According to a study by the Pew Research Center a few years
back, only about 24% of all Americans think that the authorities should never
engage in torture, no matter the circumstances. That means that three out of
four people think that torture is sometimes allowable. Every Republican
candidate has come out in favor of torture as part of their warmongering,
except Ted Cruz who, while pretending to be adamantly against torture, defines
these acts of brutality against fellow human beings in such a way as to permit
an extraordinary number of procedures that virtually everyone else would
consider to be torture.
Most legitimate research demonstrates that torture does not
work in extracting information from enemy personnel, but as with climate change
and the minimum wage, those who support torture have purchased their own
research that purports to show that torture works.
But as Guantánamo
Diary graphically and brutally shows, the issue of our essential morality
trumps any concerns for national security that sadists and the uninformed might
invoke as a cause for torture. Guantánamo Diary is the memoir of
Mohamedou Ould Slahi, a highly educated Mauritanian who ended up being tortured
for months on end at GITMO despite our intelligence services having not one
iota of evidence that he ever engaged in terrorism or helped terrorist
organizations.
At the age of 19, Slahi went to Afghanistan for a few months
to help Islamic guerillas fight against the communist government that the
United States also opposed at that time. He later lived and worked in Germany
and Canada before returning to Mauritania. After the 9/11 attacks, the United
States arranged for the Mauritanian government to detain Slahi and then render
him to Jordan, where he was tortured, and then sent to GITMO for more torture.
At Guantánamo Slahi was subjected to isolation, temperature extremes, beatings,
sleep deprivation and sexual humiliation. One time, his American
captors—representing you, me and every other citizen of the United
States—blindfolded him and took him out to sea for a mock execution. As long as
he denied accusations that he recruited suicide bombers for Al Qaida, his
captors ratcheted up the pain.
After torturers used beatings and a forced diet of water to
keep him awake for weeks, during which time he was interrogated and suffered
other tortures on a daily basis, he finally confessed to crimes he did not
commit and for which there was no shred of supporting evidence, circumstantial
or otherwise. Prosecutors later refused to prosecute Slahi in 2003 because the
government's case depended solely on his false confessions, which were inadmissible
under both U.S and international law because they had come under torture. In 2010, a federal judge ordered Slahi
released, but an appeals court overruled and Slahi is still held at GITMO,
although no longer being tortured.
Slahi’s descriptions of what his captors did to him are not
for the light of heart. His words bring to life the excruciating pain that
torture produces in a more evocative, immediate way than any movie or TV
depiction of torture I have seen. His descriptions are so grievously harrowing,
perhaps because I knew what Slahi suffered was real and that the torture
inflicted on Arnold or Bruce Willis in movies is fake. Page after page
describes hour after hour of beatings, sexual degradation, marathon
interrogations and exposure to extreme cold or heat. Because we experience
these physical torments through the eyes of an individual who is both a fine
writer and legitimately religious, we also suffer the mental anguish felt by
someone who is innocent of all charges.
Before allowing publication, the U.S. government blanked out
much of Guantánamo Diary. Eight full
pages in a row are blanked out at the height of the GITMO torture regime.
Looking at page after page of thick black lines running horizontally from one
edge of the paper to the other filled me with panic and fear, as my imagination
provided all the punches, kicks, slaps, nakedness, ice cubes, blaring music,
Billy clubs and excrement that the redaction concealed.
The basic argument of Guantánamo
Diary is that “evil is as evil does.” Slahi’s experience in the U.S.
torture gulag has caused him to consider the United States a force for evil,
and not a bastion of freedom. Reading
the memoir filled me with the shame of someone who has committed mortal sins
that she-he knows are wrong. I didn’t commit the sins, but I felt the guilt,
because it was my country. It’s no wonder that our use of torture embarrassed
the country in front of the world and sent a lot of young idealistic Muslims
into the arms of ISIS.
Slahi’s story exemplifies why torture doesn’t work. People
get so confused and so fearful of additional torment that they begin to lie and
admit to acts they didn’t really commit. It also shows that it takes a certain
brutal and barbaric turn of mind to engage in torture. It makes me wonder if
Dick Cheney ever witnessed the infliction of waterboarding or beatings on an
individual or if his sadism is only symbolic, consisting of words and images in
his mind. Or did he—or his less intellectual president—believe the sanitized
versions of torture we see in our violent entertainments? Senator John McCain
did not, but then again he went through the real deal in Vietnam.
It is unfortunate that the Obama Administration decided to
sweep our torture history under the rug, saying that no one would be prosecuted
for planning or implementing the torture regime that took hold of GITMO, Abu
Ghraib, Bagram and dozens of other U.S. military facilities across the globe.
Of course, prosecution would have meant sending President George W. Bush, Vice
President Cheney and a few dozen other government officials to jail for
breaking U.S. and international laws.
Word to Ted Cruz: Read Guantánamo
Diary.
Word to Donald Trump: Read Guantánamo Diary.
Word to anyone who thinks we should have the right to
inflict agonizing pan on others: Read Guantánamo
Diary.
If after reading this poignant but depressing memoir, you
still believe in torture, then consider yourself outside the human
race.