When It Is Torture

Those locked in conversation over Obama’s reversal of his decision to release hundreds (or was it thousands) of photos that depict torture at US hands, probably missed a one paragraph item in the World Briefing section on page A6 of last Tuesday’s New York Times (May 12, 2009); “United Arab Emirates: Sheik Held Over Torture Video.” Seems a video surfaced in which the brother of the ruler of Abu Dhabi, who is also the President of the seventeen-member United Arab Emirates, appears to torture an Afghan grain merchant. He has been detained pending the outcome of a criminal investigation.

Contrast this with the United States, where the CIA erased the videotapes, and the President we elected on the pledge to bring sunshine to government makes the excuse that if we release the photos it might prove inflammatory with negative consequences for our troops. I for one do not think confirming to the world that we are a nation unwilling and incapable of facing up to the evidence of our own crimes will serve to protect our troops while carrying out any mission we attempt to portray as just.

Justice need not lack mercy but requires accountability. Justice requires crimes be exposed, the guilty prosecuted, whether they be a corporal or the brother of the president who carries out torture, or a president or vice president who ordered it. Justice is a contract between the rulers and the ruled, that says we play by the same rules; no one is above the law.

I can’t say how many times I have been in conversation with friends, intelligent people, who repeat to me sound-bites from the media or the President’s lips, as if that were the end of discussion. Behind these thought-numbing aphorisms is what Edward Said referred to as “Orientalism,” the unconscious supposition that white Christians of European descent are best disposed to rule the world, the only ones with a grasp of fairness, the only ones worth being accountable to. I find it equally at play in the question, “If we just leave Iraq, it would be chaos. How could they rebuild?” As if they didn’t build their country in the first place, as if they weren’t capable of rebuilding without our help, and of course we would be their first choice. I mean, since we destroyed it, we should know how to put it back together, right?

Many of us have become accustomed it seems, to accepting at face value pronouncements from power, instead of comparing them to our own internal sense of justice. The thing that made Orwell’s novel 1984 so compelling was the way he laid bare the conscious transition from human being to servile co-conspirator in the suffering of others. One thought only need be accepted; let it happen to others.

As Jeremy Scahill reported this morning on Democracy Now!, AlterNet, and his blog RebelReports.com, torture is alive and well at Guantanamo under Obama. Little wonder when we can’t even compel him to release the photos, let alone bring those responsible to justice, which is what he fears their release will require, more than consequences for our troops.

Obama’s message to Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu to stop building settlements notwithstanding, his pre-election pledge of “make me do it” is sounding ironically hollow. If he cuts off funding when Netanyahu ignores him (which he most certainly will), something even Bush senior once attempted, then I might believe him. Lacking that his actions are less than one step forward, two steps back.

Justice is alive in the world, even here in the US, but don’t look for it in the halls of power or the media. There it seems we can’t afford it. Find it, hang on to it, within yourself. Losing it is torture.