - but his was a rather weak approach to addressing the actual post referenced, complaining about what it isn't. Here's a quote from said post: If you're looking for further discussion on that political topic move on. The remainder of this post is not for you. But you will miss a chance to look a little deeper into the ugly mirror that is Abu Ghraib, perhaps to clear a bit of fog from it's surface, and discover if you know all you think you do on that topic. Which I believe explains to any rational reader exactly what the post is - a look at the reality of the notorious Abu Ghraib torture case - while acknowledging that there are other issues that won't be addressed. I could provide a laundry list of what the post isn't. But for those who missed the point, here's the final paragraph: A discussion of torture is an ugly necessity in the world today, but those who would enter that discourse with the battle cry of "Abu Ghraib" should at least understand their position. It's a house of cards, ugly cards to be sure, and not a foundation for discussion with any intent of serious resolution. I'm biased, but I don't see a call for eliminating misleading fictions from any grown up discussion as a dodge. I've used the phrase "seats at the grown up table" here before - if you can't have a reasonable discussion of topics like these without regurgitation of myths, innuendo, and outright lies than there's no sense in inviting you up from the kiddy table for the talk. I'll acknowledge that Andrew's post indicates to me that he concedes the point regarding the applicability of the Abu Ghraib case, and note that such concession meets my conditions for further discussion above. But still a final step would be needed to bring his post up to a level I could respond to. With every fact I stated in the "Torture Test" I provided what we call a "link" to supporting posts, and they in fact contain even more "links" to other sources. I always think of them as similar to footnotes or citations, the sort one finds in scientific papers when one makes a reference to previous efforts. But having some background in producing such documents (usually for pre-publication peer review) I comprehend their utility. But most bloggers and other web-savvy people comprehend this practice regardless of their academic background. For instance, any blogger who would state that "Torture has occurred at Abu Ghraib after the scandal hit; in Ramadi, Tikrit, in Saddam's old mukhabbarat HQ in Basra, at Camp Cropper, Guantanamo Bay, Afghanistan, and in transit. It has been perpetrated by almost every branch of the military." without providing support in the form of these "links" would simply be inviting the sort of scorn we reserve for old media dinosaurs and those who have something to fear from the truth. Without such support we might assume his 'torture' definition includes simply wrapping a prisoner in an Israeli flag. I'm no Sullivan basher, some time ago he gave the MilBlogs page one of the earliest server-straining links it received, but in this case I fear we are seeing the product of a tortured mind. I give you a D+ on this test, but I know you can do better. More here A must-read from Donald Sensing.
Posted by Greyhawk / January 9, 2005 8:34 PM | Permalink 1 TrackBackThere's been much discussion about torture lately, most of it hyperventilated hyperbole with no relation to the truth. Today Greyhawk addresses a post by Andrew Sullivan (whom I no longer read) about torture and gives him a D+. (A side note - I find ... Read More 3 Comments |
November 26, 2010America@war [Greyhawk]
I think anyone who's ever pondered the "comment" option - once only available on blogs and bulletin boards, now ubiquitous on almost any web site - will appreciate this:
The so-called faculty of writing is not so much a faculty of writing as it is a faculty of thinking. When a man says, "I have an idea but I can't express it"; that man hasn't an idea but merely a vague feeling. If a man has a feeling of that kind, and will sit down for a half an hour and persistently try to put into writing what he feels, the probabilities are at least 90 percent that he will either be able to record it, or else realize that he has no idea at all. In either case, he will do himself a benefit. That's wisdom from the past, captured for posterity at the US Naval Institute, shared via the web on the institute's 137th anniversary. From their about page:
"The Naval Institute has three core activities," among them, History and Preservation: The Naval Institute also has recently introduced Americans at War, a living history of Americans at war in their own words and from their own experiences. These 90-second vignettes convey powerful stories of inspiration, pride, and patriotism. Take a look at the collection, and you'll see it's not limited to accounts from those who served on ships at sea, members of the other branches are well-represented. I'm fortunate to have met USNI's Mary Ripley, she's responsible for the institute's oral history program (and she's the daughter of the late John Ripley, whose story is told here). She also deserves much credit for their blog. ("We're not the Navy nor any government agency. Blog and comment freely.") We met at a milblog conference - Mary knew (and I would come to realize) that milbloggers are the 21st-century version of exactly what the US Naval Institute is all about. Once that light bulb came on in my head, I mentioned a vague idea for a project to her - milblogs as the 21st century oral history that they are. "Put that in writing," she said (of course - see first paragraph above!) - and here's part of the result. Shortly after the first tent was pitched by the American military in Iraq a wire was connected to a computer therein, and the internet was available to a generation of Americans at war - many of whom had grown up online. From that point on, at any given moment, somewhere in Iraq a Soldier, Sailor, Airman or Marine was at a keyboard sharing the events of his or her day with the folks back home. While most would simply fire off an email, others took advantage of the (then) relatively new online blogging platforms to post their thoughts and experiences for the entire world to see. The milblog was born - and from that moment to this stories detailing everything from the most mundane aspects of camp life to intense combat action (often described within hours of the event) have been available on the web... And et cetera - but since you're reading this on a milblog, you probably knew that. And you know that milblogs aren't just blogs written by troops at war, that many friends, family members, and supporters likewise documented their story of America at war online in near-real time, as those stories developed. The diversity in membership of that group is broad, the one thing we all have in common is the impulse to make sense of the seemingly senseless, and communicate the tale - for each of us that impulse was strong enough to overcome whatever barriers prevent the vast majority of people from doing the same. Everyone at some point has some vague idea they believe should be shared - we were the people who, from some combination of internal and external urging, found and spent those many half hours persistently trying to write it down. But where will all that be in another 137 years? Or five or ten, for that matter. That's something I've asked myself since at least 2004 - when I wrote this:
Membership in the ghost battalion has grown in the years since, and an ever growing majority of those abandoned-but-still-standing sites are vanishing. Have you checked out Lt Smash's site lately? How about Sgt Hook's? If you're a long-time milblog reader you know the first widely-read milblog from Operation Iraq Freedom and the first widely-read milblog from Afghanistan are both gone from the web. If you're a relative newcomer to this world you may never even have heard of them - or the dozens upon dozens of others who carried forth the standard they set down. If you have a vague notion that something should be done about that, (a notion I've heard expressed more than once...) then you and I and the good folks at the US Naval Institute are in agreement. Preserving the history documented by the milbloggers is just one of the goals of the milblog project, the once-vague idea that we're now making real. And it's a big idea, if I say so myself - too big to explain in one simple blog post, so stand by for more. Likewise, it's too big a task to be accomplished by just one person. So if you're a milblogger (and exactly what is a milblogger? is a topic for much further discussion on its own) I'm asking for your help. All I'll really need is just a little bit (maybe just one or two of those half hours...) of your time, and your willingness to tell the tale. We've already made history, it's time to save it. (More to follow...) Posted 4:02 PM | Permalink |
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The Mudville Gazette is the on-line voice of an American warrior and his wife who stands by him. They prefer to see peaceful change render force of arms unnecessary. Until that day they stand fast with those who struggle for freedom, strike for reason, and pray for a better tomorrow.
 
 
 Furthermore, I will occasionally use satire or parody herein. The bottom line: it's my house. I like having visitors to my house. I hope you are entertained. I fight for your right to free speech, and am thrilled when you exercise said rights here. Comments and e-mails are welcome, but all such communication is to be assumed to be 1)the original work of any who initiate said communication and 2)the property of the Mudville Gazette, with free use granted thereto for publication in electronic or written form. If you do NOT wish to have your message posted, write "CONFIDENTIAL" in the subject line of your email. Original content copyright © 2003 - 2011 by Greyhawk. Fair, not-for-profit use of said material by others is encouraged, as long as acknowledgement and credit is given, to include the url of the original source post. Other arrangements can be made as needed. Contact: greyhawk at mudvillegazette dot com  Tending Distant Far from hearth and home, watching What tales we'll tell When things grim Some distant sunset, vision fading Saluting fallen friends whose names - Greyhawk, Baghdad, December 2004 |
I believe most people are missing the discussion that needs to happen over the issue of "torture". We need to discuss and eventually decide what interogation tactics are permissible and under what circumstances.
As we have the discussion, we need to keep in mind that many times we will be talking about obtaining information that will prevent injury or death to others. The problem is even more complicated because the number of people possibly injured will vary.
To take the most extreme case, a terrorist has been captured that has knowledge of a nuclear weapon some where in New York city. What interogation techniques are permitted to extract that information from him? If we can not extract the information out of him because he does not respond to our 'limited" interogation, hundreds of thousands of people will die. What is acceptable?
The historic reason for conventions on torture, was to deal with prisoners of war. In "classical" war there was a government on each side that could be held accountable for actions taken during war. Who do you hold accountable in a war on terrorism where the terrorist leaders have limited control?
We need a serious discussion that recognizes the realities of terrorism. Terrorist do not just kill "combatants". In fact, they target non-combatants purposely. Are we willing to treat people that kill innocents the same as those that attack soldiers?
I am of the opinion that we need to balance the interogation method (torture if you prefer) with the severity of the outcome and the people being affected. I am aware that not all torture results in reliable information but that is something experts need to work out. For the body politic, we need to lay down the rules of what is and is not acceptable. When hundreds of thousands of innocent lives are at stake, I have no limits. I do not intend to commit suicide nor should our society.
I believe statements I read recently on Washington Post web forums citing a New Republic article calling the tempest over torture "fatuous" grossly misses the point of many of the concerns we liberals have about this.
Two examples: As a child, I grew up in an alcoholic home.
My Dad was the alcoholic. My Mom was the "raging codependent." I got hit by her A LOT! Spatulas; wooden spoons; the belt occasionally; ping pong paddles; rules and yard sticks; switches off the Lilac Tree in the summer; hair brushes; and most often, slapped across the face. That FELT like torture ... felt like ... because this was my Mom and I didn't understand what caused her to love me one minute and whack me around the next.
My Dad hardly EVER hit me. When he did, he knocked me two feet off the floor and sent me sailing against a wall.
Only two or three times. My Mom would often hit me that many times in a single day.
I was "acting out" ... my Dad seemed to just suck up a lot of her abuse. She was mad as hell he wouldn't stop drinking. I was convenient, and because of my own feelings about HIM not standing up to her, my "acting out" was often defiant and rebellious. I wouldn't cry no matter HOW HARD she whacked me with a yardstick, or these other instruments.
It has taken me 40 years for me to say: that was torture.
I'm sure there will be plenty of readers who will ridicule me for claiming that was torture.
Point: Torture is torture when the person being interrogated, or enduring a certain situation, FEELS like he or she is being tortured. NO ONE CAN SAY it doesn't FEEL like torture to the one who suffers, because they aren't on the receving end.
Example Two: I was a rifleman in Vietnam. I was shot on point in the Central Highlands in November, 66. About one month earlier, I picked a rucksack off a dead North Vietnamese body. It had all the guy's pictures, post cards, letters from his family, family photos, etc., in it. Technically, that was a VIOLATION of the Geneva Convention.
So what. He was dead and the U.S. Army pack given me sucked. It didn't carry enough stuff.
When I got shot, on point, I was in the center of two streams of fire.
One, from behind, from the guy who shot me from under fifteen feet (well concealed in jungle). He trimmed the brush down around me trying to "get me" for good. His first round went so close to my left ear lobe I FELT IT. As he fired from his position, a machine gun UP the trail I had been walking, opened up and stream of tracers went no more than two inches off my chest. My right arm was nearly shot off. I KNEW that if I rolled to my right, to get my right arm out from under me, I might die. I lay in a slight erosion rill on the trail. It put me in just enough defilade to NOT be on the surface of the trail I'd walked. Had I not had those simple two or three inches of defilade, I'd have been cut in half.
HOWEVER, I was worried about that pack. And those pictures, post cards, letters. A unit had suffered total death several weeks earlier. All the wounded had been found shot between the eyes. I thought about that and decided, as the machine gun fire subsided, and the guy behind me melted away into the jungle, and friends crawled up to me, that I wasn't going to let some s.o.b. shoot ME between the eyes, if he found me with that pack ... and executed me.
I took a grenade off my web gear, stuck in in my right armpit, where if needed, I could pull the pin with my left hand. It was awkward using the left hand (I am right handed and my right arm was nearly blown off), but I was terrified I'd be executed OR, TORTURED FIRST!
Point? The Geneva Convention has been something the United STATES has adhered to because of our liberty, freedom, dignity, justice, and sense of honor. The Japanese didn't honor it; neither did the Chinese, North Koreans, or North Vietnamese. SO WHAT!!
WE always honored it.
Yes, torture has happened in all our wars, but it has not been systematic, or "sanctioned" by the White House (Alberto Gonzales and his buddies -- no matter what they say they did -- set this in motion. PARTICULARLY Alberto Gonzales, by checking first with Justice, etc.
The incredible short-sightedness of this move towards torture is egregious on the merits of the dignity and history of the United States as a nation of Democracy and honor.
The most damage to come will come soon ... sooner or later.
There are probably some al-Qaeda cells working diligently right now, to monitor American military behavior ... to do their best to capture Americans. And now, with so many women in the military, to capture a unit of mixed sexes.
When Americans are captured this way, they will be rape; sodomized; force to committ homosexual acts; other indignities BEFORE they're beheaded.
It's already OVER.
There is such an event coming up ... we won't know where; we wont know when ... but is foreordained now that it will come. The beheadings of contractors in Iraq clearly was a message to contractors ... since U.S. contractors did some of the torture at Abu Ghrayab and elsewhere (the writer is correct: we hardly know all of the locations it has occured).
Gonzales and his buddies Feith and Cambone and the others (lawyer Yoo) have NEVER BEEN IN COMBAT! The theorists who contend what we have done ISN'T TORTURE, HAVE NEVER been in combat either. Not the ones I've seen writing the articles.
50 years of American adherence to the Geneva Convention, EVEN against the Japanese, who were horrific in their treatment of our prisoners, stands as a testament to our dignity.
We fought the Cold War, for God's sake, and never approved torture against Russian spies!!!! And we WON WW II and the Cold War!
Odd, huh? The two greatest global conflicts in our history and we managed to WIN both with NO systematic torture.
Torture is wrong. It is beneath us.
We CAN elicit answers from terrorists.
Isolation can be a powerful coercive force. Standing, or just being awakened so that sleep is disrupted for days, can persuade. Water-boarding is torture. Humiliation ... being posed giving another man a blow job or hand job ... isn't just a school or fraternity prank.
The people who are made to do that to get into a fraternity ... do it with relish to the next bunch. Else, why would college hazing get out of control (see the Chicago incident where students threw feces and urine and other things on males and females at an after-school party). Ask some of THOSE KIDS how it felt to have feces and urine thrown on them, and them made to roll in it!
Torture is covered in Michael Ignatieff's book, "The Lesser Evil." Read it. It demonstrates that even if a society practices torture in a "national emergency" , without oversight, and time limits, torture can and does corrode the hearts and minds of those who torture.
Finally, wanna bet some of th suicide bombers in Iraq are former Abu Ghrayab prisoners? Because the sexual aspects of what happened there have been used by the Israelis. It was CULTURE specific, designed to humiliate ARAB MALES. To so humiliate them, that they'd "turn" on their buddies, and rat them out to the American intelligence handlers.
NOT. I'd bet money some of these suicide bombers were humiliated; welcomed back by the resistance; told, there is a way you can seek vengance on the Americans; and regain your honor and dignity that THE AMERICANS tried to take from you.
How many Americans do we see blowing themselvse up.
If my theory is correct on the former prisoners becoming suiciders, I'd say: torture backfired.
It's wrong, it's an abomnible practice, and we shouldn't get in it.
Anyone who equivocates between a prisoner being forced to wear a pair of panties on his head, and a prisoner having his tongue cut out, is not deserving of a place in an adult discussion.
Being embarrassed or being scared is not torture. Not even close.