Anyone who knows me know that I am about as far from a fundamentalist as one can get. So it may sound strange for me to advocate returning to the first century state of mind when it comes to American Christianity. For the record, I don’t think the first century church was particularly fundamentalist theologically, but I digress. Among the key characteristics of the first century church were its minority status and its mission. Because of the minority status of the church, it could not proselytize openly, yet it thrived. Why? Because it catered to the poor and the disenfranchised in society, just as Jesus did.
Those with the biggest soapboxes in the American church have all but abandoned this principle. It’s easy to forget the little things when you’re by far the biggest fish is what is admittedly the biggest religious pond in the world. When there are so many denominations fighting for butts in pews, it’s easy to overlook the basic message of Christianity in the pursuit of convincing people that yours is the best (possibly the only) path to salvation.
The Great Commission commands believers to go and make disciples. Most of the “leaders” of American Christianity seem more interested either condemning those whose beliefs don’t line up with theirs or bemoaning the supposed persecution of Christianity in America. If I understand my Bible, neither of these fall under the rubric of making disciples. As I see it, whining has never won anyone to any cause, least of all Christianity. Furthermore, this wrong-headed persecution complex belittles the actual persecution experienced by Christians in many parts of the world.
I spent four months in Cairo this spring, where Christians make up 10% of the population and face many social and political challenges. As in almost all Muslim country, proselytizing is against the law in Egypt. Christians in America who only think their rights are being infringed upon would find those rights actually being curtailed on the streets of Cairo. Yet the churches there are active, they are vibrant, they are, indeed, fulfilling Christ’s command to go and make disciples. These churches have active prison ministries. They teach English to Sudanese refugees. They offer free or nearly free medical care to those who cannot afford to go to hospitals. They provide job training for women so that they can earn money to help feed their families.
The people who are helped by these services are well aware that they are being helped by Christian churches, even if the words “church,” “Jesus,” and “Christian” are never spoken. This is the spirit of the first century church. Jesus and his disciples, above all else, took care of the poor, widows, children, and the sick. When they met with opposition, they didn’t whine or cry or pout because Jesus commanded them to love their enemies and pray for those who persecute them.
I have been approached by a couple of people in the last few weeks asking what can be done to get young people back into churches, and I think the answer lies in going back to the ideals of the first century church. We have known for many years about the fundamentalist reaction against materialism. However, I think what we are seeing now is a progressive reaction against materialism. I call this a progressive reaction to materialism because those in my generation aren’t suggesting going back to a status quo or advocating a strict interpretation of scripture or any of the things that the fundamentalist movement espouses, but we are distressed by the vacuous nature of the our culture and desperately want to contribute something positive to the world around us.
We care about issues like global poverty, AIDS in Africa, and human rights abuses. We hope to find greener energy alternatives both because of our concern for the environment and our worries about being so dependent on foreign oil. We want to reach out to the impoverished in our own communities. We are distressed by the prevalence of abortion in this country, but do not feel that criminalizing abortion is the answer.
The key to getting young people back into churches is to recognize our concerns and find ways for us to contribute to those causes which we are passionate about which are, incidentally, the same issues Jesus and his disciples were concerned with as well. We are not satisfied with a few hours of singing and platitudes on Sunday mornings. Bishop Mouneer, the head of the Anglican diocese in Egypt, often preaches that the church’s mission does not end at the front door of the church; that’s where it begins. Only when we face the world and confront the problems in it can we claim to be doing the work of the church.
This is the position of many in my generation, yet few of our elders in the American church seem as concerned as we are about the issues we care most about. Churches all around the United States are dying. Their populations are aging, their membership decreasing. To prevent Christianity from diminishing in America, churches must reach out to my generation. This is the blueprint. Will anyone listen?
Wednesday, June 17, 2009
Saturday, May 16, 2009
More on Torture, Justice, and the American Way
When last we spoke, I asked why the Bush administration had turned to a torture program reverse-engineered from the U.S. military’s SERE program to train soldiers, sailors, and Marines to resist torture designed to elicit false confessions for propaganda purposes. Apparently the Republicans have conveniently glossed over this troubling detail, because they continue to stay on the “Dick Cheney kept us safe” bandwagon. Oh well. Things are getting a little hotter for the Republicans, though, since hearings have started on Capitol Hill regarding who knew what and when, who authorized what and when, and who dissented and when and why.
When it comes to damning testimony, I don’t know that anyone has any more damning information to share than Ali Soufan. Soufan is a Lebanese-American who joined the FBI as an interrogator in the late ‘90s. He is notable in this story because he was the guy who interrogated Abu Zubaydah before the waterboarding and got Zubaydah to give up Khalid Sheikh Mohammed as the mastermind behind 9-11 and the identity of Jose Padilla, the supposed “dirty bomber.” Again, this information was given to Soufan during a standard interrogation with NO TORTURE needed. In his testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee’s subcommittee on Administrative Oversight and the Courts this week, Soufan recounted the events that led him to walk away from the interrogation of Abu Zubaydah. He and his partner, using traditional interrogation tactics, were getting lots of actionable intelligence information from Zubaydah.
Then the CIA showed up with orders from on high to use “harsh interrogation tactics.” This is, by the way, the only time I will use this despicable euphemism. They were told to torture, and no game of semantics can hide or obscure that fact. According to Soufan, as soon as the waterboard was introduced to Zubaydah, he became defensive and uncooperative. Eventually, Soufan and his partner were asked to come back and continue their interrogation. This back and forth between Soufan and the CIA continued until Zubaydah was so traumatized by the waterboarding that he shut down completely and Soufan could not get any more information from him. It was at that point that Ali Soufan, one of this country’s greatest weapons in the fight against terror, walked away from the interrogation. His disenfranchisement with what he saw going on around him eventually led him to leave the FBI altogether.
In his testimony this week, Mr. Soufan offered several refutations to the Bush administration’s “ticking time bomb” nonsense—you know, that scenario where an attack is imminent so you’ll resort to ANYTHING to get information to stop it, never mind the fact that torture doesn’t lead to actionable intelligence. In fact, that was Soufan’s first point. Torture is ineffective. According to Mr. Soufan, “Al Qaeda terrorists are trained to resist torture. As shocking as these techniques are to us, the al Qaeda training prepares them for much worse – the torture they would expect to receive if caught by dictatorships for example.” Hey, guess what, these guys have their very own SERE school! Just in case they get captured and tortured to elicit false confessions for propaganda purposes. Mr. Soufan also said that torture at the hands of Americans only reinforces a detainees impression of America as amoral and Godless and thus strengthens his will to resist.
Following closely from this is Mr. Soufan’s second point: The information gained during torture is not, despite the constant ramblings of former Vice President Cheney, reliable. In fact, the FBI and CIA spent entirely too much time chasing down false information which had been tortured right out of detainees. Again, see my previous point in the preceding post—I would probably admit to having Osama bin Laden’s love child if waterboarded just to make it stop. Too bad it would have been not just a lie, but a real whopper of a lie.
Finally, Mr. Soufan addressed the “ticking time bomb” scenario directly. The CIA had, in its arsenal of torture tactics, authorization to use sleep deprivation for up to 180 hours. That is seven and a half days, at the end of which, I don’t know many people who would be coherent enough to even remember their own name, let alone anything that might even resemble actionable intelligence. When questioned by Senator Lindsey Graham (we’ll get back to Mr. Graham in a moment) about the allegations of former CIA officer John Kiriakou that Abu Zubaydah (the very one that Mr. Soufan so excellently interrogated) broke within seconds of being waterboarded, Mr. Soufan first reminded the senator that Mr. Kiriakou had recanted that statement, saying he had not been present during the waterboarding of Zubaydah and thus could not speak to the veracity of that claim. Then he made the excellent point that if waterboarding was so successful, why was it used 83 times against Abu Zubaydah and 183 times against Khalid Sheikh Mohammed…IN ONE MONTH!! What kind of “timely” information can be coerced from a guy who has to be waterboarded 6 times a day for a month?
But here’s the really bad news, just as I feared in my last post about this topic: this wasn’t really about “actionable intelligence” at all. It was about propaganda, gotten by any means, at any cost. The administration always held up the “ticking time bomb” scenario as the only acceptable reason for getting a little rough with detainees, be they in Guantanamo, Afghanistan, Iraq, or any number of black-ops sites around the world. Yet, the evidence points to something much more insidious. In a 2004 report of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence regarding the use of intelligence in the lead-up to the Iraq War, buried near the back, on page 353, is the following statement: “CTC [Counter Terrorist Center] noted that the questions regarding al-Qaida's ties to the Iraqi regime were among the first presented to senior al-Qaida operational planner Khalid Shaikh Muhammad following his capture.”
Just so we all know the timeline here, KSM was captured on March 1, 2003. During March 2003, he was famously waterboarded 183 times. The Iraq War started March 20, 2003. So apparently the only attack that was imminent here was the American attack on Iraq. Furthermore, this was not, I repeat WAS NOT, a ticking time bomb scenario. This was a directive from somewhere in the Bush administration to get information linking al-Qaeda and Iraq, a link that virtually everyone (except Dick Cheney) now believes to be non-existent, to justify the war. If that’s not a propaganda purpose, then I don’t know what is.
Everyone, and I do mean everyone, is completely missing the point here. This isn’t about finger pointing or hating Bush or demonizing our armed forces or intelligence services. This is about what America stands for. This is about keeping America safe. This is about actually preventing the next attack, not merely paying lip service to that auspicious goal. Sunshine really is the best disinfectant here. The only way this country can avoid making the same horrible, illegal, injurious mistakes again is to know exactly what those mistakes where. How were these things allowed to happen? Who was responsible for allowing it? Who stood back and did nothing while it happened? I’m sure I will come back to this issue many times before all is said and done because it infuriates me. It infuriates me because it was harmful to national security. It infuriates me because it put our men and women in uniform in greater danger in Iraq and Afghanistan. It infuriates me because it has galvanized Muslim opinion in favor of al Qaeda and its objectives. And personally, it infuriates me because the Bush administration and its Republican allies in Congress at the time demonized those who disagreed with them.
Dissenters were subtly, and not-so-subtly, called traitors and turncoats. Their patriotism was questioned. They were mocked and ridiculed by people who claimed to be looking out for this country. As it turns out, the true patriots here were the dissenters, not the idiots in charge. And to think that their integrity was being impugned by the likes of Dick Cheney and Don Rumsfeld who were looking out for something, though I haven’t quite figured it out yet. One thing is certain, they were not looking out for the best interests of the country. If they had been, they would have left the interrogating to the professionals, refrained from meddling in the affairs of the intelligence community, and listened when Judge Advocates from all four branches of the military raised objections to the torture methods being authorized from on high.
And now the Republicans, who are supposedly all about duty, honor, and country, who have tried to win every election since 9-11 by portraying the Democrats as sissies and not at all concerned about national security, are stonewalling every attempt to get to the truth in this, the most important of matters with relation to national security. And that brings me back to our friend, Senator Graham. It was obvious from some of his questions for Mr. Soufan in the Judiciary Committee hearing this week that Mr. Graham has been drinking the Republican Kool-Aid. It is also becoming readily apparent to me that this is all being done not because of some deeply held conviction that these tactics were necessary but because the Republicans want to do whatever they can wherever they can to get in President Obama’s way. Want to know my proof? The words of no less than Senator Lindsey Graham.
In February 2006, when hearings were convening to investigate the allegations of prisoner abuse at Abu Ghraib, Senator Graham disagreed with his Republican colleague, Jim Inhofe, who I try regularly to forget that my fellow Oklahomans have the bad sense to keep sending to Washington, about whether outrage over the events at Abu Ghraib was warranted or not. Inhofe, of course, thought that the outrage itself was outrageous because he just knew that all of the detainees being abused were murderers and terrorists. Senator Graham rebutted this assertion saying, “When you are the good guys, you’ve got to act like the good guys.” Indeed, Senator Graham. So in 2006, you thought the good guys ought to act that way, and now you think the good guys should just…what, exactly? Avoid looking too close at what was going on? You, John McCain, and others who have in the past vocally opposed torture now think we should just sweep it under the rug? How is that helpful? What good does that accomplish? Don’t the good guys generally stand for truth, justice, and the American way? How can we possibly do that if we ignore the truth and don’t vigorously pursue justice?
Prove to me, Republicans, prove to me that you are interested in government accountability all the time and not just when it’s the other guys in power. Prove to me that your belief in the goodness of our country isn’t just lip service to win elections. Cooperate with the Democrats. Call for a special prosecutor. Demand an independent investigation. Rigorously pursue justice for those who were tortured, no matter their degree of guilt or innocence. Demand of yourselves, of the Democrats, of all of us, that none of us be considered above the law—even, if necessary, a former president, vice-president, cabinet secretary, or legal counsel turned federal judge. Loving this country doesn’t mean turning a blind eye to its faults or its wrongdoings. Patriotism is not blind allegiance. So prove it, Republicans. Let’s see if your patriotism can hold up when the going gets tough, because this isn’t going away. You can stay on the wrong side of this issue, or you can come toward the light. If you’re at all concerned about the survival of the GOP or its continued relevance on the national stage, I strongly recommend you chose the latter of those two options.
Here is the link to all of the testimony from the hearing in front of the Judiciary’s subcommittee on Administrative Oversight and the Courts, as well as a link to the written testimony of former Air Force interrogator Matthew Alexander. I would also like to thank Mr. Soufan and Mr. Alexander for their exemplary service to this country. These men are true patriots and deserve nothing but our utmost respect.
Testimony from Subcommittee on Administrative Oversight and the Courts
Matthew Alexander's Written Testimony to the Subcommittee
When it comes to damning testimony, I don’t know that anyone has any more damning information to share than Ali Soufan. Soufan is a Lebanese-American who joined the FBI as an interrogator in the late ‘90s. He is notable in this story because he was the guy who interrogated Abu Zubaydah before the waterboarding and got Zubaydah to give up Khalid Sheikh Mohammed as the mastermind behind 9-11 and the identity of Jose Padilla, the supposed “dirty bomber.” Again, this information was given to Soufan during a standard interrogation with NO TORTURE needed. In his testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee’s subcommittee on Administrative Oversight and the Courts this week, Soufan recounted the events that led him to walk away from the interrogation of Abu Zubaydah. He and his partner, using traditional interrogation tactics, were getting lots of actionable intelligence information from Zubaydah.
Then the CIA showed up with orders from on high to use “harsh interrogation tactics.” This is, by the way, the only time I will use this despicable euphemism. They were told to torture, and no game of semantics can hide or obscure that fact. According to Soufan, as soon as the waterboard was introduced to Zubaydah, he became defensive and uncooperative. Eventually, Soufan and his partner were asked to come back and continue their interrogation. This back and forth between Soufan and the CIA continued until Zubaydah was so traumatized by the waterboarding that he shut down completely and Soufan could not get any more information from him. It was at that point that Ali Soufan, one of this country’s greatest weapons in the fight against terror, walked away from the interrogation. His disenfranchisement with what he saw going on around him eventually led him to leave the FBI altogether.
In his testimony this week, Mr. Soufan offered several refutations to the Bush administration’s “ticking time bomb” nonsense—you know, that scenario where an attack is imminent so you’ll resort to ANYTHING to get information to stop it, never mind the fact that torture doesn’t lead to actionable intelligence. In fact, that was Soufan’s first point. Torture is ineffective. According to Mr. Soufan, “Al Qaeda terrorists are trained to resist torture. As shocking as these techniques are to us, the al Qaeda training prepares them for much worse – the torture they would expect to receive if caught by dictatorships for example.” Hey, guess what, these guys have their very own SERE school! Just in case they get captured and tortured to elicit false confessions for propaganda purposes. Mr. Soufan also said that torture at the hands of Americans only reinforces a detainees impression of America as amoral and Godless and thus strengthens his will to resist.
Following closely from this is Mr. Soufan’s second point: The information gained during torture is not, despite the constant ramblings of former Vice President Cheney, reliable. In fact, the FBI and CIA spent entirely too much time chasing down false information which had been tortured right out of detainees. Again, see my previous point in the preceding post—I would probably admit to having Osama bin Laden’s love child if waterboarded just to make it stop. Too bad it would have been not just a lie, but a real whopper of a lie.
Finally, Mr. Soufan addressed the “ticking time bomb” scenario directly. The CIA had, in its arsenal of torture tactics, authorization to use sleep deprivation for up to 180 hours. That is seven and a half days, at the end of which, I don’t know many people who would be coherent enough to even remember their own name, let alone anything that might even resemble actionable intelligence. When questioned by Senator Lindsey Graham (we’ll get back to Mr. Graham in a moment) about the allegations of former CIA officer John Kiriakou that Abu Zubaydah (the very one that Mr. Soufan so excellently interrogated) broke within seconds of being waterboarded, Mr. Soufan first reminded the senator that Mr. Kiriakou had recanted that statement, saying he had not been present during the waterboarding of Zubaydah and thus could not speak to the veracity of that claim. Then he made the excellent point that if waterboarding was so successful, why was it used 83 times against Abu Zubaydah and 183 times against Khalid Sheikh Mohammed…IN ONE MONTH!! What kind of “timely” information can be coerced from a guy who has to be waterboarded 6 times a day for a month?
But here’s the really bad news, just as I feared in my last post about this topic: this wasn’t really about “actionable intelligence” at all. It was about propaganda, gotten by any means, at any cost. The administration always held up the “ticking time bomb” scenario as the only acceptable reason for getting a little rough with detainees, be they in Guantanamo, Afghanistan, Iraq, or any number of black-ops sites around the world. Yet, the evidence points to something much more insidious. In a 2004 report of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence regarding the use of intelligence in the lead-up to the Iraq War, buried near the back, on page 353, is the following statement: “CTC [Counter Terrorist Center] noted that the questions regarding al-Qaida's ties to the Iraqi regime were among the first presented to senior al-Qaida operational planner Khalid Shaikh Muhammad following his capture.”
Just so we all know the timeline here, KSM was captured on March 1, 2003. During March 2003, he was famously waterboarded 183 times. The Iraq War started March 20, 2003. So apparently the only attack that was imminent here was the American attack on Iraq. Furthermore, this was not, I repeat WAS NOT, a ticking time bomb scenario. This was a directive from somewhere in the Bush administration to get information linking al-Qaeda and Iraq, a link that virtually everyone (except Dick Cheney) now believes to be non-existent, to justify the war. If that’s not a propaganda purpose, then I don’t know what is.
Everyone, and I do mean everyone, is completely missing the point here. This isn’t about finger pointing or hating Bush or demonizing our armed forces or intelligence services. This is about what America stands for. This is about keeping America safe. This is about actually preventing the next attack, not merely paying lip service to that auspicious goal. Sunshine really is the best disinfectant here. The only way this country can avoid making the same horrible, illegal, injurious mistakes again is to know exactly what those mistakes where. How were these things allowed to happen? Who was responsible for allowing it? Who stood back and did nothing while it happened? I’m sure I will come back to this issue many times before all is said and done because it infuriates me. It infuriates me because it was harmful to national security. It infuriates me because it put our men and women in uniform in greater danger in Iraq and Afghanistan. It infuriates me because it has galvanized Muslim opinion in favor of al Qaeda and its objectives. And personally, it infuriates me because the Bush administration and its Republican allies in Congress at the time demonized those who disagreed with them.
Dissenters were subtly, and not-so-subtly, called traitors and turncoats. Their patriotism was questioned. They were mocked and ridiculed by people who claimed to be looking out for this country. As it turns out, the true patriots here were the dissenters, not the idiots in charge. And to think that their integrity was being impugned by the likes of Dick Cheney and Don Rumsfeld who were looking out for something, though I haven’t quite figured it out yet. One thing is certain, they were not looking out for the best interests of the country. If they had been, they would have left the interrogating to the professionals, refrained from meddling in the affairs of the intelligence community, and listened when Judge Advocates from all four branches of the military raised objections to the torture methods being authorized from on high.
And now the Republicans, who are supposedly all about duty, honor, and country, who have tried to win every election since 9-11 by portraying the Democrats as sissies and not at all concerned about national security, are stonewalling every attempt to get to the truth in this, the most important of matters with relation to national security. And that brings me back to our friend, Senator Graham. It was obvious from some of his questions for Mr. Soufan in the Judiciary Committee hearing this week that Mr. Graham has been drinking the Republican Kool-Aid. It is also becoming readily apparent to me that this is all being done not because of some deeply held conviction that these tactics were necessary but because the Republicans want to do whatever they can wherever they can to get in President Obama’s way. Want to know my proof? The words of no less than Senator Lindsey Graham.
In February 2006, when hearings were convening to investigate the allegations of prisoner abuse at Abu Ghraib, Senator Graham disagreed with his Republican colleague, Jim Inhofe, who I try regularly to forget that my fellow Oklahomans have the bad sense to keep sending to Washington, about whether outrage over the events at Abu Ghraib was warranted or not. Inhofe, of course, thought that the outrage itself was outrageous because he just knew that all of the detainees being abused were murderers and terrorists. Senator Graham rebutted this assertion saying, “When you are the good guys, you’ve got to act like the good guys.” Indeed, Senator Graham. So in 2006, you thought the good guys ought to act that way, and now you think the good guys should just…what, exactly? Avoid looking too close at what was going on? You, John McCain, and others who have in the past vocally opposed torture now think we should just sweep it under the rug? How is that helpful? What good does that accomplish? Don’t the good guys generally stand for truth, justice, and the American way? How can we possibly do that if we ignore the truth and don’t vigorously pursue justice?
Prove to me, Republicans, prove to me that you are interested in government accountability all the time and not just when it’s the other guys in power. Prove to me that your belief in the goodness of our country isn’t just lip service to win elections. Cooperate with the Democrats. Call for a special prosecutor. Demand an independent investigation. Rigorously pursue justice for those who were tortured, no matter their degree of guilt or innocence. Demand of yourselves, of the Democrats, of all of us, that none of us be considered above the law—even, if necessary, a former president, vice-president, cabinet secretary, or legal counsel turned federal judge. Loving this country doesn’t mean turning a blind eye to its faults or its wrongdoings. Patriotism is not blind allegiance. So prove it, Republicans. Let’s see if your patriotism can hold up when the going gets tough, because this isn’t going away. You can stay on the wrong side of this issue, or you can come toward the light. If you’re at all concerned about the survival of the GOP or its continued relevance on the national stage, I strongly recommend you chose the latter of those two options.
Here is the link to all of the testimony from the hearing in front of the Judiciary’s subcommittee on Administrative Oversight and the Courts, as well as a link to the written testimony of former Air Force interrogator Matthew Alexander. I would also like to thank Mr. Soufan and Mr. Alexander for their exemplary service to this country. These men are true patriots and deserve nothing but our utmost respect.
Testimony from Subcommittee on Administrative Oversight and the Courts
Matthew Alexander's Written Testimony to the Subcommittee
Sunday, April 26, 2009
Torture, Justice, and the American Way
Hey, guess what? The Bush administration tortured people! NEWS FLASH!! Oh, wait…most of us already knew this, didn’t we? The real question here is whether we are willing to admit that this happened. The primary question seems to be this: is waterboarding torture? Many Republicans seem to think not. Last night, Sean Hannity volunteered, in a disturbingly jocular fashion, to be waterboarded for charity. Keith Olbermann, never one to let that kind of invitation from Fox News sneak by, offered to pay $1,000 to a fund for the families of American service men and women for every second Mr. Hannity lasts while being waterboarded. I hope, admittedly in part for purely sadistic reasons, that Mr. Hannity takes him up on the offer.
Lest there be any confusion as to where I stand: Yes, I think waterboarding is torture. In fact, in these United States, the issue of whether waterboarding is or is not torture has never been quite as ambiguous as those on the right would like for us to think. During the Spanish-American War (1898), at least two U.S. Army officers were court-martialed for using “the water cure,” that which we now call waterboarding.
After World War II, during the war crimes tribunals in both Germany and Japan, testimony was offered stating that both the Gestapo and Japanese troops used waterboarding as a method of torture. One U.S. airman, subjected to waterboarding by his Japanese captors during the war, said in his testimony, “The towel was wrapped around my face and put across my face and water poured on. They poured water on this towel until I was almost unconscious from strangulation, then they would let up until I'd get my breath, then they'd start over again… I felt more or less like I was drowning, just gasping between life and death.”
During the Vietnam War, the Washington Post published a photo of American servicemen and one South Vietnamese soldier waterboarding a North Vietnamese POW. One of those servicemen was court-martialed and discharged from the service because of his use of torture.
Finally, in the early 1980s, a Texas sheriff and his deputies were tried and convicted of conspiracy to force confessions from prisoners. Their method of choice? You guessed it, waterboarding. For their crimes, the three deputies were sentenced to four years in prison and the sheriff to ten years. Still think America doesn’t consider waterboarding torture? Here’s the real doozy….
In the recently released report by the Senate Armed Services Committee, chaired by Carl Levin, it was reported that much of the Bush torture program was based on reverse-engineering of the U.S. military’s SERE program. SERE (Survival, Evasion, Resistance, Escape) training is given to U.S. servicemen in all branches of the military who are at high risk of capture by enemy forces. Among the training they are given is training to resist torture tactics used to elicit false confessions to be used for propaganda purposes. If you guessed that those who go through SERE training are subjected to waterboarding, deemed by the folks who put together the SERE training as a potential torture method, give yourself a pat on the back. Obviously, the U.S. military views waterboarding as a form of torture, otherwise why subject servicemen to it in anticipation of its illegal use by enemy forces.
But here’s the bigger problem for the Bush administration: Look at the first two sentences of the last paragraph…go ahead. Take a look. The Bush torture policies were based on reverse-engineering of a U.S. military program designed to help servicemen resist torture techniques designed to elicit false confessions for propaganda purposes. Ponder that for a moment, if you will. In what world where the United States stands for truth, justice, and the American way does this country base its interrogation policies on those used by communists to elicit FALSE confessions? When did we turn into the Soviet Union all of the sudden and how in God’s name do we make it stop?
For the last 8 years, we have listened to the endless chorus of Republicans telling us that they would keep this country safe by any means necessary—even “enhanced interrogation techniques.” The ever popular “ticking time bomb” scenario was put before the American people, and we were told that if an attack was imminent, surely we would want our government to do whatever was necessary to foil that attack. (There’s a logical fallacy here, too, but I’ll get back to that in a minute.) Yet, all the while, their methodology was based on reverse-engineering a program designed to prevent false confessions for propaganda purposes. Seriously?
Did the Bush administration want actionable intelligence or did they want propaganda to help sell the American people on a phony war based on false pretenses? And if the answer to that question is the latter, what does that say about this country? Throughout her history, America has been cast as a “City on a Hill.” This is what we at the Institute of Church-State Studies at Baylor call civil religion. America is good. America does good. God bless America. Far be it for me to speak for the Almighty, but my guess is that God doesn’t bless this kind of action. If this country, this wonderful, flawed place that we all love and call home, acts in such a way, how can we purport to be a country of freedom and liberty and justice and respect for the rule of law?
The ramifications of this debate include forcing America to take a long, hard look at what this country stands for. Are we a nation of law and justice or have we allowed this awful war to turn us into a country no better than the evil dictatorships we have fought so tirelessly to defeat throughout our history? During Spring Break, while in Jerusalem, I went to Yad Vashem, the Israeli Holocaust Museum, and only a day after taking a trip to Bethlehem. On the road from Jerusalem to Bethlehem, a section of the “separation fence” being built by Israel between the West Bank and Israel-proper is visible. While walking through Yad Vashem, the irony of what I was seeing memorialized and what I saw in reality was striking.
Yad Vashem includes several exhibits extolling the virtues of the martyrs of the various eastern European ghetto uprisings, the most famous of which was the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising. These admittedly courageous men and women who rose up against the Nazis were resisting an unjust and brutal occupation by an enemy who saw the Jews as less than them. 60 years later, the oppressed have become the oppressors and are facilitating the ghettoization of the Palestinians who, since the 1987 Intifada started (non-violently, I might add), have been resisting an unjust and brutal occupation by an enemy who sees the Palestinians as less than them.
In the same way, has the United States, victim of the horrific events of 9/11, become the victimizer, exacting revenge and eliciting phony confessions from terrorists in the name of national security? The unfortunate answer to this question is most likely yes. It is an uncomfortable and unenviable position that the United States finds itself in currently. How can we claim any kind of moral superiority, any kind of mantle as the standard bearers of freedom and democracy if we resort to the same kind of depravity and malice that we find in our enemies?
To make matters worse, despite former Vice-President Dick Cheney’s continued assertion that torture works, there is no evidence to support that claim. The plot most often pointed to by Bush officials is the “Library Tower” plot. The use of advanced interrogation techniques, they claim, stopped that attack. This is not the case, however. The evidence gathered against those who were thinking about an attack on the Los Angeles landmark was gathered by FBI interrogators using conventional interrogation methods. In fact, so concerned was FBI director Robert Mueller about the potential legal ramifications for his interrogators if they got too close to these “enhanced” interrogations, that he pulled his interrogators out of the business of interrogating terror suspects altogether. Mueller has since conveyed his doubts about administration assertions that torture has yielded actionable intelligence.
The continued insistence of Bush administration officials that in the “ticking time bomb” scenario I mentioned earlier is reason enough to torture if necessary ignores some basic facts, namely that NO ONE who interrogates for a living thinks that torture works. Then again, the Bush administration made it a habit to ignore the advice of people who actually knew what they were talking about, but I digress. Torture doesn’t provide actionable intelligence. It provides copious amounts of crap. People will say almost anything to make the torture stop. I can personally say that if I were being waterboarded, I would confess to having Osama bin Laden’s love child if that’s what it took to make it stop. So if it doesn’t provide actionable intelligence AND it goes against the character of this nation…wait. Why, exactly are we torturing again? False confessions. Propaganda. That’s all we’ve got, folks. Not safer, not more secure, definitely not seen in higher esteem in Muslim countries. That’s what torture got us. Our descent into Soviet-style tactics must see the light of day. Only then can we confront our identity crisis and move ahead, learning from our mistakes and returning to the straight and narrow…at least for a few days.
Lest there be any confusion as to where I stand: Yes, I think waterboarding is torture. In fact, in these United States, the issue of whether waterboarding is or is not torture has never been quite as ambiguous as those on the right would like for us to think. During the Spanish-American War (1898), at least two U.S. Army officers were court-martialed for using “the water cure,” that which we now call waterboarding.
After World War II, during the war crimes tribunals in both Germany and Japan, testimony was offered stating that both the Gestapo and Japanese troops used waterboarding as a method of torture. One U.S. airman, subjected to waterboarding by his Japanese captors during the war, said in his testimony, “The towel was wrapped around my face and put across my face and water poured on. They poured water on this towel until I was almost unconscious from strangulation, then they would let up until I'd get my breath, then they'd start over again… I felt more or less like I was drowning, just gasping between life and death.”
During the Vietnam War, the Washington Post published a photo of American servicemen and one South Vietnamese soldier waterboarding a North Vietnamese POW. One of those servicemen was court-martialed and discharged from the service because of his use of torture.
Finally, in the early 1980s, a Texas sheriff and his deputies were tried and convicted of conspiracy to force confessions from prisoners. Their method of choice? You guessed it, waterboarding. For their crimes, the three deputies were sentenced to four years in prison and the sheriff to ten years. Still think America doesn’t consider waterboarding torture? Here’s the real doozy….
In the recently released report by the Senate Armed Services Committee, chaired by Carl Levin, it was reported that much of the Bush torture program was based on reverse-engineering of the U.S. military’s SERE program. SERE (Survival, Evasion, Resistance, Escape) training is given to U.S. servicemen in all branches of the military who are at high risk of capture by enemy forces. Among the training they are given is training to resist torture tactics used to elicit false confessions to be used for propaganda purposes. If you guessed that those who go through SERE training are subjected to waterboarding, deemed by the folks who put together the SERE training as a potential torture method, give yourself a pat on the back. Obviously, the U.S. military views waterboarding as a form of torture, otherwise why subject servicemen to it in anticipation of its illegal use by enemy forces.
But here’s the bigger problem for the Bush administration: Look at the first two sentences of the last paragraph…go ahead. Take a look. The Bush torture policies were based on reverse-engineering of a U.S. military program designed to help servicemen resist torture techniques designed to elicit false confessions for propaganda purposes. Ponder that for a moment, if you will. In what world where the United States stands for truth, justice, and the American way does this country base its interrogation policies on those used by communists to elicit FALSE confessions? When did we turn into the Soviet Union all of the sudden and how in God’s name do we make it stop?
For the last 8 years, we have listened to the endless chorus of Republicans telling us that they would keep this country safe by any means necessary—even “enhanced interrogation techniques.” The ever popular “ticking time bomb” scenario was put before the American people, and we were told that if an attack was imminent, surely we would want our government to do whatever was necessary to foil that attack. (There’s a logical fallacy here, too, but I’ll get back to that in a minute.) Yet, all the while, their methodology was based on reverse-engineering a program designed to prevent false confessions for propaganda purposes. Seriously?
Did the Bush administration want actionable intelligence or did they want propaganda to help sell the American people on a phony war based on false pretenses? And if the answer to that question is the latter, what does that say about this country? Throughout her history, America has been cast as a “City on a Hill.” This is what we at the Institute of Church-State Studies at Baylor call civil religion. America is good. America does good. God bless America. Far be it for me to speak for the Almighty, but my guess is that God doesn’t bless this kind of action. If this country, this wonderful, flawed place that we all love and call home, acts in such a way, how can we purport to be a country of freedom and liberty and justice and respect for the rule of law?
The ramifications of this debate include forcing America to take a long, hard look at what this country stands for. Are we a nation of law and justice or have we allowed this awful war to turn us into a country no better than the evil dictatorships we have fought so tirelessly to defeat throughout our history? During Spring Break, while in Jerusalem, I went to Yad Vashem, the Israeli Holocaust Museum, and only a day after taking a trip to Bethlehem. On the road from Jerusalem to Bethlehem, a section of the “separation fence” being built by Israel between the West Bank and Israel-proper is visible. While walking through Yad Vashem, the irony of what I was seeing memorialized and what I saw in reality was striking.
Yad Vashem includes several exhibits extolling the virtues of the martyrs of the various eastern European ghetto uprisings, the most famous of which was the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising. These admittedly courageous men and women who rose up against the Nazis were resisting an unjust and brutal occupation by an enemy who saw the Jews as less than them. 60 years later, the oppressed have become the oppressors and are facilitating the ghettoization of the Palestinians who, since the 1987 Intifada started (non-violently, I might add), have been resisting an unjust and brutal occupation by an enemy who sees the Palestinians as less than them.
In the same way, has the United States, victim of the horrific events of 9/11, become the victimizer, exacting revenge and eliciting phony confessions from terrorists in the name of national security? The unfortunate answer to this question is most likely yes. It is an uncomfortable and unenviable position that the United States finds itself in currently. How can we claim any kind of moral superiority, any kind of mantle as the standard bearers of freedom and democracy if we resort to the same kind of depravity and malice that we find in our enemies?
To make matters worse, despite former Vice-President Dick Cheney’s continued assertion that torture works, there is no evidence to support that claim. The plot most often pointed to by Bush officials is the “Library Tower” plot. The use of advanced interrogation techniques, they claim, stopped that attack. This is not the case, however. The evidence gathered against those who were thinking about an attack on the Los Angeles landmark was gathered by FBI interrogators using conventional interrogation methods. In fact, so concerned was FBI director Robert Mueller about the potential legal ramifications for his interrogators if they got too close to these “enhanced” interrogations, that he pulled his interrogators out of the business of interrogating terror suspects altogether. Mueller has since conveyed his doubts about administration assertions that torture has yielded actionable intelligence.
The continued insistence of Bush administration officials that in the “ticking time bomb” scenario I mentioned earlier is reason enough to torture if necessary ignores some basic facts, namely that NO ONE who interrogates for a living thinks that torture works. Then again, the Bush administration made it a habit to ignore the advice of people who actually knew what they were talking about, but I digress. Torture doesn’t provide actionable intelligence. It provides copious amounts of crap. People will say almost anything to make the torture stop. I can personally say that if I were being waterboarded, I would confess to having Osama bin Laden’s love child if that’s what it took to make it stop. So if it doesn’t provide actionable intelligence AND it goes against the character of this nation…wait. Why, exactly are we torturing again? False confessions. Propaganda. That’s all we’ve got, folks. Not safer, not more secure, definitely not seen in higher esteem in Muslim countries. That’s what torture got us. Our descent into Soviet-style tactics must see the light of day. Only then can we confront our identity crisis and move ahead, learning from our mistakes and returning to the straight and narrow…at least for a few days.
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