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One hallmark of the administration of President Barack Obama has been the commitment of the administration to move forward and not look back—to, as a Democratic Party operative only concerned with election results might say, not re-litigate the eight years of the administration of George W. Bush. This means no accountability for those responsible for committing torture. It means no justice for torture victims.
Professor Alfred W. McCoy, author of Torture and Impunity: The U.S. Doctrine of Coercive Interrogation, was on “Democracy Now!” on Friday to talk about his book. Host Amy Goodman played a clip of President Obama in his first prime-time press conference giving a slick, calculated but somewhat banal comment on whether the administration would have a truth and reconciliation commission examine the past years of the Bush administration.
PRESIDENT BARACK OBAMA: My administration is going to operate in a way that leaves no doubt that we do not torture, that we abide by the Geneva Conventions, and that we observe our traditions of rule of law and due process as we are vigorously going after terrorists that can do us harm. And I don’t think those are contradictory. I think they are potentially complementary. My view is also that nobody is above the law, and if there are clear instances of wrongdoing, that people should be prosecuted just like any ordinary citizen, but that, generally speaking, I’m more interested in looking forward than I am in looking backwards.
McCoy reacted to this clip saying what Obama said was an example of “the third stage of impunity.” He then went through the stages of impunity, a “universal process” that he argues “happens in countries emerging from authoritarianism that have had problems with torture.”
Step one, McCoy stated:
…is blame the bad apples. Donald Rumsfeld did that right after the Abu Ghraib scandal was exposed in 2004.
Step two is saying that it was necessary for our national security—unfortunate, perhaps, but necessary to keep us all safe. That was done very articulately by former Vice President Cheney at the time, and he continues to make that argument. He claims that these “enhanced techniques,” as he calls them, i.e. CIA torture, saved thousands, sometimes tens of thousands, sometimes hundreds of thousands of lives. OK?
The third step is the step we just witnessed in President Obama, saying that, well, whatever might have happened in the past, we need unity as a nation, we need to move forward together into the future. So, the past isn’t germane. We need to put it behind us, not investigate, not prosecute. And that was the position he was taking there.
In the fourth stage, those implicated in acts of torture seek not only exoneration for their crimes but also vindication. For example, former Bush administration officials argued “enhanced interrogation under the Bush administration led the Navy SEALs to Osama bin Laden,” despite there being no evidence for the claim. They created pressure on Attorney General Eric Holder to not investigate torture and drop investigations into torture, which appears to have worked.
“The fifth and final stage,” according to McCoy, is “rewriting the history, rewriting the past, ripping it apart, without respect to the truth of the matter, and reconstructing it in a way that justifies the torture.” Vice President Dick Cheney’s appearances on news television have frequently been utilized for this purpose—to make it seem as if torture was effective in getting suspected terrorists to talk so that plots could be disrupted.
Like the Party slogan in George Orwell’s 1984, “Who controls the past controls the future; who controls the present controls the past,” The Party controls the records, which allows it to control all memories. That allows the Party to control the past.
This is but another vile aspect of President Barack Obama, his administration, the Democratic Party leadership’s fealty to the mantra of moving forward and not looking back now enshrined in the messaging of the Obama 2012 campaign with the simple word, “Forward.” It is but another despicable aspect of members of Congress, especially Democrats, and supporters of Obama and Democrats’ refusal to raise their voice to take issue with the administration’s inaction and active refusal to prosecute individuals for torture.
Without accountability or justice, those who were at the center of acts of torture may work to clear their name, as if they never committed any wrong. They are able to suggest that if what they had done was criminal, they would have been put on trial. They would have been charged with committing a crime, but there are no prosecutions so all the civil liberties and human rights advocates and the antiwar or peace activists may just be part of focus groups, which happen to be deluded.
No justice gives former officials license to argue there was no torture. No convictions gives former officials the conviction and brass to sit before a television camera, write a memoir or pen an op-ed for the Wall Street Journal and assert what they did was for Americans’ protection and it is wrong for them to be scrutinized or questioned.
This does a great disservice to the victims of torture, especially those still indefinitely imprisoned in Guantanamo; but it is the inevitable byproduct of the Obama administration’s complicity in allowing officials responsible for torture to walk free. To the extent that the Obama administration continues to subject prisoners to torture and outsource torture to allies in the “war on terrorism,” it is worse than complicity. It is a coverup—an act to conceal and ensure the national security state can continue to be purveyors of violence and torture against those the US contends it has a right to indefinitely hold in detention without charge or trial, without judicial or due process.
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FYI, for those interested in most up-to-date revelations concerning the US torture program, see my article published yesterday at Truthout, “New Revelations Suggest DoD Cover-Up Over Detainee Drugging Charges”. A snippet:
Meanwhile, I encourage readers to come by FDL Book Salon at 5pm Eastern Time tomorrow, where I will be moderating a discussion with prominent bioethicist Jonathan Moreno about the revised reissue of his book Mind Wars: Brain Science and the Military in the 21st Century.
It really twists my knickers that otherwise intelligent and educated Obama supporters turn a blind eye to Obama duplicity in war crimes. The GOP would circle the wagons to protect their own also. Obama and the Administration, including Holder, have moved beyond the rule of law to holding the Government and Administration above the law, at home and internationally. And they are.
Yet another killer post Kevin. Well done.
Torture / Murder / Treason , nothing less hang um high constitutionally.
In domestic violence, in child abuse, in violent authoritarian regimes…these three behaviors will be present in perpetrators:
1) minimize: What I/we did was not that bad. It was only a spanking, only a slap, a shove, only a waterboarding, only solitary confinement.
2) Deny: I/we didn’t do it. I didn’t ever hit you. I didn’t slap you. We didn’t torture anyone.
3) Blame: I had to do it because of the way you behaved. If you acted like a lady I would treat you like a lady. We have to torture sometimes for national security.
This is the invariant language of all perpetrators. Once you get good at recognizing it, you will see that folks who are not perpetrators, don’t use these mechanism to deflect guilt. The only one that an innocent person might use, is to deny that they did it, if they did not. The other two mechanisms are reserved for the guilty.
Amen
Testify
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JwNjyiCnp3w
Thanks Jeff
I have to second that. Exposing an Obamabot to what they are really endorsing by supporting Barry gets you the same reaction as telling a TeaBagger that Barry isn’t an African, Marxist, Muslim.
I hate to say it, but even Prof. McCoy lost an opportunity to point out how the Obama administration engages directly, i.e., not through proxy, in abusive interrogation via use of the Army Field Manual, and particularly its Appendix M. As McCoy points out, the core of the US torture program lies in use of isolation and sensory deprivation, exactly what is maintained in the AFM, along with sleep deprivation, 20 hr. interrogations, and environmental and dietary “manipulations,” so long as they are not “extreme.”
Unfortunately, because the use of the AFM in this way, despite the occasional article by Amnesty, CCR, ACLU and others, has not been made part of the official narrative by the MSM and their critic-satellites (the latter including Democracy Now), the issue of Appendix M almost never gets brought up. The purpose of this is to defend the CURRENT use of interrogation abuse by the Democratic Party led Executive Branch of President Obama from any criticism. It’s all about Bush and the bad GOP, don’t ya know.
It should not be up to me to point this kind of thing out. Readers here should know about this Army Field Manual business by now and be able to point it out.
To be fair, there is one mention of the Bush revision to the AFM in McCoy’s new book, where he notes that it was revised to “permit abuse techniques such as stress positions and sleep deprivation.”
Actually, McCoy is technically incorrect on one point. The revised AFM does not permit stress positions, at least not specifically. While it did take verbiage about the abusive and illegal nature of stress positions out of the revision — it was in the 1992 ed. of the AFM — some have argued that doesn’t mean they are allowed. That is a matter of some debate. On sleep deprivation, however, there is no question of the AFM’s intentions, b/c it states that detainees can be limited to 4 hr sleep per day for up to 30 days straight, and longer than that with approval. It doesn’t say when such sleep occurs, so the hours allowed can be shifted all over the 24 hour clock, a form of manipulation of circadian rhythms that also amounts to torture, not to mention allowing mammoth interrogation sessions to exhaust the prisoner.
What McCoy inexplicably left out is that the revision specifically allows the use of isolation (for 30 days, or more w/approval) and use of goggles and earmuffs as sensory deprivation, right out of the old Hebb experiments, which were known to cause hallucinations, etc.
Thank you, Kevin, for continuing to stand for the rule of law, as your actions and reporting always and consistently do …
Thank you, Jeff, for the added information in your comments, and I will certainly check out your article in the next several hours, as time permits.
My greatest appreciation to both of you.
DW
I found yr analysis to be brilliant. Thank you.
Another great piece Kevin, thanks for all that you do.
They don’t call him “BTKO” for nuthin’.*
* “Bind, Torture, Kill” Obama.
The “conservative” pundit Thomas Sowell described a People’s Republic as a place where yesterday’s weather can be changed by decree. More and more that looks like us.
While we’re on the theme of impunity for torture, and with particular relevance to Jeff’s post: So far impunity has proven just as total for medical professionals who torture as for other actors.
We know that the courts have been closed to the victims of U.S. torture. But beyond the legal system, there is another avenue of accountability for doctors and psychologists who use their skills to direct or participate in torture. Ongoing efforts to get licensing and professional organizations to use sanctions, disbarment, or other form of professional accountability have not yet had success.
But there’s no chance it will ever happen without persistence and focus — qualities that Jeff and Kevin have in admirable amounts. Thank you both.
The near-complete closing of professional ranks against accountability suggests to me that Jeff is correct to remind that torture is ongoing, by way of Appendix M of the Army Field Manual, and doctors and psychologists are continuing to participate.
Good article, good comments. Thanks!
I am forced to rise to thank Mr. Kaye for raising the issue, so carefully avoided by this article, though I do empahtically agree that it does contain much of value,of the abuses done under the Obama administration.
Despite the tightrope walked emphasizing the abuses under Bush and remaining silent about the rendition for the purpose of torture, and the torture itself commited by this current administration I am heartened to read responses that rtefuse to enter into a condition of denial of fact.
You’re suggesting I’m blind to reality that Obama has allowed rendition to continue and permitted torture in Guantanamo and other US prisons? Because Kaye was not saying that. He was referring to answers McCoy gave.
I have re-read the article, sir, and find much about torture and rendition under Bush and only this, at the very tail end, about the abuses of the current administration:
“To the extent that the Obama administration continues to subject prisoners to torture and outsource torture to allies in the “war on terrorism,” it is worse than complicity. It is a coverup—an act to conceal and ensure the national security state can continue to be purveyors of violence and torture against those the US contends it has a right to indefinitely hold in detention without charge or trial, without judicial or due process.”
As I stated in my post addressed to Jeff Kaye, I found the article to contain much of value, and yes, I was aware to whom Mr. Kaye was speaking..so what?
You seem a bit brittle, sir, and I do apologize for your taking umbrage at what I noted. In fact I believe we share much similarity in our political views.