“Robin Mathews is a fighter poet, aggressive in his defense of human
rights, expressing his nationalist vision with enough feeling to slash
like a razor.”
—Montreal Gazette
Arguments about U.S. torture rage in Canada and elsewhere, especially
elsewhere in the West. The arguments arise largely because of a recent
descent by the U.S.A. into the practice of torture and encouragement of
it by less inhibited allies who are willing to torture on behalf of the
U.S.
The two sides of the argument in Canada are reflected in the writing of
Michael Byers, Canada Research Chair in Global Politics and
International Law at the University of B.C. in Vancouver, and Michael
Ignatieff recently crowned – by a manipulated avoidance of democratic
competition – federal Liberal candidate for Etobicoke-Lakeshore in
Toronto. He was, just before that, Director of the Carr Centre for
Human Rights Policy at Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts,
U.S.A.
The two men take distinctly different positions.
Naomi
Klein, writing in the U.S. magazine, The Nation, urges that the idea of
a recent U.S. "descent" into torture be rejected. She writes of "the
notorious [U.S.] School of the Americas from 1946 to 1984Š that, if it
had a motto, [it] might have been ‘we do torture’". She goes on to
write: "It was there in Panama – and later, at the school’s new
location at Fort Benning, Georgia – where the roots of the current
torture scandals can be found". (www.thenation.com).
Klein is challenged by U.S. writer, Alfred McCoy. His new book, A
Question of Torture, is about to arrive in Canadian bookstores. McCoy
alleges "the roots of the current [U.S.] torture scandals" are located
in Canada. In a CBC interview in the week of December 17, 2005, McCoy
argued that CIA-financed studies in sensory deprivation at McGill
University in the early 1950s provided the definitive groundwork for
present U.S. torture. It is, apparently, a no-touch torture, the
purpose of which is to free torturers from the charge of physical abuse.
McCoy also argues that the U.S. has ratified agreements on physical
torture but has refused to ratify agreements or parts of agreements
that refer to mental torture or stress or humiliation. It is through
that crack, it seems, that Michael Ignatieff squeezes to support what
might be called "soft torture".
When principles of justice are being violated, signs usually go up. In
this case the U.S. argues (a) that its (so-called) "non-physical"
torment is not torture, and it argues for that position (b) even while
legal advisors to the U.S. political administration attempt to widen
the opening for physical torture.
As if to further my point that signs go up, Michael Byers, in his book,
War Laws (Vancouver, Douglas and McIntyre, 2005), argues that the
(international law) principle of jus cogens – a peremptory rule which
overrides conflicting rules and arguments put forward by individual
states – covers "prohibitions on genocide, slavery, and torture" (p.
6). If true, then the U.S. arguments are used to grandstand and obscure
violations of international law and practice.
We are faced in this whole enormously important argument with a simple
fact: the U.S. is trying in every way possible to gain sanction for
unilateral actions that are an offense to human morality, to say
nothing of international norms, covenants, and accepted practices. All
of the debate revolves around the world’s only super power attempting
to re-write the meaning of brutality and violation of persons to suit
what it sees as its own interest and its own designs for the planet.
The fact is that both Naomi Klein and Alfred McCoy are probably wrong
in dating the beginnings of present U.S. torture. Before showing why,
we should examine the argument that arises from the work of the two
Canadians – Michael Byers and Michael Ignatieff. It teaches us
important things about torture and the attitude to it in our time.
Put succinctly, Michael Ignatieff is a proponent of what might be
called "careful torture" or "soft torture". Michael Byers rejects
torture out of hand, being, perhaps, more deeply aware than Ignatieff
of the hard and long-fought struggle to reach the world’s present shaky
respect for human rights and international justice. Behind each treaty,
covenant, convention, and formal practice assuring fair treatment of
‘the enemy", prisoners and non-combatants, Byers sees a strongly
mutually reinforcing principle. It can be stated simply: "if I don’t
violate my enemy, my enemy is less likely to violate me". In addition,
of course, all humane arguments, Byers would say, must be brought
forward, and, in fact, underlie any and all reciprocal agreements.
Any argument for expediency – "if we torture these ten people, they
will give us information to save thousands of people" – he rejects on
behalf of the growing, fragile, international "rule of law".
That is why we can say that U.S. arguments to allow no-touch torment
are nonsense, and that U.S. arguments for permissable physical torture
are a horrendous threat to fragile procedures accepted to assure humane
treatment of populations in war or perceived threats of war.
There are other simple, essential differences between Michael Byers’
position and that of Michael Ignatieff. First, Byers calls all
infractions into question, whomsoever engages in them. Secondly (it
follows) he doesn’t draw back from citing the U.S. for wreaking havoc
among the delicate written and practice-established protections against
torture and other – especially wartime – forms of violation of human
sanctity.
Closing the major portion of the book, War Law, he writes: "Saddam
Hussein’s show trial in Bahgdad will only exacerbate the tension
between a world that still wants a fair and sustainable international
legal syustem and a single superpower that hardly seems to care." (p.
136)
His "Epilogue" that follows immediately, ends with the sentence: "The
immense power of the Untied States carries with it an awesome
responsibility: to improve the world – for everyone. Obeying the
requirements of war law is a necessary first step". (p. 155)
Michael Ignatieff begins from a different place than Byers. His
definition of torture is faulty, to start. For him, it is "the
deliberate infliction of physical cruelty and pain in order to extract
information." (p. 136, The Lesser Evil, Edinburgh Univ. Press, 2004)
But torture is regarded in covenants and formal statements as involving
mental torment, moral humiliation, and potentially damaging sensory
deprivation.
As Michael Byers points out "the Third Geneva convention, Article 13 Š
provides that POWs ‘must at all times be protected, particularly
against acts of violence or intimidation and against insults and public
curiosity’. To reinforce the point, Article 14 stipulates that
prisoners of war ‘are entitled in all circumstances to respect for
their persons and their honour.’"(War Law, p. 132) The U.S. attempt to
invent new categories of prisoners in order to by-pass humane
restrictions is self-evidently fraudulent manipulation.
Ignatieff leapfrogs the mental and psychological parts of the
restrictions, leading him to statements said, by some, to excuse
torture. One of his most quoted statements appeared in The New York
Times Magazine (May 2, 2004): "Permissible duress might include forms
of sleep deprivation that do not result in lasting harm to mental
health or physical health, together with disinformation and
disorientation (like keeping prisoners in hoods) that would produce
stress".
In addition, in his book, The Lesser Evil, Ignatieff appears to accept
both U.S. claims and the U.S. version of acceptable treatment. He
writes: "The interrogation methods of which the Americans have been
accused since 9/11 are held [by the Americans, presumably] to include
nothing more than sleep deprivation, permanent light or permanent
darkness, disorienting noise, and insolation. If this were true, if
interrogation remained free of physical duress or cruelty, it would
amount to coercion, rather than torture and there might be a lesser
evil justification for it. The grounds would be that isolation and
disorientation that stopped short of physical or psychological abuse
might gain the authorities vital information about on-going terrorist
operations" (p. 138, The Lesser Evil)
For many readers Ignatieff’s separation of the "interrogation methods"
he describes from "psychological abuse" will be too tenuous to make
sense. For those people he will be disguising a description of torture
behind a definition of non-torture.
As I have asked before (1) who is present to assure this "soft torture"
will be closely contained? And (2) who is present to provide proof that
no "lasting harm"occurs?
Ignatieff walks a very thin line, aware, at times, it would seem, that
permission to torture can have horrible consequences. Regarding
civilians (in law, usually called non-combatants), Ignatieff is firm.
"To violate civilian immunity Š is to assume that noble political ends,
like the struggle against injustice, can justify treating any human
being as a means. This way nihilism lies." (p. 94, The Lesser Evil)
His statement applies, however, precisely to combatants, suspected
combatants, suspected terrorists and proved terrorists. For if
fundamental human "immunity" is violated, it invites as response what
Ignatieff calls "nihilism" – the unimpeded use of violence and terror –
by an enemy who wishes to respond in kind. Whether employed by bands of
guerillas or by established state authorities, torture in violation of
international covenants and norms is the employment of violence and
terror. It is, to use Ignatieff’s term, "nihilism".
Whereas Ignatieff only ever slightly touches on the possibility of the
U.S. violating international norms, Byers faces the problem head on.
Indeed, he confronts misdeeds and possible misdeeds by Canada, too,
warning Canadians away from the slippery slope inhabited by U.S.
operatives.
In doing that, in relation to Canadian behaviour in Afghanistan (Ottawa
Citizen, Feb. 15, 05), he comes up against Canada’s General Rick
Hillier, Chief of Canada’s Defence Staff. A rather loud-mouth, verbally
strutting, U.S.-style military man, Hillier seems untroubled by the
subtleties of international law and practice. His headquarters
responded, falsely, that in Peacekeeping missions detainees "are not
subject to the Geneva Convention." Such a comment is (in Canadian
terms) simply irresponsible "yank-talk," suggesting the integration of
Canadian and U.S. forces is altogether too close.
Byers, in addition, gave the F.C. Kronkite Lecture at the University of
Saskatchewan on November 14, 2005, in which he charged that Canada
"since September 11, 2001, [has] "repeatedly and cynically disregarded
fundamental rules of the laws of war". (His remarks may be found on the
Lui Institute for Global Issues website.) Very clearly, Canadian
military and interrogation practices are being negatively affected by
our military’s too close relation to the U.S. military for whom
internationally condemned forms of torture are almost daily practice as
are violations of rules of aggressive activity covered specifically by
what Byers calls ‘war law’.
In much of the talk about torture we are asked (even by Naomi Klein and
Alfred McCoy, for instance) to see a somewhat recent descent by the
U.S.A. into forms of torture threatening international law. Klein is
correct when she writes that to face the situation correctly,
commentators would have to make "an admission that the embrace of
torture by U.S. officials long pre-dates the Bush administrationŠ." But
she appears to work within the indoctrination box that few – even
critical – commentators escape. The indoctrination fable is that the
U.S. began as a "city on a hill", seeking justice and fairness for all
in and outside of the U.S.A. As slow time passed, the U.S. [says the
indoctrination fable] began to lose its way at times, for brief
periods. And then, as Klein writes – as if some new and terrible thing
has happened – torture "has been integral to U.S. foreign policy since
the Vietnam war".
The truth is very different, hard to stomach, and deeply upsetting even
for the toughest critics of the U.S. because the truth suggests the
U.S. cannot be converted to international decency by public outcry and
disapproval alone. Much stronger forms of persuasion will be needed.
That is so because the U.S. was not only born in violence and had its
federal unity confirmed in violence, but it also – by state-approved,
on-going violence, torture, and the violation of human dignity –
founded its economic wealth, engaged in its earliest expansionism, and
promulgated the idea of U.S. exceptionalism and Manifest Destiny.
What must be remembered in that long history (which continues, in fact,
today) is that the perpetrators of torture and human degradation were
ordinary U.S. people going about their daily lives. They were not
"special forces"or chosen "elite" troops. The day to day conduct of
slavery and of the genocidal policy toward Indians engaged a very large
portion of the "civilian", "non-combatant" population over a very long
time. Violence and the achievement of self-seeking ends by the
desecration of other human beings were established and became "as
American as apple pie".
Two major, on-going, long-term exercises in simple brutality undertaken
by large parts of the U.S. population – that some claim fixed U.S.
character – have been the genocide of the Indian peoples and the
enslavement of black people. Both involved the desecration of persons
and contempt for human life by ordinary members of the population, not
only based upon racism but – in very concrete terms – based upon the
lure of economic benefit that plainly resulted from violation and
oppression. Because "law" in the U.S. was non-existent, more honoured
in the breach than the observance, or directly oppressive of outcast
races, members of the larger population took for granted that the state
believed the desecration of those ruled "non American" was not only
acceptable but, perhaps, a desirable choice of behaviour.
Put in the simplest terms – to use a single example – a very large part
of the mystery of the disappearance of the Indian hero, Tecumseh,
killed in the War of 1812 by U.S. troops, arises because of the habit
of Kentucky men to hack up and desecrate the bodies of Indians killed
in warfare. Major John Richardson, involved in the same battle that saw
Tecumseh killed, believed Tecumseh was flayed by the Kentucky men,
pieces of his hide being kept as souvenirs.
Whether the story is true or not, it is based on the legendary
brutality of the Kentucky soldiers in the formal U.S. army of the time.
And the failure of anyone to be able to find Tecumseh’s body is very
likely related to the desecration of corpses engaged in by the Kentucky
men.
The Indian wars which went on in one way and another for nearly 200
years were wars to erase Indian ownership of land, best effected by
erasing the Indians themselves. Those wars fixed and perpetuated the
doctrine that what U.S. white people wanted they could gain by warfare,
violation of human sanctity, and – if useful – torture. To take the
land from the Indians, U.S. government had to erect (a) a picture of
the natives as inhuman monsters (b) a theory that land not used as the
whites wanted to use it was "waste" land to be appropriated by white
people, and (c) a theory that it was the Manifest Destiny of the U.S.A.
[the God-appointed work] to seize and occupy all of the North American
continent.
To that end the famous U.S. Declaration of Independence characterizes
the Indian peoples as "the merciless Indian Savages, whose known rule
of warfare, is undistinguished destruction of all ages, sexes and
conditions". The U.S., moreover, rejected the Royal Proclamation of
1763 which required, in short, a recognition of Indian land rights and
a process for the transfer of Indian lands to others that had to follow
public, lawful, and examinable behaviour. The Royal Proclamation filled
with anger the leaders in what was to become the U.S.A.
The Royal Proclamation is still an active force in Canadian law. In the
U.S. – tellingly – Indian peoples have no defined status and are
treated as the left-overs from wars in which the victor’s culture
displaced all others without any rights remaining to the conquered. The
U.S. Indian position exists "tellingly" because it is an admission by
the U.S. state that white occupation was affected by a genocidal war of
conquest.
Building upon a concomitant theory that U.S. power is centred in the
territorial U.S.A. – which was deviously, ruthlessly, and
diplomatically expanded in the nineteenth century – the U.S. initiated
(in 1823) the Monroe Doctrine, a unilateral statement that said, in
effect, the U.S. would not permit European presence in governments of
Central and South America.
That was, and remains, U.S. policy. The Monroe Doctrine in the Western
hemisphere has served to permit the U.S. in its "own back yard", as its
historians write, to practice violence, torture, torture-training, and
the overthrow of reform governments throughout the region for its long
history. It is no accident that the infamous (torture) School of the
Americas, to which Naomi Klein refers, began its life in the Central
American country (ruled, in fact, by the U.S.A.), Panama.
Before the 1946 creation of the School of the Americas and from 1823
onwards, the U.S. invaded, coerced, undermined, imposed ruthless
dictatorial regimes, and practiced brutal administration of countless
Central and South American countries. Without the global reach it has
today, the U.S. imposed dictatorships, fully aware that torture and
violation of human sanctity on behalf of U.S. dominance would be
characteristic in its puppet regimes.
Pablo Neruda, internationally famous Chilean poet and diplomat, writing
in the early 1960s, registered the fact that in the past hundred years
every reform government in Central and South America had been
overthrown, and every overthrow was supported covertly or overtly by
the U.S.A.
Whenever one thinks of the practice of racism for economic gain in the
U.S.A., one thinks immediately of black slavery and the slave trade.
But racism-for-gain has been practiced by the U.S.A. against aboriginal
peoples of North and South America from earliest times.
Little needs to be said to remind readers of the brutality, the
personal torture, and the state support for violation of black people
in the U.S.A. The authors of the book, Complicity, (NY, Ballantine
Books, 2005), write that "from the very beginning, the [U.S.] nation’s
experience with slavery was defined by commerce and violence, in the
North as well as in the South". (p. xxvii)
To understand the real history of U.S. torture a few points need to be
underscored. (1) After the Declaration of Independence slavery in the
U.S. increased dramatically. (2) At the time of the U.S. Civil War
(1861-65), there were four million black slaves in the U.S. out of a
population of about thirty million. (3) Many people in the northern
states supported slavery, captured escaped slaves for re-sale in the
South, and built their wealth on slavery, the slave trade, and trade to
provide for slave needs in the West Indies. The authors of the book,
Complicity, claim that New York City was built into a leading
international port by slavery and the services provided to slave
operations.
Thomas Jefferson, an example of the famous U.S. Founding Fathers, is
presented by loyal, "progressive" people in the U.S.A. as a leader in
democratic ideas. The Encyclopedia Britannica, 1960, characterizes him
as "the most conspicuous of American apostles of democracy, and one of
the great liberals of modern times". (Vol 12, p. 986) Such is the
reigning U.S. indoctrination employed, over and over, to cover the
real, historical nature of U.S. society.
Jefferson not only wrote and/or approved of the statement about Indians
in the Declaration of Independence already cited, he also, as
president, extinguished Indian title rapaciously and supported
rejection of the rule of law to govern Indian/white relations. Anthony
Hall writes of Jefferson’s action "to renew his call to pursue Indian
people ‘to extermination, or to drive them to new seats beyond our
reach.’" (The American Empire and the Fourth World, p. 397) Jefferson
was, in addition, a slave owner, and did almost nothing to advance the
liberation of the slaves who – in his own case – escaped from his
estate whenever opportunity permitted. In the late 1770s he wrote his
Notes on the State of Virginia in which he asserted his belief in the
natural inferiority of blacks.
The most public history of the U.S.A, which was founded in lawlessness,
brutality, and genocide; which grew rich upon the twin evils of the
erasure of the Indian peoples and the torture and gross exploitation of
black people; and which has established a global empire upon the active
oppression of other indigenous peoples, beginning in Central and South
America, confirms the statement that U.S. torture as a state policy and
a commonly accepted activity by the larger population is as old as the
country itself.
The world has been and is presented with an endless variety of kinds of
indoctrination language paralleling the Encyclopedia Britannica
quotation I repeat above about racist, slave-owning, treaty-breaking,
Indian-hunting, imperial expansionist Thomas Jefferson.
How, you might ask, is the huge contradiction possible? In the first
place the Declaration of Independence was a Declaration of Independence
for white, "Saxon" people in the U.S.A., not only from British rule but
also from particular instances of British law and legal principle. It
did not and was not intended to include black people or native Indians.
Not until the "liberty, equality, and fraternity" of the French
Revolution – coming after the U.S. War for Independence (incorrectly
named "The American Revolution" in the U.S.A.) – did "equality" and
"fraternity" genuinely enter the dictionary of peoples in order to be
expressed in their claims upon society.
Secondly, Thomas Jefferson was an apostle of a system that rejected
monarchy and an aristocracy of birth. He believed his position was
evidence that what he believed in was democracy. But the system he
supported and encouraged was not democracy. It was a system of
domination by rich, white beneficiaries of Capitalism, arriving at
their power through any brutal exploitation of those they believed
lesser others. The beneficiaries of Capitalism then placed in political
position those who would maintain the essentially repressive U.S.
regime.
The U.S. is a single, corporate capitalist society with two political
factions: Democrats and Republicans. No competing political group
holding any other belief is permitted viable legitimacy in the U.S.A.
Economics in the U.S. – strictly controlled by an entrepreneurial
oligarchy intricately merged with two apparently democratically elected
houses and a president whom John A. Macdonald described as operating a
despotism – is unmodified capitalist economics. It operates within a
special U.S. definition which allows for rapacious and exploitative
treatment of the world and its peoples (as well as the U.S.
underclasses) while it utters a consistent rhetoric about the U.S. as
leader (in the world) of democracy and justice and equality.
By the same token, social and cultural life in the U.S.A. has the
quality of having, always and everywhere, to contribute to the power of
the state which – as pointed out – is a merged structure of "elected"
politicians and corporate capitalists running a class society based
upon private riches. Sad as it is to observe, religion, the arts, the
culture of ethnic groups, and even those claiming to be in political
opposition to governmental power accept as ideology a self-defeating
anarchism and individualism that integrates them into the society they
apparently wish to change. They "go along" with the U.S. system in
order to function. Or they believe the rhetoric used to indoctrinate
the population.
The "merged structure of ‘elected’ politicians and corporate
capitalists" has an additional characteristic which intensifies the
picture we have been examining. The military budget in the United
States is the largest in the world – indeed, it is larger than the next
several national budgets for military expenditures put together. In
short, the U.S. is a highly militarized state in which corporate
capitalism is hugely into war contracts, war research, and lobbying for
activities that contribute to war expenditures. Experiments into forms
of torture are only a small corner of U.S. militaristic activity. The
U.S. has always, besides, lionized its military heroes , making many of
them leaders of the country. Canada has never made a military hero
leader of the country.
Finally, the U.S. standing army helps to shape U.S. nationalism and
chauvinsim towards "we can lick them" kinds of foreign policy. That
attitude contributes to the unilateralism that has always been a
quality of U.S. behaviour in the world. It contributes, too, to the
U.S. belief it can re-model international covenants and customs on the
treatment of "the enemy", prisoners, and non-combatabts to suit its own
expansionist interests.
While some Canadians praise the U.S. population for rising after much
provocation to inhibit the worst elements of U.S. aggression, time
passes and U.S. behaviour in the world continues its lawless way. Even
Canadians – as we have seen here – are divided about the acceptability
of U.S. brutality in the world. Michael Byers and Michael Ignatieff
nicely characterize the division. If uncontained lawlessness is not to
be set loose among nations, Canadians are going to have to return – at
all levels of government and administration – to the best codes of
behaviour. They are going to have to return, that is, to international
law and covenants controlling the conduct of war and the definitions of
torture. And they are going to have to speak loudly for those codes and
covenants wherever they can – in alliances, in public forums, and in
any legislation to which Canada is a party.
Robin Mathews is a columnist for www.vivelecanada.ca. This article also
appears on that website and was used here with their permission.