The Rhetoric of Torture

A Fragment from an unpublished paper dated April 19, 2013

Postscript: The Rhetoric of Torture

Presidential uses of the word torture were meant to evoke a warrant for the Bush administration’s transition of the ‘war on terror’ from Afghanistan to Iraq. In the years 2002-2003 President Bush asserted that Saddam Hussein was a torturer in nearly every public appearance. Likewise, that the war had shut down Saddam’s torture chambers was a reference made by Bush during his 2004 presidential campaign in nearly every campaign speech. The zenith of this rhetoric against torture came June 26th 2004 when he asserts that ‘Freedom from torture is an inalienable human right’. This left a queasy feeling for proponents of human rights for whom such a statement came as a victory. For the world he claimed status as watchdog, while in the same speech he seemed to distort, if not downplay U.S. human right violations. Referring not to the torture, but to ‘the abuses’ at Abu Ghraib Prison, such institutional remorse was disingenuous: “these acts were wrong”.

Anti-Torture Rhetoric, the appeal to Human Rights:

Search for a Prime Text

Arguably, one might consider as a primary text for the reasoning in a source meant to reach United States citizens as a whole, rather than in a text of public record addressed to a representative body or as often was the case during the war, limited communication to a Senate committee. In fact it is not obvious just what of the multiple texts are appropriate to our criterion. The President widely traveled, and everywhere he went he left a trail of anti-torture rhetoric in 2002-2004. The consistency of his remarks is the one binding aspect of what political philosophers have called ‘the multiple publics”. The weekly radio addresses given by President Bush related anti-torture sentiment in the most urbane way. From speeches given in September of 2002 he then gave the practiced radio version: “The Iraqi regime practices the rape of women, as a method of intimidation, and the torture of dissenters and their children.” He may have been advised not to speak on the radio in the way he had at the Denver luncheon: “This man is a dictator who tortures and rapes women”. It was a pattern. The next radio address he targets Saddam who he claims: “ordered the torture of children, and instituted the systematic rape of the wives and daughters of his political opponents.” It had been a personal attack the evening before, “This is a man who continues to torture people in his own country who disagree with him.”

The public record of campaign speeches differs greatly from the public record of the State of the Union address. As Commander and Chief President Bush gave an account of the reasons for which U.S. armies must prepare for war. The last of such public forum to which he exposed himself in 2003, the text is for these reasons the primary evidence given directly to the public from the bearer holding Office of the President. In which he states:

“International human rights groups have cataloged other methods used in the torture chambers of Iraq: electric shock, burning with hot irons, dripping acid on the skin, mutilation with electric drills, cutting out tongues, and rape. If this is not evil, then evil has no meaning.”

A further reason to call this the primary text is that he is more concise the following year, though the echo of the human rights appeal is audible: “Iraq's torture chambers would still be filled with victims, terrified and innocent.”

Why should there be war? Torture is at least one reason given (implying human right’s reasoning). In the former context (Jan. 2003), the reason is given to support preparation for war. War support is then sought en medias res (Jan. 2004), re-asserting what ‘would still be filled’ and ironically would still be filled, namely the torture chambers of Abu Ghraib.

Outbreak of Unreason: Abu Ghraib and the ‘Torture Memos’

The reasoning of human rights used to justify war on Iraq came into starkest ‘relief’ when the American public glimpsed for the first time another set of reasons: the cause was involuntary on the part of the Bush administration for they only surfaced from memos which “leaked” in April, 2004.

These were the eponymous ‘torture memos’ which included from the Office of Legal Counsel a memo of August 1, 2002 written by Jay Bybee, which approved of treatment of detainees held by the CIA such as the treatment later named ‘waterboarding’. The memos stung many, including Senator of Vermont, Patrick Leahy. As he repeated during the 2010 hearing before the Judiciary committee, Chairman Leahy was particularly upset with the Bush administration for having withheld such documents from the Senate.

Presumably, the Senate had requested all pertinent information regarding Bybee. As implied by Chairman Leahy, the Senate was acting without full knowledge, having no access to these memos, when it unknowingly went on to confirm Bybee to a lifetime term as a Federal Judge in the ninth district court.

The United States public was made aware of the prison Abu Ghraib in Iraq, and its prisoners April 27, 2004. But that public did not entertain on their televisions the interviews given to Arab media by President Bush. Instead, that public heard from him in May, June, July, August and September into October a daily refrain. Bush was running for a second term in office and under scrutiny for his conduct as Commander and Chief, repeating a line from the State of the Union address he gave in 2003. “International human rights groups have cataloged other methods used in the torture chambers of Iraq: electric shock, burning with hot irons, dripping acid on the skin, mutilation with electric drills, cutting out tongues, and rape. If this is not evil, then evil has no meaning.”

Moreover, he echoed this defense of ongoing war, stating in the State of the Union address of 2004: “Iraq's torture chambers would still be filled with victims, terrified and innocent.”

As stated above, revelations of treatment at Abu Ghraib did not prevent Bush from campaigning as torture abolitionist. With his primary justification for war in 2004 being the phrases repeated since the years before: In 2002: wives and mothers of political opponents have been systematically raped as a method of intimidation, and political prisoners have been forced to watch their own children being tortured.” In 2003:“Who can possibly think that the world would be better off with Saddam Hussein still in power? Surely not the dissidents who would be in his prisons or end up in his mass graves. Surely not the men and women who would fill Saddam's torture chamber or rape rooms.”  

Ten years since, citizens may still find occasion to assess the President’s claim in June 2004 that ‘Freedom from torture is an inalienable right’.   Disagreement has surfaced  whether it is necessary to set up a truth and reconciliation committee. Questions left unanswered are whether the United States has not retained the right to torture. This week, 22-25 April 2013, Khalid Sheik Mohammed will be tried at a military tribunal in Guantanamo rather than at a Federal court in the U.S.; this confirms doubt of the extent to which the President will implement Supreme court decisions Rasul v. Bush, Obed v. Bush, Hamdi v. Rumsfeld, Hamdan v. Rumsfeld, Boumediene v. Obama. The executive order to close GITMO within a year proved to be a political gains, yet like Bush beforehand, President Obama claims the difficulties of transferring detainees are too great. Hunger strikes by the detainees have raised the question whether indefinite detention has caused anguish on the order of torture. Another disagreement about torture is the way the international community ought to respond.  

President Obama has moved international opinion on whether torture by a regime warrants sanctions. The proposal for sanctions made by Human Rights Watch to the United Nations Security Council came in March 2011. In response, the President issued an Executive order April 29, 2011 expanding the scope of the International Emergency Economic Powers Act and the National Emergencies Act. Then in a letter to the Congress the President makes the affirmation that the Syrian government’s use of torture is one reason that warrants sanctions. He makes this case in a series of statements through the summer and presents this argument in September to the UN General Assembly. “As we meet here today, men and women and children are being tortured, detained, and murdered by the Syrian regime.” Having drawn out the ominous parallel we can propose greater scrutiny to the purpose for which anti-torture rhetoric has re-surfaced.

However often President Bush insisted on torture, we cannot take seriously the notion that torture was a cause for the war.  

“One thing there can’t be skepticism about...”

“Dictators in Iraq and Syria promised the restoration of national honor, a return to ancient glories. They've left instead a legacy of torture, oppression, misery, and ruin.”

--President of the U.S.

Last year, the U.N. Commission on Human Rights found that Iraq continues to commit extremely grave violations of human rights and that the regime's repression is all-pervasive. Tens of thousands of political opponents and ordinary citizens have been subjected to arbitrary arrest and imprisonment, summary execution, and torture by beating and burning, electric shock, starvation, mutilation, and rape. Wives are tortured in front of their husbands, children in the presence of their parents, and all of these horrors concealed from the world by the apparatus of a totalitarian state. --George W. Bush: "Address to the United Nations General Assembly

in New York City," September 12, 2002.

One of the classic premises of International Relations is that the foreign policy of governments often aims to unite the citizens, otherwise in domestic turmoil (grief too, in the case of 9-11). Generally, terrorism attacks take an economic toll, as Fernanda Llussa and Jose Tavares (2011) have depicted below according to type of terrorist attack:

Fig. 1. Types of terrorism and aggregate costs-fixed effects estimates.

Existential Economic Rationale

The motive of this section is to find what Fr. David Hollenbach wrote of in the context of a discussion of pluralism, advocating for a virtue of “intellectual solidarity”. One may infer from my initial use of the letter by al Hasan Moqbel a breach of the nation-sympathy-contract. The problem is to create a consensus of sympathy--or shared regard--that might genuinely bear the reality of suffering together.

Case Study: Egypt

Torture, to be sure, was not a ‘cause’ of the revolution, but rather one of the ‘catalysts’ which precipitated the long list of Egyptian grievances (poverty, corruption, inequality, restriction of liberties, and police brutality) by bringing the confrontation with the regime onto an almost existential level, where the tortured body made public epitomised an ultimate form of negation of life.      

Thus, Luca Mavelli attributes the cause of the 2011 revolution to the shared political imagination created when a multiplier effect generated by the blogosphere transformed an image of a victim killed by police brutality into an icon of resistance. 80,000 viewers revived a nameless victim, and the face of Khaled Said became to Egyptians a son, brother and friend. The recognition of his tortured body in this way configured a political symbol for what the people suffered in oppression.

Mavelli accounts for the systematic use of torture under the regime of Mubarak with a an eye to the critical socio-economic factors the country faced:: 40 percent earning under $2.00 a day in absolute poverty, illiteracy rates reaching 30 percent, even as 90 percent of the population were youths. Prisons quadrupled in size, while numbers held without charge for more than a year surpassed 20,000.

Measuring the Response to Terror

What can be seen by economic measurement is to be understood as ‘c’ conscience argued for above. William Cavanaugh helps us to understand the concrete and contextual ecclesial dimension of the real body of Christ. By helping us to see the real body of Christ economic analysis performs the role of conscience to inflict realization of remorse. The task of theologian is to find the “C” conscience of a true encounter with the risen Lord. For this we are summoned, first, by the immediacy of our neighbor conjoined to ourselves in conflict with the enemy. The “assembly” configures the response to terror in their everyday lives especially, therefore, as a survival. For existence is at hand in order to love.

Economic analysis of impact from 9-11 found quantitative expression for the felt-knowledge of ‘discipline’ they experienced from al-Qaida.  “The total physical capital loss was estimated to be $21.6 billion and the lifetime earnings loss was estimated to be $7.8 billion, yielding a total estimated loss of $29.4 billion ($2001).” (Bram, Haughwout & Orr, 2009).

It is worth remembering that in 2002 and in 2009 financial markets were in crises. The crises was not more than short term setback for the wealthiest as they grew wealthier during the decade, but the overall picture for the poor worsened in the United States. Population grew from 143,882 million in 2000 to 157,244 million in 2010 with projections 163,538 million in 2015, Meanwhile more people reduced their oil consumption as in 2010 energy use slowed to proportion levels of 1968 that is, down to 7,224.8 from 8,056.8 kg oil per capita in 2000. Comparing U.S. civilian employment levels of 2000 and 2010 it fell from 71.9 percent to 63.9 percent for men and from 57.5 percent to 53.6 percent for women. Comparing the years 2000 and 2011, the number of families of all races below the poverty line rose from 6,400,000 to 9,497,000 including an increase of about 700 million black families. As 5 million more families lived in poverty, unemployment levels of 9.3 percent in 2009 reduced to 8.1 percent in 2012. 46 million people per month received nutrition assistance during 2012 for a total of 74 billion dollars in annual benefits. For example in Massachusetts 86.638 percent of all eligible people were receiving these benefits and 66.414 percent of working poor received them. These benefits generated less than 25 percent of the sales at farmers markets linked. Meanwhile the net stock of Federal Defense assets in current dollars increased comparing the years 2000 to 2010 from 0.704 trillion to 1.307 trillion. While military expenditures nearly doubled, so did the total U.S. Official Development Assistance (ODA) which rose from 7,404.2 million dollars in 2000 to 18,901.15 million dollars in 2007. From 2007-2009 U.S. ODA donations were on average 58.54 million dollars for climate change mitigation. This increased to 636 million in 2010! Not so dramatic, but also a clear indication, during the same period U.S. donations for biodiversity averaged 209.80 millions and jumped to 255 millions in 2010. For 2011, U.S. ODA reached 30.75 billion dollars. For 2008 Iraq received 3,246 millions dollars and Afghanistan received 1,816 million dollars from the U.S..  For 2011 Afghanistan received 2,991 millions dollars and Iraq 1,985 millions dollars. Total Global ODA increased from 80 billion dollars in 2000 to 129 billion dollars in 2010, though it fell short from donor pledges by 19 billion dollars .  30 billion dollars is pledged under the Copenhagen Accord including 7.5 billion from the U.S. to help developing countries “adapt to and mitigate climate change.”

The Presidents each made a similar use of a rhetoric of torture to avert attention from this turmoil. In doing so they also emulated the author of the Constitution. According to military historian Major W.W. Harney, USMC economic depression preceded the War of 1812. President Madison was facing desultory results of an ill-designed Embargo, and summoned the U.S. to war. He found most useful in making propaganda the fact that a relatively inconsequential raid by the Shawnee Tecumseh was made possible by ammunition trade with the British. Beating the war drums for what would be called the second war of independence, James Madison condemned the unscrupulous King, who ”against the feelings sacred to humanity” gave license to ruthless acts--”carnage and torture”----and, claiming moral superiority,  “in the face of our example”.  

Prior to war in Iraq, among the given reasons in support of just cause, Bush cited torture. He often slipped into ad hominem: referring to “Saddam Hussein's torture” when repeatedly pointed out how Saddam’s regime carried out torture. Or perhaps the President made no mistake. A year after signing the Authorization for Use of Military Force Against Iraq Resolution of 2002, he said:

“I watched the videos of the Mukhabarat, the intelligence services, interrogate, torture, abuse, and execute people day after day. I watched them tie grenades to the necks of people or stuff grenades in the pockets of people as they interviewed them and then detonate those grenades and watch the people disappear. I watched a video of Saddam sitting in an office and allowing two Doberman Pinschers to eat alive a general, a military general because he did not trust his loyalty.”

The torture issue helped him sidestepping questions of counter-intelligence, “We care deeply about those who dissent and then are tortured, about those who express an opinion other than what the dictator thinks and are raped and mutilated. The condition of the Iraqi citizen is on our mind and in our hearts.” The torture issue, helped him out of questions about the economy. Interviewed after the meeting of the National Economic Council he put focus on Saddam: “He tortures people. He brutalizes them. He could care less about human condition inside of Iraq.” The move was similar in his address to leaders of Enterprise: “Today [Iraqis] live in scarcity and fear under a dictator who has brought them nothing but war and misery and torture.” In a news conference March 6th he said, “Anything they choose will be better than the misery and torture and murder they have known under Saddam Hussein. ...He tortures his own people. ...This is a society, Ron, who—which has been decimated by his murderous ways, his torture.” On the radio March 15th he repeated the claim about human rights groups from the State of the Union Address, “We know from human rights groups that dissidents in Iraq are tortured, imprisoned, and sometimes just disappear; their hands, feet, and tongues are cut off; their eyes are gouged out; and female relatives are raped in their presence.”  Then March 17th, War is to the rescue, he claims, as a forty-eight hour ultimatum is announced:: “...[N]o more torture chambers and rape rooms. The tyrant will soon be gone. The day of your liberation is near. Does Bush feel guilt? --No, this is about deposing Saddam: a Villain, a Tyrant,“ ...somebody who has stayed in power through mutilation and rape and torture.”

A year later, no confirming evidence of weapons of mass destruction was a major blow to support for the war. Even warhawks had fatigue, if not skepticism. To which President Bush replied:

I think there's going to be skepticism until people find out there was, in fact, a weapons of mass destruction program. One thing there can't be skepticism about is the fact that this guy was torturous and brutal on the Iraqi people. I mean, he brutalized them; he tortured them; he destroyed them; he cut out their tongues when they dissented.

With irony, the rhetoric of torture has a long history, for barbarians we are not. As a principle established by General George Washington, when he prohibited the torture of captives because it would bring, in his words, "shame, disgrace and ruin" to our nation.” Washington was not in isolation with this stance.