Showing posts with label torture. Show all posts
Showing posts with label torture. Show all posts
Friday, December 11, 2009
Water Sport
With every thing to lose,
we should be sure to test
all prescriptions we endorse.
So, run ourselves a nice, warm bath,
the sort where we linger and lounge
until the water cools. Step in,
sit down, ease back, ears underwater
listening to our life pulsing, waves rolling in.
Nice, warm, wet to sopping washcloth
over nose and mouth, inhale, exhale,
head further back, inhale, water trickles in,
breathing harder now, fighting panic, inhaling,
fighting to breathe, sitting up abruptly,
breathe hard, breathe grateful, repeat,
head back, nice, warm, wet to sopping washcloth,
say “ve vant names, giff us names, you must
tell us of ze evil plots against us,”
inhale through water invading nose,
mouth, lungs, fight rising panic, fight to breathe,
to breathe, to breathe and up. Breathing gratefully deeply.
Now chuckle audibly and say this:
The United States of America does not torture and
repeat nice, warm, wet to sopping washcloth over
nose and mouth, fight to breathe, feel the anger and
fear invading nose, mouth, lungs and panic,
panic, panic. Think we 300 million witnesses
to trauma, we Chuck and Larry, Carlos and Jamal,
Sandra and Casandra, we Amina and Judith,
we who stood by, silent witnesses to torture.
:
Tuesday, April 28, 2009
Conscience and Community, III
Who Is Torturing Whom?
The controversy over the use of torture continues. Interested parties should read the "torture memos," classified documents affirming the use of frightening and painful techniques in the interrogation of individuals captured by US security agencies or military personnel. These memos, written by high-ranking staff in the Bush administration, outline procedures that sound like torture to me. I haven't yet read all the memos, but I have read one written by Jay S. Bybee, in his capacity as an assistant attorney general. Bybee is now a judge on the US Court of Appeal for the Ninth District.
Reading Bybee's memo doesn't bring me much clarity, though I'm pretty sure he shouldn't be sitting as a judge anywhere. I understand from other coverage that Bybee felt uncomfortable about writing the memo. But he didn't refuse to write it, and his protestations clearly come after the fact. Perhaps, he's simply disturbed that he has been publicly associated with systematic torture.
For me, the lack of clarity lies in my own discomfort with the discussion. I draw lots of lines between good and bad, good and evil, in my own life, but those lines do not always guide my own attitudes, or my behavior.
I want my family, my friends, my community, my country to be safe. If there is someone out there who wants to attack the United States, to attack Washington, DC, the city I live in, I want somebody to know about those plans. I do not want to see a recurrence of 9-11.
But the fact remains that there were far more Iraqi deaths in the First Gulf War, which began in 1990, than American deaths from Sept. 11 events. Perhaps, 20 to 40 times as many.
And as many as 1,000,000 more Iraqis may have died as a result of sanctions imposed on Iraq after the first war. "Some researchers say that over a million Iraqis, disproportionately children, died as a result of the sanctions, [13] although other estimates have ranged as low as 170,000 children."
Estimates of Iraqi deaths since the beginning of the 2003 invasion of Iraq have been as high as one million or more. The number of Iraqis displaced by the war and the ensuing occupation has been estimated at more than four million.
There may be as many as 30 million people currently living in Iraq. All told, sanctions, bombings, invasion and occupation may have killed or displaced as much as one-quarter of that number. To have the same effect on the United States, terrorists would have to kill, wound or displace somewhere between 80 million and 90 million people.
No level of terrorist activity, indeed, no hostile action of any type, short of alien invasion, will ever have such an effect on the United States. In fact, climate change is the only earth-based event likely to have that kind of an effect on the US. Perhaps, we should be torturing "climate-change deniers," like George Will, to find out more about possible plots against America.
Nancy Pelosi wants a Truth Commission to identify those responsible for sanctioning the use of torture. But it's obvious, we have all sanctioned torture in some way. That blanket of guilt does not fall on each of us just because we failed to speak out against torture. It falls on us for, among other things, the torture we have visited on Iraq and Iraqis these last 20 years or more.
My idea for an investigation into who did what to whom would be more along the lines of a national self-investigation. Abu Zubaydah may wish that he could deliver the same sort of mayhem to Americans that we have visited upon others, but that's only a dream. Compared to Americans, Zubaydah is a piker.
The controversy over the use of torture continues. Interested parties should read the "torture memos," classified documents affirming the use of frightening and painful techniques in the interrogation of individuals captured by US security agencies or military personnel. These memos, written by high-ranking staff in the Bush administration, outline procedures that sound like torture to me. I haven't yet read all the memos, but I have read one written by Jay S. Bybee, in his capacity as an assistant attorney general. Bybee is now a judge on the US Court of Appeal for the Ninth District.
Reading Bybee's memo doesn't bring me much clarity, though I'm pretty sure he shouldn't be sitting as a judge anywhere. I understand from other coverage that Bybee felt uncomfortable about writing the memo. But he didn't refuse to write it, and his protestations clearly come after the fact. Perhaps, he's simply disturbed that he has been publicly associated with systematic torture.
For me, the lack of clarity lies in my own discomfort with the discussion. I draw lots of lines between good and bad, good and evil, in my own life, but those lines do not always guide my own attitudes, or my behavior.
I want my family, my friends, my community, my country to be safe. If there is someone out there who wants to attack the United States, to attack Washington, DC, the city I live in, I want somebody to know about those plans. I do not want to see a recurrence of 9-11.
But the fact remains that there were far more Iraqi deaths in the First Gulf War, which began in 1990, than American deaths from Sept. 11 events. Perhaps, 20 to 40 times as many.
And as many as 1,000,000 more Iraqis may have died as a result of sanctions imposed on Iraq after the first war. "Some researchers say that over a million Iraqis, disproportionately children, died as a result of the sanctions, [13] although other estimates have ranged as low as 170,000 children."
Estimates of Iraqi deaths since the beginning of the 2003 invasion of Iraq have been as high as one million or more. The number of Iraqis displaced by the war and the ensuing occupation has been estimated at more than four million.
There may be as many as 30 million people currently living in Iraq. All told, sanctions, bombings, invasion and occupation may have killed or displaced as much as one-quarter of that number. To have the same effect on the United States, terrorists would have to kill, wound or displace somewhere between 80 million and 90 million people.
No level of terrorist activity, indeed, no hostile action of any type, short of alien invasion, will ever have such an effect on the United States. In fact, climate change is the only earth-based event likely to have that kind of an effect on the US. Perhaps, we should be torturing "climate-change deniers," like George Will, to find out more about possible plots against America.
Nancy Pelosi wants a Truth Commission to identify those responsible for sanctioning the use of torture. But it's obvious, we have all sanctioned torture in some way. That blanket of guilt does not fall on each of us just because we failed to speak out against torture. It falls on us for, among other things, the torture we have visited on Iraq and Iraqis these last 20 years or more.
My idea for an investigation into who did what to whom would be more along the lines of a national self-investigation. Abu Zubaydah may wish that he could deliver the same sort of mayhem to Americans that we have visited upon others, but that's only a dream. Compared to Americans, Zubaydah is a piker.
Saturday, April 25, 2009
Conscience and Community, II
In Torture We Trust
Though I posted Conscience and Community just yesterday, I'm not entirely sure why I did so. After all, there are always issues requiring some moral judgment. Why bring it up, at all? And in such an abstract way?
Torture is a hot issue right now (read "Military Agency Warned Against Torture" in the Washington Post). Supporters of "enhanced interrogation techniques"--a sterilized term for a dirty business--argue that our use of torture has prevented terrorist attacks on Americans and American interests.
Of course, because torture occurs mostly in secret, we have no real way of knowing whether or not that is the case. Or, why, in a discussion of the ethics of torture, we ought to concern ourselves with the claim of effectiveness.
Dick Cheney (remember him?) claims that torturing prisoners has helped protect the U.S. The debate about the merits and legality of torture, Cheney says, would be greatly advanced by releasing all the government memos on the subject, "including those that show success."
This must be disingenuous. After his eight years of leadership in creating opacity in government, one can't help but greet his call for openness with a bit of skepticism.
As the most influential vice-president in history, Cheney specialized in obstructing the free flow of accurate information, beginning with his closed meetings with oil company lobbyists and others in the early days of the Bush administration. Cheney and his colleagues went on to manipulate the news in the Valerie Plame affair, oppose disclosure and public discussion of Abu Ghraib (this entry about Abu Ghraib includes some details about WMDs, another Cheney obsession) and oppose the closing of Guantanamo.
In all probability, Cheney is reasoning that there will never be full disclosure of classified documents related to the torture question and that his call for transparency gives him a claim to some sort of high ground in the debate. But my goodness, with his history, who could possibly entertain the notion that Cheney ought to be part of the discussion about torture, too?
Still, in the interests of maintaining dialogue and community, I'm going with Mark Danner's smart piece in the Post.
"Beginning more than a half-dozen years ago," Danner writes, "Bush administration officials broke the law and did repugnant things to detainees under their control." But, he reminds us, that is not the only important element of this scandal.
"The dirty little secret of the torture scandal and of all the loud expressions of outrage now clogging the nation's airwaves is that, until very recently, the politics of torture cut in the opposite direction. This is why, although we have known the general narrative of torture since summer of 2004, most politicians have been loathe to do anything about it."
Danner has more to say, but the fact is that it would have taken far more courage to speak out against torture five years ago than it does to day. Personally, I was appalled. But I took no action and did not speak out.
The controversy about torture provides something of an example for discussing conscience and community, but it is not an act of conscience to speak loudly now. Everybody in the debate, regardless of their position, has allies and cover. Perhaps, one day supporters of torture will run huge political and social risks bucking an established ethical consensus, but they don't now. And calling for a truth commission is hardly a big risk these days, either.
So--I'm still asking myself--where ought a discussion of conscience and community be headed? And what else is there to say?
Though I posted Conscience and Community just yesterday, I'm not entirely sure why I did so. After all, there are always issues requiring some moral judgment. Why bring it up, at all? And in such an abstract way?
Torture is a hot issue right now (read "Military Agency Warned Against Torture" in the Washington Post). Supporters of "enhanced interrogation techniques"--a sterilized term for a dirty business--argue that our use of torture has prevented terrorist attacks on Americans and American interests.
Of course, because torture occurs mostly in secret, we have no real way of knowing whether or not that is the case. Or, why, in a discussion of the ethics of torture, we ought to concern ourselves with the claim of effectiveness.
Dick Cheney (remember him?) claims that torturing prisoners has helped protect the U.S. The debate about the merits and legality of torture, Cheney says, would be greatly advanced by releasing all the government memos on the subject, "including those that show success."
This must be disingenuous. After his eight years of leadership in creating opacity in government, one can't help but greet his call for openness with a bit of skepticism.
As the most influential vice-president in history, Cheney specialized in obstructing the free flow of accurate information, beginning with his closed meetings with oil company lobbyists and others in the early days of the Bush administration. Cheney and his colleagues went on to manipulate the news in the Valerie Plame affair, oppose disclosure and public discussion of Abu Ghraib (this entry about Abu Ghraib includes some details about WMDs, another Cheney obsession) and oppose the closing of Guantanamo.
In all probability, Cheney is reasoning that there will never be full disclosure of classified documents related to the torture question and that his call for transparency gives him a claim to some sort of high ground in the debate. But my goodness, with his history, who could possibly entertain the notion that Cheney ought to be part of the discussion about torture, too?
Still, in the interests of maintaining dialogue and community, I'm going with Mark Danner's smart piece in the Post.
"Beginning more than a half-dozen years ago," Danner writes, "Bush administration officials broke the law and did repugnant things to detainees under their control." But, he reminds us, that is not the only important element of this scandal.
"The dirty little secret of the torture scandal and of all the loud expressions of outrage now clogging the nation's airwaves is that, until very recently, the politics of torture cut in the opposite direction. This is why, although we have known the general narrative of torture since summer of 2004, most politicians have been loathe to do anything about it."
Danner has more to say, but the fact is that it would have taken far more courage to speak out against torture five years ago than it does to day. Personally, I was appalled. But I took no action and did not speak out.
The controversy about torture provides something of an example for discussing conscience and community, but it is not an act of conscience to speak loudly now. Everybody in the debate, regardless of their position, has allies and cover. Perhaps, one day supporters of torture will run huge political and social risks bucking an established ethical consensus, but they don't now. And calling for a truth commission is hardly a big risk these days, either.
So--I'm still asking myself--where ought a discussion of conscience and community be headed? And what else is there to say?
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