{"id":6087,"date":"2004-05-11T08:37:47","date_gmt":"2004-05-11T08:37:47","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.earthwidemoth.com\/blog\/2004\/05\/11\/words-made-me-d\/"},"modified":"2004-05-11T08:37:47","modified_gmt":"2004-05-11T08:37:47","slug":"words-made-me-d","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.earthwidemoth.com\/blog\/2004\/05\/11\/words-made-me-d\/","title":{"rendered":"Words Made Me Do It"},"content":{"rendered":"\u23f3 Approximate reading time: <\/span> 4<\/span> mins<\/span><\/span>

&nbsp<\/p>\n

A<\/a>
\nnumber<\/a>
\nof<\/a>
\nsmart<\/a>,
\ninsightful<\/a>
\nposts have turned up in recent days, working over the abhorrent prisoner abuse
\nnews out of Abu Ghraib; I’m not sure I have a lot to add.  I’m still not
\nready to dig my heals in on the whole issue; haven’t come to many firm
\nconclusions about what’s happened, although I do find Mike’s mention of command
\nfailures to be compelling.  Jenny’s reading of Shaviro’s post is
\ninteresting, too, for the suggestion that many<\/i> of the young folks who
\nfollow the enticements of recruiters have few other post-secondary options, have
\nvexed experiences with power and aggression, and find, in the recruiter’s pitch,
\nsomething<\/i> promising.  <\/p>\n

Lynndie England has become the poster child for U.S. military recklessness,
\ngone to abuse and photo op celebrations of abuse.  In one story (whose link
\nis down), England’s uncle said, basically, she was just following orders. 
\nAnother story
\nfrom the Baltimore Sun<\/a>, describes England as a "paper pusher";
\nshe’s also termed a "scapegoat" by a family friend.  So what the
\nworld needs now is a resurrection of Stanley Milgram’s experiment on subjects’
\nwillingness to inflict harm by subduing conscience in deference to authority: agentic
\nshift<\/i>. It’s the same sort of critique applied to Adolf
\nEichmann<\/a> who was found guilty of war crimes and sentenced to death. 
\nNote: Some <\/i>accountability went to his superiors, too.<\/p>\n

I mention Eichmann because the corollaries are considerable.  And since
\nEichmann’s role surfaced during the Nuremberg trials, I thought the following
\nconnection was good enough for the blog.  See, Mark Bowden’s Atlantic
\nMonthly<\/i> report on "The
\nDark Art of Interrogation"<\/a> seems almost prophetic now, in light of the
\ntorture.  In October 2003, Bowden’s piece ran with its premise that
\ncoercive discomfort, while not exactly "torture," is militarily
\nuseful.  It saves lives, it enables intelligence officers to head off
\nplots, and it’s vital to criminal interrogation.  Fine. The project was
\neerily predictive as I re-read it over the weekend, during the garage sale when
\nI needed something interruptible. From Bowden:<\/p>\n

\nThe official statements by President Bush and William Haynes reaffirming the
\nU.S. government’s opposition to torture have been applauded by human-rights
\ngroups–but again, the language in them is carefully chosen. What does the Bush
\nAdministration mean by "torture"? Does it really share the activists’
\nall-inclusive definition of the word? In his letter to the director of Human
\nRights Watch, Haynes used the term "enemy combatants" to describe
\nthose in custody. Calling detainees "prisoners of war" would entitle
\nthem to the protections of the Geneva Convention, which prohibits the
\n"physical or mental torture" of POWs, and "any other form of
\ncoercion," even to the extent of "unpleasant or disadvantageous
\ntreatment of any kind." (In the contemptuous words of one military man,
\nthey "prohibit everything except three square meals, a warm bed, and access
\nto a Harvard education.") Detainees who are American citizens have the
\nadvantage of constitutional protections against being held without charges, and
\nhave the right to legal counsel. They would also be protected from the worst
\nabuses by the Eighth Amendment, which prohibits "cruel and unusual
\npunishment." The one detainee at Guantanamo who was discovered to have
\nbeen born in the United States has been transferred to a different facility, and
\nlegal battles rage over his status. But if the rest of the thousands of
\ndetainees are neither POWs (even though the bulk of them were captured during
\nthe fighting in Afghanistan) nor American citizens, they are fair game. They are
\nprotected only by this country’s international promises–which are, in effect,
\nunenforceable.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

And this:<\/p>\n

The Bush Administration has adopted exactly the right posture on the matter.
\nCandor and consistency are not always public virtues. Torture is a crime against
\nhumanity, but coercion is an issue that is rightly handled with a wink, or even
\na touch of hypocrisy; it should be banned but also quietly practiced. Those who
\nprotest coercive methods will exaggerate their horrors, which is good: it
\ngenerates a useful climate of fear. It is wise of the President to reiterate
\nU.S. support for international agreements banning torture, and it is wise for
\nAmerican interrogators to employ whatever coercive methods work. It is also
\nsmart not to discuss the matter with anyone.\n<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Apart from sensationalizing passages, it’s a strong
\narticle for context, for digging into the semantics of "torture,"
\nsplitting out what it is and what it’s not, in legal terms. 
\n"Torture," in this sense, is avoidable–duck the Geneva Compact, dodge
\ninternational law and the Constitution, play the slippery terms.  <\/p>\n

As I looked into Bowden’s article and what follows, I
\nwas especially taken by the letter from Stephen Rickard, Director of the Nuremberg
\nLegacy Project<\/a>, an effort to memorialize historic atrocities of war. 
\nRickard’s letter
\nshows up in the Jan\/Feb 2004 Atlantic Monthly<\/i><\/a>, an issue with the
\nWhite House Chiefs of Staff, including Don Rumsfeld, on the front.  In his
\nletter (scroll down to "Interrogations"), Rickard defends the Bush
\nAdministration’s definitive stance on torture and coercion:<\/font><\/p>\n

Mark Bowden’s article "The Dark Art of Interrogation" (October Atlantic<\/i>)
\n is an important survey of calculated cruelty. But when Bowden argues that the
\n Bush Administration’s position on the legality of "torture lite"
\n (so-called "stress and duress" interrogation) is ambiguous and
\n should be, he is wrong on both points.<\/p>\n

Bowden correctly notes that Administration officials said for months that no
\n detainee was being "tortured," but failed to rule out "cruel,
\n inhumane, or degrading" treatment. Both are prohibited by the U.S.
\n Constitution and international law. Specifically, he cites an April letter
\n from William J. Haynes II, general counsel for the Defense Department, to
\n Human Rights Watch, which ruled out only "torture," and says,
\n "Haynes’s choice of words was careful–and telling."<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

It’ll be interesting to see how the Nuremberg Legacy
\nProject responds to the atrocities now upon us, U.S. culpability in the fiasco,
\nand the currency of it all.  So many other atrocities of war have been set
\nagainst years of discovery.  Eichmann, for example, was pursued for years
\nbefore he was tried in 1997 for crimes nearly fifty years past.  And while
\nI’m not sure recent events match Eichmann’s crimes, I recommend a quick read
\nthrough Bowden’s story and some of the letters of response.  If nothing
\nelse, they affirm the drastic shifts in meaning stemming from context: the
\nmeaning of these months-old articles has been overhauled in the last ten
\ndays.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u23f3 Approximate reading time: <\/span> 4<\/span> mins<\/span><\/span>&nbsp A number of smart, insightful posts have turned up in recent days, working over the abhorrent prisoner abuse news out of Abu Ghraib; I’m not sure I have a lot to add.  I’m still not ready to dig my heals in on the whole issue; haven’t come to many firm conclusions about what’s happened,…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[165],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6087","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-media_massage"],"yoast_head":"\nWords Made Me Do It - 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This time is clockfaced with transition and red-inked bleedingly with fascistic bombardments on all sides\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Methods"","block_context":{"text":"Methods","link":"https:\/\/www.earthwidemoth.com\/blog\/category\/method\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.earthwidemoth.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/02\/l6124e942-m0rd-w960_h720.jpeg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200,"srcset":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.earthwidemoth.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/02\/l6124e942-m0rd-w960_h720.jpeg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1 1x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.earthwidemoth.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/02\/l6124e942-m0rd-w960_h720.jpeg?resize=525%2C300&ssl=1 1.5x"},"classes":[]},{"id":6180,"url":"https:\/\/www.earthwidemoth.com\/blog\/2004\/11\/12\/song-is-getting\/","url_meta":{"origin":6087,"position":1},"title":"Song Is Getting Thin","author":"Derek Mueller","date":"November 12, 2004","format":false,"excerpt":"EWM's been on hold for a whole week.\u00a0 I'd like to think blog-time will open soon.\u00a0 Or else what? Got three books piled up for the weekend and semester-end projects, conceptually formed as they are, requiring a hard pry to loosen them into keystroke-motion.\u00a0 So it's not an official hiatus,\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Technologies"","block_context":{"text":"Technologies","link":"https:\/\/www.earthwidemoth.com\/blog\/category\/technologies\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"You are .jpg You are very colorful. Sometimes you forget things, or distort the truth. 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I could run the numbers wicked-quickly through the tenth year or so, not that anyone\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Unspecified"","block_context":{"text":"Unspecified","link":"https:\/\/www.earthwidemoth.com\/blog\/category\/unspecified\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":6255,"url":"https:\/\/www.earthwidemoth.com\/blog\/2005\/03\/02\/hurleys-jinx\/","url_meta":{"origin":6087,"position":4},"title":"Hurley’s Jinx","author":"Derek Mueller","date":"March 2, 2005","format":false,"excerpt":"I'm wading through the shallows (where the heck are the depths?) of a draft I'll be stammering through for a colloquium Friday afternoon, the same draft carrying forward to CCCC in San Francisco two weeks from tomorrow.\u00a0 But I did break for Lost.\u00a0 Tonight's Hurley-centric episode turned open the millionaire's\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Media"","block_context":{"text":"Media","link":"https:\/\/www.earthwidemoth.com\/blog\/category\/media_massage\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":6346,"url":"https:\/\/www.earthwidemoth.com\/blog\/2005\/07\/06\/continuous-part\/","url_meta":{"origin":6087,"position":5},"title":"Continuous, Partial","author":"Derek Mueller","date":"July 6, 2005","format":false,"excerpt":"These notes from the recent Supernova 2005 conference--themed \"Attention\"--call attention to the keynote address by Linda Stone, which she leads by citing her own coinage of \"continuous partial attention\" in 1997.\u00a0 I'm hesitant to argue with the phrase out of context, but I appreciate the position expressed at unmediated (citing\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Media"","block_context":{"text":"Media","link":"https:\/\/www.earthwidemoth.com\/blog\/category\/media_massage\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.earthwidemoth.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6087","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.earthwidemoth.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.earthwidemoth.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.earthwidemoth.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.earthwidemoth.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6087"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.earthwidemoth.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6087\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.earthwidemoth.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6087"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.earthwidemoth.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6087"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.earthwidemoth.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6087"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}