Why would guards torture a man they considered innocent? At first it was all in fun: M.P.'s would drop by to give him common peroneal strikes just to hear him scream, "Allah! Allah! Allah!" This was done to him perhaps 100 times, according to one of his tormentors, Specialist Corey E. Jones: "My first reaction was that he was crying out to his god... Everybody heard him cry out and thought it was funny."
It gradually progressed to something I don't particularly want to detail. However miserable it will make you, it's every American's civic duty to read Tim Golden's exhaustive treatment of this in the Times.
I hope that explicit pictures from Bagram surface, even though they are bound to fill the Afghan streets with anguished fury... because perhaps they'll bring out Americans in equal numbers. Even Republicans. I do not expect Bush to take any responsibility for this — which is very much the low point in a uniformly wretched administration — but perhaps the public will at last hold him responsible.
America is filled with absolutists. Some of them are admirable; some plagued by hobgoblins; but they are everywhere, on both the right and the left. If you're an economist, chances are you have a religious allegiance to the free market. If you're a civil libertarian, you're not likely to countenance a single instance in which free speech is abridged.
Yet none of these absolutes — these supposed bottom lines — have anything like the moral urgency of the absolute proscription against torture. Decent men can disagree with aspects of free market theory, or certain applications of the First Amendment; but no decent human being can endorse torture. It is what separates good from evil. A good person from an evil person. If anything constitutes the line which should not be crossed — which cannot be crossed, for the sake of our collective conscience — it is this.
And yet one of the most vocal defendants of the First Amendment, Alan Dershowitz, has notoriously outlined circumstances in which torture would be permissible. God help you if you silence a man; but to make him scream is negotiable.
I have a great deal of sympathy for free speech absolutists — I am close to one myself. But to worship at this altar, yet shrug off the prohibition — the absolute prohibition — against torture, is beyond shallow. One is an important practical necessity: insurance against tyranny. The other, however, is so much more than this: it is the litmus test of the soul.
Article comments
1 - Barry Stoller
Very well written with a devastating conclusion. Funny, I don't hear all the usual blogcritic rightwingers make their usual glib remarks. That's quite an accomplishment on this forum.
2 - Dave Nalle
It's still early Barry.
But you know what, most right wingers don't endorse torture either. Even President Bush who does believe in some extreme measures when dealing with terrorists, doesn't endorse what went on at Abu Ghraib. What happened there was clearly in violation of miitary policy, and what has come out in these trials is that the soldiers knew that and chose to act as they did anyway. Some responsibility goes up the chain of command, but soldiers still aren't required to obey unlawful orders, especially when - as in this case - they really originated from outside the chain of command in the first place.
Dave
3 - alienboy
Fabulous piece of work Mr Cooper, thanks for writing it.
Isn't it odd that no officers have been convicted?
4 - steve
I could care less about the terrorists being held at guantanamo bay. I hope they all rot there. they are guilty until proven innocent
5 - The Searcher
The Stanford experiment was very revealing indeed.
If only Gort would come down and ensure everyone plays fair.
6 - Christian
"Isn't it odd that no officers have been convicted?"
The soldiers involved in the Bagram, Afghanistan incident have suffered for their actions.
By the way - Specialist Damien M. Corsetti was never accused of taking "this man to the extremes of excruciating pain". Get it right.
7 - Silas Kain
George Walker Bush -- the man elected to embody the soul of the nation --
Um, like it or not, but doesn't G.W. Bush, in fact, embody the soul of this nation? From the liberal POV we have an apathetic, disconnected leader who only takes interest in issues when the shit hits the fan. From the conservative POV we have a leader who is the bastion of all that is good and righteous about America, praise Jesus. Now, my friends, I ask you -- which side is wrong?
8 - Douglas Anthony Cooper
>By the way - Specialist Damien M. Corsetti was never >accused of taking "this man to the extremes of >excruciating pain". Get it right.
By the way, my article says that it did *not* take Corsetti to do this. Which is to say, they didn't need him, and didn't call him in. Learn to read.