In the run up to the Iraqi war I was involved in a project called Stand Down which attempted to gather bloggers on the “right” and “left” of the political spectrum to write posts in opposition to going to war. Sadly the site is down. I say sadly because it would provide useful documentation of how correct the anti-war side was and how badly wrong the pro-war side was. We accurately predicted everything that went wrong in Iraq because of the invasion. We laid out all the facts and exposed all the lies that the rest of the country only seemed to “discover” long after the invasion, even though all the information was out there for all to see (just mostly in overseas press not in the jingoist, cheer-leading US press).
Just to give one small example: the fact that Saddam Hussein’s son-in-law had already told Western intelligence that the WMD program was dead and buried when he defected to Europe (before he went back and was made dead and buried by Pappa Hussein).
To understand how people of such diverse political views shared so much in common, you need to visit The Political Compass site. Most everyone on Stand Down scored high on the anti-authoritarian end of the compass, sharing a deep distrust in government and in the use of force by government. If you feel the need to apply labels, those on the “right” can be described as libertarians and those on the left can be described as anarchists. Personally I am not a big fan of labels (particularly as they are usually thrown around in ad hominem attacks) so anti-authoritarian will do.
Andrew Sullivan is one such anti-authoritarian conservative, although not anti-authoritarian enough since he is pro-interventionist. In his bio he is proud of the fact that he was an early supporter of intervention in the Serbian wars. Still, he does have his moments, and recently he posted this piece. deriding the hypocrisy of Bush & Co, and McCain on the issue of torture.
In all the discussion of John McCain’s recently recovered memory of a religious epiphany in Vietnam, one thing has been missing. The torture that was deployed against McCain emerges in all the various accounts. It involved sleep deprivation, the withholding of medical treatment, stress positions, long-time standing, and beating. Sound familiar?
According to the Bush administration’s definition of torture, McCain was therefore not tortured.
AndrewExcellent article but there is one connection you (like many others) fail to make. Colin Dayan in her book The Story of Cruel and Unusual points out that the treatment of prisoners in Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo is identical to the treatment of prisoners in the US. Most of the techniques you mention (sleep deprivation, solitary confinement, withholding of medical treatment, stress positions) are widespread and common practice in the day to day lives of millions of prisoners in these United States (let’s not even begin to discuss the fact that we have more prisoners absolutely and proportionately than baddie countries like Russia and China).
Bush & Co precisely didn’t want Geneva to apply because then they would be protected by Supreme Court rulings! It’s a short book, well worth reading and well worth pondering and promoting, particularly by someone on the anti-authoritarian side of the political spectrum. The crimes of this administration run deep but didn’t start in 2000 but are the result of 30 years of rule by your authoritarian Republican friends.
I was walking down Madison Avenue the other day and saw this engraved into a court house built in the early fifties:
Madison Avenue Courthouse
Tags: Activism, Feature, Human Rights, Iraq, Torture, US Politics