Mark LeVine says that torture has been used by the United States for years and Barack Obama’s pledge to desist must be matched by getting others to follow suit
THE debate over the release of George W Bush’s administration’s “torture memos” has been characterised by vitriol and catharsis in equal measure. All sides seem to assume, however, that the use of torture was unprecedented in American history.
Barack Obama probably shares this view. Why else would he argue that investigating Bush administration policies would be tantamount to spending “time and energy laying blame for the past”?
However, when it comes to torture, the past has been repeated many times. On the United States government’s own admission, torture, including water-boarding, has been used against captured enemies at least since the 1898-1902 Philippine War. And 141 cases were documented in Vietnam alone.
Bill Clinton, who opposed the Vietnam War, effectively authorised torture during his presidency when he created the secret rendition programme in 1995 – one purpose of which was clearly to enable the interrogation of suspected terrorists outside the jurisdiction of American law.
When senior US military officers came together to watch Gillo Pontecorvo’s film The Battle of Algiers in preparation for the 2003 invasion of Iraq, they are unlikely to have been shocked by the opening scene in which a captured Algerian independence fighter is tortured by French officers into giving up his comrades.
The message was clear: running an empire is a “brutal and dirty business” – as President Lyndon Johnson described Vietnam in 1965 – and torture comes with the territory. One wonders how many of the officers watching The Battle of Algiers knew what their CIA colleagues were doing to al Qaida suspects at that very moment.
Torture is hardly the only example of excessive deployment of American power against its enemies. Not counting the two world wars and the Korean War, the US has invaded a host of countries during the past 100 years, killing millions of civilians in the process. Equally deadly has been the military support and training which the Americans have long provided to many of the world’s most brutal regimes and insurgencies.
All this blood has been spilled to “secure our freedom”, as every US President since the Second World War has described it. Given this history, why are Americans so focused on the torture of a few dozen suspected terrorists?
The torture debate should be easy to resolve. We admit that torture is wrong, solemnly declare not to do it again and, in President Obama’s words, “move on confidently” with the knowledge that we’ve learned from our mistakes.
In fact, we can do no such thing. By focusing exclusively on the abuse of a relatively small number of detainees, we avoid confronting the reality that violence has always been among the most important tools for securing the power and resources necessary to maintain the “American way of life”.
We may no longer resort to torture (until the next time we do). Yet we continue to give billions of dollars in aid to governments, such as those in Morocco and Pakistan – that systematically use torture, sometimes at our behest. We say we support freedom and democracy, yet we continue to support governments that have no intention of providing much of either to the people under their control.
We support economic development, yet have never demanded our friends in the Middle East share their nations’ wealth more equitably with those they rule over.
We do this when we know full well that poverty, corruption, violence and authoritarianism are the primary ingredients from which a new generation of terrorists is produced. We do it because, by and large, we have benefited from the global political and economic system the violence has helped maintain.
We are slowly coming to understand the environmental costs of the now globalised American way of life. But the political costs of the policies that have secured it are still lost on most Americans – leaders and citizens alike. One of the Obama administration’s most pressing foreign policy challenges, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, is a good example of how the violence we have enabled will frustrate important policy goals.
Most policy-makers and commentators assume that the Israeli occupation or the Palestinian resistance to it are the main obstacles to peace. This narrow focus leads them to think that the mediation of regional allies such as Egypt and Jordan is crucial in reducing violence and moving the two sides back towards negotiations.
And so Obama’s Middle East envoy, George Mitchell, recently declared that: “A comprehensive peace in the Middle East will be possible only as a result of the leadership of Egypt, President Mubarak and the whole [Egyptian] government.”
Hosni Mubarak is a ruthless autocrat who regularly jails and tortures pro-democracy activists in order to ensure the continued dominance of Egypt’s political and economic elite. He has no interest in peace. His only concern is to continue riding the US gravy train to secure billions of dollars in aid and the political support that enable his hugely unpopular regime to remain in power.
If the Obama administration is naive enough to believe that Mubarak or his autocratic counterparts across the region will of their own volition change such a profitable status quo, the chances for peace during Obama’s tenure in the White House are slim indeed.
Peace between Israelis and Palestinians will only come when the US is willing to take on Mubarak ,as well as Israel Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh. Peace will only come when we demand that all the governments in the Middle East stop violating the most basic human, political and civil rights of their people. We must tell them to allow freedom, democracy and equitable development to flourish or forget about American backing.
Unless Obama’s declaration that the US will never again use torture is matched by a commitment to stop engaging in and supporting violence more broadly, peace in the Middle East – and with it America’s quest for a better relationship with the people of the Muslim world – will remain beyond our grasp.
Mark LeVine is the author of Impossible Peace: Israel/Palestine Since 1989 published by Zed Press
