Breaking Eggs To Make An Omelet?

Danner, Mark. (2009). The Red Cross torture report: What it means. The New York Book Review, 56 (7).

This article is an analyses of The International Committee of the Red Cross' report on the treatment of 14 "high value" detainees held in CIA custody overseas in what are referred to as "black site prisons" i.e. Guantanamo Bay and Abu Ghraib in the Middle East.

These sites are particularly famous (more so since 9/11) for prisoner abuse and torture that includes many "techniques" such as "forced nudity, sleep deprivation, long term standing, and water suffocation" by way of water boarding. Other more heinous practices stretch to binding a prisoner with a straight jacket, his only article of clothing, and using a stopper in his rectum. In 2006, horrendous photo's detailing these practices were leaked to the press. The world viewed these photo's with abject horror and outrage. The international community was irate with the Bush administration and America's benevolent (ha!) reputation was forever tarnished...

Find photo's here: http://www.antiwar.com/news/?articleid=2444

The acclaimed theorist Foucault, would tell us in his book "Discipline and Punish" that torture "is not a lawless practice" that it is instead, a "technique." That however, was the torture of old. That was torture to "repay society." This kind of torture enters a whole new realm. The political realm. The American political realm...Are you scared yet?

Danner's article looks at many issues raised by the Red Cross report, but pays particular attention to the American political discourse had in the last 6 years.

First Cheny. As if we (depends which "we" doesn't it?) didn't hate this international war criminal and thug enough, we can find new lows, even for him, in Danner's article. Cheny (and Bush camp groupies) look at this form of torture as "a necessary evil" to protect "the American public." We know from first hand experience that Cheny (like his comrades the Bushs') has no use for the laws that govern society unless it is something useful like "corporate person hood" or some such thing. (Remember the guy he shot in the face in the woods who later apologized to him?) In the little spirit of fairness that I can muster for Cheny, he is concerned, and rightfully so, about biological attacks and nuclear weapons, which could involve the "deaths of hundreds of thousands of people" (these aren't your father's terrorists are they?).

In an interview conducted two weeks after he left office, Cheny goes on to say " I think there's a high probability of such an attempt." He then turns logic on its ear and uses his thoughts as if they are fact and goes on to predict that the release of "hard-core" Al Queda terrorists being held a Guantanamo (referencing Obama's promise to close the site within a year from when he took office) equals the killing of thousands of American's, and wonders aloud, who will be to blame then? This is the kind of insular logic we have come to expect from Cheny, but it enrages me every time. Who is this guy, the genie of the lamp? Madam Zolta who can predict the future? Give me a break.

Danner calls this kind of thinking "audacious, outrageous, even reckless." He does go on to say however, that though this logic is insidious, in the aftermath of a future attack, it may turn out to be compelling. I don't care. Cheny and his followers operate in the secrecy of old and fear is their main weapon. (Recall McCain, 1 month after 9/11, sitting with David Letterman starting the beating of the war drums) Danner says that "Torture is at the heart of the deadly politics of National Security." It is part of it, of course, but at the black corrupted heart of the politics of National Security lies fear. The international community better take notice, you mess with us, we'll get you good, leave you nothing but a vapor. On the home front, America's citizens better be in fear of her leadership as well. It boils down to social control, abroad and state side.

Next Blog to come: Obama's thoughts on this international war past time.