Canadian Responses To U.S. Torture

Naomi Klein, writing in the U.S. magazine The Nation, urges that the idea of a recent U.S. “descent” into torture be rejected. She writes of “the notorious [U.S.] School of the Americas from 1946 to 1984 … that, if it had a motto, [it] might have been ‘we do torture’”. She goes on to write: “It was there in Panama – and later, at the school’s new location at Fort Benning, Georgia – where the roots of the current torture scandals can be found”. (www.thenation.com). Klein is challenged by U.S. writer, Alfred McCoy. His new book, A Question of Torture, is about to arrive in Canadian bookstores. McCoy alleges “the roots of the current [U.S.] torture scandals” are located in Canada. In a CBC interview in the week of December 17, 2005, McCoy argued that CIA-financed studies in sensory deprivation at McGill University in the early 1950s provided the definitive groundwork for present U.S. torture. It is, apparently, a no-touch torture, the purpose of which is to free torturers from the charge of physical abuse. McCoy also argues that the U.S. has ratified agreements on physical torture but has refused to ratify agreements or parts of agreements that refer to mental torture or stress or humiliation. It is through that crack, it seems, that Michael Ignatieff squeezes to support what might be called “soft torture”. When principles of justice are being violated, signs usually go up. In this case the U.S. argues (a) that its (so-called) “non-physical” torment is not torture, and it argues for that position (b) even while legal advisors to the U.S. political administration attempt to widen the opening for physical torture. As if to further my point that signs go up, Michael Byers, in his book, War Laws (Vancouver, Douglas and McIntyre, 2005), argues that the (international law) principle of jus cogens - a peremptory rule which overrides conflicting rules and arguments put forward by individual states - covers “prohibitions on genocide, slavery, and torture” (p. 6). If true, then the U.S. arguments are used to grandstand and obscure violations of international law and practice. We are faced in this whole enormously important argument with a simple fact: the U.S. is trying in every way possible to gain sanction for unilateral actions that are an offense to human morality, to say nothing of international norms, covenants, and accepted practices. All of the debate revolves around the world’s only super power attempting to re-write the meaning of brutality and violation of persons to suit what it sees as its own interest and its own designs for the planet. The fact is that both Naomi Klein and Alfred McCoy are probably wrong in dating the beginnings of present U.S. torture. Before showing why, we should examine the argument that arises from the work of the two Canadians – Michael Byers and Michael Ignatieff. It teaches us important things about torture and the attitude to it in our time. Put succinctly, Michael Ignatieff is a proponent of what might be called “careful torture” or “soft torture”. Michael Byers rejects torture out of hand, being, perhaps, more deeply aware than Ignatieff of the hard and long-fought struggle to reach the world’s present shaky respect for human rights and international justice. Behind each treaty, covenant, convention, and formal practice assuring fair treatment of ‘the enemy”, prisoners and non-combatants, Byers sees a strongly mutually reinforcing principle. It can be stated simply: “if I don’t violate my enemy, my enemy is less likely to violate me”. In addition, of course, all humane arguments, Byers would say, must be brought forward, and, in fact, underlie any and all reciprocal agreements. Any argument for expediency – “if we torture these ten people, they will give us information to save thousands of people” – he rejects on behalf of the growing, fragile, international “rule of law”. That is why we can say that U.S. arguments to allow no-touch torment are nonsense, and that U.S. arguments for permissable physical torture are a horrendous threat to fragile procedures accepted to assure humane treatment of populations in war or perceived threats of war. There are other simple, essential differences between Michael Byers’ position and that of Michael Ignatieff. First, Byers calls all infractions into question, whomsoever engages in them. Secondly (it follows) he doesn’t draw back from citing the U.S. for wreaking havoc among the delicate written and practice-established protections against torture and other – especially wartime - forms of violation of human sanctity. Closing the major portion of the book, War Law, he writes: “Saddam Hussein’s show trial in Bahgdad will only exacerbate the tension between a world that still wants a fair and sustainable international legal syustem and a single superpower that hardly seems to care.” (p. 136) His “Epilogue” that follows immediately, ends with the sentence: “The immense power of the Untied States carries with it an awesome responsibility: to improve the world – for everyone. Obeying the requirements of war law is a necessary first step”. (p. 155) Michael Ignatieff begins from a different place than Byers. His definition of torture is faulty, to start. For him, it is “the deliberate infliction of physical cruelty and pain in order to extract information.” (p. 136, The Lesser Evil, Edinburgh Univ. Press, 2004) But torture is regarded in covenants and formal statements as involving mental torment, moral humiliation, and potentially damaging sensory deprivation. As Michael Byers points out “the Third Geneva convention, Article 13 … provides that POWs ‘must at all times be protected, particularly against acts of violence or intimidation and against insults and public curiosity’. To reinforce the point, Article 14 stipulates that prisoners of war ‘are entitled in all circumstances to respect for their persons and their honour.’”(War Law, p. 132) The U.S. attempt to invent new categories of prisoners in order to by-pass humane restrictions is self-evidently fraudulent manipulation. Ignatieff leapfrogs the mental and psychological parts of the restrictions, leading him to statements said, by some, to excuse torture. One of his most quoted statements appeared in The New York Times Magazine (May 2, 2004): “Permissible duress might include forms of sleep deprivation that do not result in lasting harm to mental health or physical health, together with disinformation and disorientation (like keeping prisoners in hoods) that would produce stress”. In addition, in his book, The Lesser Evil, Ignatieff appears to accept both U.S. claims and the U.S. version of acceptable treatment. He writes: “The interrogation methods of which the Americans have been accused since 9/11 are held [by the Americans, presumably] to include nothing more than sleep deprivation, permanent light or permanent darkness, disorienting noise, and insolation. If this were true, if interrogation remained free of physical duress or cruelty, it would amount to coercion, rather than torture and there might be a lesser evil justification for it. The grounds would be that isolation and disorientation that stopped short of physical or psychological abuse might gain the authorities vital information about on-going terrorist operations” (p. 138, The Lesser Evil) For many readers Ignatieff’s separation of the “interrogation methods” he describes from “psychological abuse” will be too tenuous to make sense. For those people he will be disguising a description of torture behind a definition of non-torture. As I have asked before (1) who is present to assure this “soft torture” will be closely contained? And (2) who is present to provide proof that no “lasting harm”occurs? Ignatieff walks a very thin line, aware, at times, it would seem, that permission to torture can have horrible consequences. Regarding civilians (in law, usually called non-combatants), Ignatieff is firm. “To violate civilian immunity … is to assume that noble political ends, like the struggle against injustice, can justify treating any human being as a means. This way nihilism lies.” (p. 94, The Lesser Evil) His statement applies, however, precisely to combatants, suspected combatants, suspected terrorists and proved terrorists. For if fundamental human “immunity” is violated, it invites as response what Ignatieff calls “nihilism” - the unimpeded use of violence and terror - by an enemy who wishes to respond in kind. Whether employed by bands of guerillas or by established state authorities, torture in violation of international covenants and norms is the employment of violence and terror. It is, to use Ignatieff’s term, “nihilism”. Whereas Ignatieff only ever slightly touches on the possibility of the U.S. violating international norms, Byers faces the problem head on. Indeed, he confronts misdeeds and possible misdeeds by Canada, too, warning Canadians away from the slippery slope inhabited by U.S. operatives. In doing that, in relation to Canadian behaviour in Afghanistan (Ottawa Citizen, Feb. 15, 05), he comes up against Canada’s General Rick Hillier, Chief of Canada’s Defence Staff. A rather loud-mouth, verbally strutting, U.S.-style military man, Hillier seems untroubled by the subtleties of international law and practice. His headquarters responded, falsely, that in Peacekeeping missions detainees “are not subject to the Geneva Convention.” Such a comment is (in Canadian terms) simply irresponsible yank-talk, suggesting the integration of Canadian and U.S. forces is altogether too close. Byers, in addition, gave the F.C. Kronkite Lecture at the University of Saskatchewan on November 14, 2005, in which he charged that Canada “since September 11, 2001, [has] “repeatedly and cynically disregarded fundamental rules of the laws of war”. (His remarks may be found on the Lui Institute for Global Issues website.) Very clearly, Canadian military and interrogation practices are being negatively affected by our military’s too close relation to the U.S. military for whom internationally condemned forms of torture are almost daily practice as are violations of rules of aggressive activity covered specifically by what Byers calls ‘war law’. In much of the talk about torture we are asked (even by Naomi Klein and Alfred McCoy, for instance) to see a somewhat recent descent by the U.S.A. into forms of torture threatening international law. Klein is correct when she writes that to face the situation correctly, commentators would have to make “an admission that the embrace of torture by U.S. officials long pre-dates the Bush administration….” But she appears to work within the indoctrination box that few – even critical – commentators escape. The indoctrination fable is that the U.S. began as a “city on a hill”, seeking justice and fairness for all in and outside of the U.S.A. As slow time passed, the U.S. [says the indoctrination fable] began to lose its way at times, for brief periods. And then, as Klein writes – as if some new and terrible thing has happened – torture “has been integral to U.S. foreign policy since the Vietnam war”. The truth is very different, hard to stomach, and deeply upsetting even for the toughest critics of the U.S. because the truth suggests the U.S. cannot be converted to international decency by public outcry and disapproval alone. Much stronger forms of persuasion will be needed. That is so because the U.S. was not only born in violence and had its federal unity confirmed in violence, but it also - by state-approved, on-going violence, torture, and the violation of human dignity - founded its economic wealth, engaged in its earliest expansionism, and promulgated the idea of U.S. exceptionalism and Manifest Destiny. What must be remembered in that long history (which continues, in fact, today) is that the perpetrators of torture and human degradation were ordinary U.S. people going about their daily lives. They were not “special forces”or chosen “elite” troops. The day to day conduct of slavery and of the genocidal policy toward Indians engaged a very large portion of the “civilian”, “non-combatant” population over a very long time. Violence and the achievement of self-seeking ends by the desecration of other human beings were established and became “as American as apple pie”. Two major, on-going, long-term exercises in simple brutality undertaken by large parts of the U.S. population – that some claim fixed U.S. character – have been the genocide of the Indian peoples and the enslavement of black people. Both involved the desecration of persons and contempt for human life by ordinary members of the population, not only based upon racism but – in very concrete terms – based upon the lure of economic benefit that plainly resulted from violation and oppression. Because “law” in the U.S. was non-existent, more honoured in the breach than the observance, or directly oppressive of outcast races, members of the larger population took for granted that the state believed the desecration of those ruled “non American” was not only acceptable but, perhaps, a desirable choice of behaviour. Put in the simplest terms – to use a single example – a very large part of the mystery of the disappearance of the Indian hero, Tecumseh, killed in the War of 1812 by U.S. troops, arises because of the habit of Kentucky men to hack up and desecrate the bodies of Indians killed in warfare. Major John Richardson, involved in the same battle that saw Tecumseh killed, believed Tecumseh was flayed by the Kentucky men, pieces of his hide being kept as souvenirs. Whether the story is true or not, it is based on the legendary brutality of the Kentucky soldiers in the formal U.S. army of the time. And the failure of anyone to be able to find Tecumseh’s body is very likely related to the desecration of corpses engaged in by the Kentucky men. The Indian wars which went on in one way and another for nearly 200 years were wars to erase Indian ownership of land, best effected by erasing the Indians themselves. Those wars fixed and perpetuated the doctrine that what U.S. white people wanted they could gain by warfare, violation of human sanctity, and – if useful – torture. To take the land from the Indians, U.S. government had to erect (a) a picture of the natives as inhuman monsters (b) a theory that land not used as the whites wanted to use it was “waste” land to be appropriated by white people, and (c) a theory that it was the Manifest Destiny of the U.S.A. [the God-appointed work] to seize and occupy all of the North American continent. To that end the famous U.S. Declaration of Independence characterizes the Indian peoples as “the merciless Indian Savages, whose known rule of warfare, is undistinguished destruction of all ages, sexes and conditions”. The U.S., moreover, rejected the Royal Proclamation of 1763 which required, in short, a recognition of Indian land rights and a process for the transfer of Indian lands to others that had to follow public, lawful, and examinable behaviour. The Royal Proclamation filled with anger the leaders in what was to become the U.S.A. The Royal Proclamation is still an active force in Canadian law. In the U.S. – tellingly – Indian peoples have no defined status and are treated as the left-overs from wars in which the victor’s culture displaced all others without any rights remaining to the conquered. The U.S. Indian position exists “tellingly” because it is an admission by the U.S. state that white occupation was affected by a genocidal war of conquest. Building upon a concomitant theory that U.S. power is centred in the territorial U.S.A. – which was deviously, ruthlessly, and diplomatically expanded in the nineteenth century – the U.S. initiated (in 1823) the Monroe Doctrine, a unilateral statement that said, in effect, the U.S. would not permit European presence in governments of Central and South America. That was, and remains, U.S. policy. The Monroe Doctrine in the Western hemisphere has served to permit the U.S. in its “own back yard”, as its historians write, to practice violence, torture, torture-training, and the overthrow of reform governments throughout the region for its long history. It is no accident that the infamous (torture) School of the Americas, to which Naomi Klein refers, began its life in the Central American country (ruled, in fact, by the U.S.A.), Panama. Before the 1946 creation of the School of the Americas and from 1823 onwards, the U.S. invaded, coerced, undermined, imposed ruthless dictatorial regimes, and practiced brutal administration of countless Central and South American countries. Without the global reach it has today, the U.S. imposed dictatorships, fully aware that torture and violation of human sanctity on behalf of U.S. dominance would be characteristic in its puppet regimes. Pablo Neruda, internationally famous Chilean poet and diplomat, writing in the early 1960s, registered the fact that in the past hundred years every reform government in Central and South America had been overthrown, and every overthrow was supported covertly or overtly by the U.S.A. Whenever one thinks of the practice of racism for economic gain in the U.S.A., one thinks immediately of black slavery and the slave trade. But racism-for-gain has been practiced by the U.S.A. against aboriginal peoples of North and South America from earliest times. Little needs to be said to remind readers of the brutality, the personal torture, and the state support for violation of black people in the U.S.A. The authors of the book, Complicity, (NY, Ballantine Books, 2005), write that “from the very beginning, the [U.S.] nation’s experience with slavery was defined by commerce and violence, in the North as well as in the South”. (p. xxvii) To understand the real history of U.S. torture a few points need to be underscored. (1) After the Declaration of Independence slavery in the U.S. increased dramatically. (2) At the time of the U.S. Civil War (1861-65), there were four million black slaves in the U.S. out of a population of about thirty million. (3) Many people in the northern states supported slavery, captured escaped slaves for re-sale in the South, and built their wealth on slavery, the slave trade, and trade to provide for slave needs in the West Indies. The authors of the book, Complicity, claim that New York City was built into a leading international port by slavery and the services provided to slave operations. Thomas Jefferson, an example of the famous U.S. Founding Fathers, is presented by loyal, “progressive” people in the U.S.A. as a leader in democratic ideas. The Encyclopedia Britannica, 1960, characterizes him as “the most conspicuous of American apostles of democracy, and one of the great liberals of modern times”. (Vol 12, p. 986) Such is the reigning U.S. indoctrination employed, over and over, to cover the real, historical nature of U.S. society. Jefferson not only wrote and/or approved of the statement about Indians in the Declaration of Independence already cited, he also, as president, extinguished Indian title rapaciously and supported rejection of the rule of law to govern Indian/white relations. Anthony Hall writes of Jefferson’s action “to renew his call to pursue Indian people ‘to extermination, or to drive them to new seats beyond our reach.’” (The American Empire and the Fourth World, p. 397) Jefferson was, in addition, a slave owner, and did almost nothing to advance the liberation of the slaves who – in his own case – escaped from his estate whenever opportunity permitted. In the late 1770s he wrote his Notes on the State of Virginia in which he asserted his belief in the natural inferiority of blacks. The most public history of the U.S.A, which was founded in lawlessness, brutality, and genocide; which grew rich upon the twin evils of the erasure of the Indian peoples and the torture and gross exploitation of black people; and which has established a global empire upon the active oppression of other indigenous peoples, beginning in Central and South America, confirms the statement that U.S. torture as a state policy and a commonly accepted activity by the larger population is as old as the country itself. The world has been and is presented with an endless variety of kinds of indoctrination language paralleling the Encyclopedia Britannica quotation I repeat above about racist, slave-owning, treaty-breaking, Indian-hunting, imperial expansionist Thomas Jefferson. How, you might ask, is the huge contradiction possible? In the first place the Declaration of Independence was a Declaration of Independence for white, “Saxon” people in the U.S.A., not only from British rule but also from particular instances of British law and legal principle. It did not and was not intended to include black people or native Indians. Not until the “liberty, equality, and fraternity” of the French Revolution – coming after the U.S. War for Independence (incorrectly named “The American Revolution” in the U.S.A.) – did “equality” and “fraternity” genuinely enter the dictionary of peoples in order to be expressed in their claims upon society. Secondly, Thomas Jefferson was an apostle of a system that rejected monarchy and an aristocracy of birth. He believed his position was evidence that what he believed in was democracy. But the system he supported and encouraged was not democracy. It was a system of domination by rich, white beneficiaries of Capitalism, arriving at their power through any brutal exploitation of those they believed lesser others. The beneficiaries of Capitalism then placed in political position those who would maintain the essentially repressive U.S. regime. The U.S. is a single, corporate capitalist society with two political factions: Democrats and Republicans. No competing political group holding any other belief is permitted viable legitimacy in the U.S.A. Economics in the U.S. – strictly controlled by an entrepreneurial oligarchy intricately merged with two apparently democratically elected houses and a president whom John A. Macdonald described as operating a despotism – is unmodified capitalist economics. It operates within a special U.S. definition which allows for rapacious and exploitative treatment of the world and its peoples (as well as the U.S. underclasses) while it utters a consistent rhetoric about the U.S. as leader (in the world) of democracy and justice and equality. By the same token, social and cultural life in the U.S.A. has the quality of having, always and everywhere, to contribute to the power of the state which – as pointed out – is a merged structure of “elected” politicians and corporate capitalists running a class society based upon private riches. Sad as it is to observe, religion, the arts, the culture of ethnic groups, and even those claiming to be in political opposition to governmental power accept as ideology a self-defeating anarchism and individualism that integrates them into the society they apparently wish to change. They “go along” with the U.S. system in order to function. Or they believe the rhetoric used to indoctrinate the population. The “merged structure of ‘elected’ politicians and corporate capitalists” has an additional characteristic which intensifies the picture we have been examining. The military budget in the United States is the largest in the world – indeed, it is larger than the next several national budgets for military expenditures put together. In short, the U.S. is a highly militarized state in which corporate capitalism is hugely into war contracts, war research, and lobbying for activities that contribute to war expenditures. Experiments into forms of torture are only a small corner of U.S. militaristic activity. The U.S. has always, besides, lionized its military heroes , making many of them leaders of the country. Canada has never made a military hero leader of the country. Finally, the U.S. standing army helps to shape U.S. nationalism and chauvinsim towards “we can lick them” kinds of foreign policy. That attitude contributes to the unilateralism that has always been a quality of U.S. behaviour in the world. It contributes, too, to the U.S. belief it can re-model international covenants and customs on the treatment of “the enemy”, prisoners, and non-combatabts to suit its own expansionist interests. While some Canadians praise the U.S. population for rising after much provocation to inhibit the worst elements of U.S. aggression, time passes and U.S. behaviour in the world continues its lawless way. Even Canadians – as we have seen here – are divided about the acceptability of U.S. brutality in the world. Michael Byers and Michael Ignatieff nicely characterize the division. If uncontained lawlessness is not to be set loose among nations, Canadians are going to have to return – at all levels of government and administration – to the best codes of behaviour. They are going to have to return, that is, to international law and covenants controlling the conduct of war and the definitions of torture. And they are going to have to speak loudly for those codes and covenants wherever they can – in alliances, in public forums, and in any legislation to which Canada is a party. [Proofreader's note: this article was edited for spelling and typos on December 28, 2005]

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