By Kelly Jean Cogswell
It's not just the wire-tapping and kidnappings and torture that are undermining Bush's War on Terror, but the fact that his target's all wrong. How effective is it really, chasing down the elusive figures of Bin Laden and al-Qaeda, or the Lashkar-e-Taiba, presumably responsible for the recent attacks in India? Are they our worst enemy?
Their membership, compared to the global population, is absolutely miniscule. Their tactics are banal, and the body count not as high as what their pursuit has cost. Two hundred dead in Mumbai. 2,752 in New York. There are other groups out there killings millions and frankly, these terrorists can't compare. The residents of Mumbai are already showing their disdain by drinking beer at the Leopold Café next to bullet holes and the crater from a grenade.
New Yorkers likewise were stunned for a while after September 11, fighting off nightmares and holding their breath crossing bridges. Dust and ashes in the air, we avoided subways and buses and talked about where we'd meet after a dirty bomb. But pretty soon the city itself eclipsed our fear. The attacks like the attackers have faded away. They're nothing but a rotten dream like the sicarii zealots, Assassins, or Weathermen who had their day in the sun, but are fading fast.
You want terror, you have to go whole hog, and either knock out city after city, or like snipers and movie serial killers, pick off your victims one by one by one by one with such regularity and persistence you create a terrified sense of inevitability. Numbers, in particular, are essential, so potential victims can't shrug off the odds in a fit of optimism. I'd go for 1:1 or at least 1:10.
Maybe you've guessed what I'm talking about, even if this war hasn't been declared, and acknowledged by the United Nations or anybody's State Department, but gets the job done. One half of the population against the other. Men against women. The Gender War.
I hadn't quite thought of violence against women as terrorism until I read Nicholas D. Kristof's New York Times piece about how Pakistani men target women and girls by tossing acid in their faces. Sometimes the girls have just dared to attend school. Sometimes a woman has just registered for a divorce. The damage is immediate, skin and flesh dropping off revealing bone, noses and ears eaten away. If they aren't killed, these women are left gravely deformed, monstrous object lessons of what happens in the case of even minor revolt.
Since 1994, there are 7,800 documented cases of women "deliberately burned, scalded, or subjected to acid attacks, just in the Islamabad area."
This violence -- methodical, perpetual, and backed by a shared creed glorifying masculine dominance to the end of female submission, compliance, fear -- is the classic stuff of terrorism without the annoyances of secret meetings and cells groups, surreptitious fundraising, special channels of communication, or international task forces against them.
I only wondered why Mr. Kristof confined his analysis to the east. We have our own terrorists in the U.S. murdering 1,400 women a year, battering between two to four million, raping hundreds of thousands of all races and classes in an endless struggle for power. The only difference between them and traditional terrorists like the Baader-Mienhof Gang killing victims for ideology and spreading fear, is that there's no need for press release. The message is carved in flesh. Submit or disappear.
Writing this, I realized we don't talk much about "violence against women" anymore. Maybe because feminists are so lame, or because it most often happens in the cesspit of women's own homes. Though even violence against LGBT people and people of color has become less visible since young gay Matthew Shepard was left crucified on a Wyoming fence. And James Byrd dragged behind a pickup truck until his head was ripped from his body for being black.
Maybe it's that September 11 and the horror of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have rendered other slaughters irrelevant, though women are still regularly attacked and killed, and violence is actually climbing again against queers despite our progress in areas like gay marriage.
We need a new War on Terror, eradicating the men that kill women, or make it their mission to climb in their SUV and cruise looking for fags or immigrants to kill like the Sucuzhañay brothers beaten with baseball bats and bottles a couple weeks ago in Brooklyn, leaving José Sucuzhañay dead on Sunday.
The only question is how do you fight back against that violence so deeply embedded in gender? (Most hate-crime perps are male). Do we gender-profile, drag young men like off the street like the CIA in random checkpoints? Send them off to Egypt? Or Syria? Indulge in a little waterboarding? After all, this is war.
Showing posts with label torture. Show all posts
Showing posts with label torture. Show all posts
Tuesday, December 16, 2008
Tuesday, October 21, 2008
Torture: Doing The Dirty Work
By Kelly Jean Cogswell
On June 6th, the last day of the Hillary-Obama battle, fifty-six Democrats in the House of Representatives asked the Attorney General for an immediate investigation into whether Bush and Company were in violation of "the War Crimes Act ... and other U.S. and international laws."
Their letter charged new information had surfaced about top level meetings at the White House specifically approving the use of "enhanced techniques" like waterboarding. "President Bush was aware of and approved of the meetings taking place." "... the Bush administration may have systematically implemented, from the top down, detainee interrogation policies that constitute torture or otherwise violate the law."
As far as I know their request is dead in the water. Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi didn't sign on. Their effort didn't make the front or even last page of the New York Times. I wouldn't have know about it all if I hadn't seen an old Nat Hentoff column in the Village Voice. He's like an anti-torture prophet crying in the wilderness, with a lot less effect. Abu Ghraib was swept under the rug with a few prosecutions of low level grunts, and Guantanamo only comes up when one more disgusted prosecutor resigns over unethical practices in the military tribunals.
Maybe Americans are blase because they've seen James Bond tortured too many times. He stands it easily, escapes, has a cocktail, and saves the world. Or maybe it's that we've tortured before with total impunity. The CIA was so good at it, they spent most of the 70's helping the right-wing governments of Latin America hold back the evil tide of Communism with a few nicely placed electrodes.
In Chile alone we helped Augusto Pinochet murder three thousand lefties, some pursued beyond their borders by death squads from the intelligence services. Thirty thousand or so were tortured with our help.
We Americans now indulge in our own kidnappings, our own disappearances and torture and murders, this time to keep America safe from terrorists. As I sit comfortably in front of my computer there's a man in a cell somewhere, battered and terrified. In fact, there are thousands of them whose excruciating physical pain is carefully redoubled with uncertainty, terror, and solitude. All in the name of my safety. We don't even know where half of them are. Our own security forces have spirited them away to Egypt, Morocco, Syria, Jordan, anywhere they can be tortured without the inconveniences of overstepping American law.
They remind me of those who died particularly horrible deaths on 9/11, trapped in the rubble, talking on cell phones until their batteries died, their voices gradually lost in the darkness, their bodies broken, suffering alone and finally in silence. They died powerless, dehumanized, terrified. For months, their lost faces covered every square inch of telephone pole and mailbox and billboard on First Avenue as relatives begged for information about people who didn't come home after the blast. People just snatched away one morning, a primary election day, under a clear blue sky. Killed by terrorists that never had to look them in the eye.
Torturers are even worse, consciously inflicting horrible suffering, not on faceless masses, but very real prisoners who cry out in real voices begging for pity. These torturers betray an ice-cold degeneration that my country now stands for. They should be locked up, and their criminal commanders tried for treason.
I don't see it happening. As Senator Schumer said, when he was asked about the possibility of bringing Bush to justice for war crimes, "People don't care about that." For getting a blow job in the oval office: national scandal, impeachment. Ditto for partisan spying a la Watergate. For killing and torturing: nada. In fact, shut up. Turn the page. It's a new era with a new President who'll want to start fresh.
For now, justice will require action from abroad. Impunity for Chilean Dictator Augosto Pinochet was only challenged by a judge in Spain, who was investigating the torture and murder of Spanish nationals in Chile. When the British police actually arrested Pinochet ten years ago during a trip to London for back surgery, it was an earthquake, a landmark, one of the first exercises of universal jurisdiction since that was included in the UN Convention on Genocide in 1948. The arrest helped propel The Hague's International Criminal Court into existence in 2002. And everywhere, it pointed the way to justice.
In 2005, an Italian court issued arrest warrants for twenty-five CIA agents responsible for snatching an Egyptian cleric off the streets of Milan and flying him to Egypt where he was tortured during interrogation. In 2007, a Munich court issued warrants for similar reasons. Also that year, former defense secretary Donald Rumsfeld beat a quick retreat from France when his visit there inspired a torture suit against him.
Still, it would be better if we washed our own dirty laundry. There's plenty of evidence, just not the will to risk our delicate hands in that filth.
On June 6th, the last day of the Hillary-Obama battle, fifty-six Democrats in the House of Representatives asked the Attorney General for an immediate investigation into whether Bush and Company were in violation of "the War Crimes Act ... and other U.S. and international laws."
Their letter charged new information had surfaced about top level meetings at the White House specifically approving the use of "enhanced techniques" like waterboarding. "President Bush was aware of and approved of the meetings taking place." "... the Bush administration may have systematically implemented, from the top down, detainee interrogation policies that constitute torture or otherwise violate the law."
As far as I know their request is dead in the water. Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi didn't sign on. Their effort didn't make the front or even last page of the New York Times. I wouldn't have know about it all if I hadn't seen an old Nat Hentoff column in the Village Voice. He's like an anti-torture prophet crying in the wilderness, with a lot less effect. Abu Ghraib was swept under the rug with a few prosecutions of low level grunts, and Guantanamo only comes up when one more disgusted prosecutor resigns over unethical practices in the military tribunals.
Maybe Americans are blase because they've seen James Bond tortured too many times. He stands it easily, escapes, has a cocktail, and saves the world. Or maybe it's that we've tortured before with total impunity. The CIA was so good at it, they spent most of the 70's helping the right-wing governments of Latin America hold back the evil tide of Communism with a few nicely placed electrodes.
In Chile alone we helped Augusto Pinochet murder three thousand lefties, some pursued beyond their borders by death squads from the intelligence services. Thirty thousand or so were tortured with our help.
We Americans now indulge in our own kidnappings, our own disappearances and torture and murders, this time to keep America safe from terrorists. As I sit comfortably in front of my computer there's a man in a cell somewhere, battered and terrified. In fact, there are thousands of them whose excruciating physical pain is carefully redoubled with uncertainty, terror, and solitude. All in the name of my safety. We don't even know where half of them are. Our own security forces have spirited them away to Egypt, Morocco, Syria, Jordan, anywhere they can be tortured without the inconveniences of overstepping American law.
They remind me of those who died particularly horrible deaths on 9/11, trapped in the rubble, talking on cell phones until their batteries died, their voices gradually lost in the darkness, their bodies broken, suffering alone and finally in silence. They died powerless, dehumanized, terrified. For months, their lost faces covered every square inch of telephone pole and mailbox and billboard on First Avenue as relatives begged for information about people who didn't come home after the blast. People just snatched away one morning, a primary election day, under a clear blue sky. Killed by terrorists that never had to look them in the eye.
Torturers are even worse, consciously inflicting horrible suffering, not on faceless masses, but very real prisoners who cry out in real voices begging for pity. These torturers betray an ice-cold degeneration that my country now stands for. They should be locked up, and their criminal commanders tried for treason.
I don't see it happening. As Senator Schumer said, when he was asked about the possibility of bringing Bush to justice for war crimes, "People don't care about that." For getting a blow job in the oval office: national scandal, impeachment. Ditto for partisan spying a la Watergate. For killing and torturing: nada. In fact, shut up. Turn the page. It's a new era with a new President who'll want to start fresh.
For now, justice will require action from abroad. Impunity for Chilean Dictator Augosto Pinochet was only challenged by a judge in Spain, who was investigating the torture and murder of Spanish nationals in Chile. When the British police actually arrested Pinochet ten years ago during a trip to London for back surgery, it was an earthquake, a landmark, one of the first exercises of universal jurisdiction since that was included in the UN Convention on Genocide in 1948. The arrest helped propel The Hague's International Criminal Court into existence in 2002. And everywhere, it pointed the way to justice.
In 2005, an Italian court issued arrest warrants for twenty-five CIA agents responsible for snatching an Egyptian cleric off the streets of Milan and flying him to Egypt where he was tortured during interrogation. In 2007, a Munich court issued warrants for similar reasons. Also that year, former defense secretary Donald Rumsfeld beat a quick retreat from France when his visit there inspired a torture suit against him.
Still, it would be better if we washed our own dirty laundry. There's plenty of evidence, just not the will to risk our delicate hands in that filth.
Tuesday, December 11, 2007
Embodying Virtue in America
By Kelly Jean Cogswell
Is anybody else disturbed by how race is playing out in this election? -- the messianic message sent out by Obama's team that because of genetics he's got some third world and cross-cultural insight, as if his black skin alone were a bridge. Maybe it is. Maybe not. And god knows we could use one. In terms of race, the U.S. moves one step forward, three back, as they say.
Sure, queers know best about homophobia, women about misogyny, people of color about racism. But does that suffering give each person of color, each woman, each queer some special insight, some gift? Does it make us better? Is that experience enough to turn us into experts on how to extract the nation from its divisions? No, not by itself.
Bigotry is just as likely to leave us wounded and embittered as enlightened. Some turn the pain inward. There are plenty of queer homophobes -- most of them in the U.S. Congress. And Africa and Latin America are full of men like Robert Mugabe who with his dark skin hasn't built any bridges at all between white and blacks, rich and poor. In fact he burns bridges as fast as he can, along with the houses of the opposition, usually with troublesome black dissidents inside. Skin only gets you so far.
The election of a black president in the U.S. would be historic, an important symbol of what people of color can accomplish, and maybe it will build something, a footpath, maybe, but god only knows if it will give him the good sense to walk over it or not. Because race doesn't say anything about Obama himself. That kind of biological determinism, thinking race or sexual identity or gender gives you any qualities at all is the flip side of all the 'isms. In fact, it reinforces them.
In the Democratic primary, besides the question of skin, there's the related issue of sheer beauty. Obama apparently embodies every good thing in that glorious, virtuous face girls shriek over. White ones especially (polls show) are creaming their pants at rallies for the handsome guy in a way that reminds me of those erotic neocolonial French films that are always set on a yacht or some tropical island with drums beating so a white woman can screw her black stallion under the palm trees or up against a mast.
Are they screaming for Obama the candidate, or some erotic fantasy? It may help him win the Democratic nomination, but what effect will this tactic have in the long run? Another black man reduced to his body? Will they turn on him when he fails, as they all do, will they blame his race?
In the U.S., we speak incessantly of faith, but we're more literal-minded than ever. Virtue embodies itself in beauty, potential in skin. The CIA apparently only believes information, "intelligence," when it's bought with blood and screams.
What's a dumpy, matronly Hillary to do in that milieu? She stuffs her significant ass in tailored suits, wears her flaws out there like wrinkles. Experience is etched in her body, when we only want the brand new because it resembles perfection.
As a voter, I'm beginning to lean towards her, like I'd prefer to buy an apartment, if I had the money, that needed work. You can see all the existing problems that haven't been hidden under plaster and paint.
And unlike Obama, she can't pull off the hopeful ingénue. Time has made her cautious. A real politician. She splits hairs and prevaricates, but she has her bottom lines. Saudi Arabia's an important U.S. ally, but a couple weeks ago she very publicly condemned the rape of a woman there and the victim's subsequent sentencing to jail and lashes. After all, she shouldn't have been in a car with a man not her husband or brother. She shouldn't have been out at all.
Hillary didn't buy it, didn't make one gesture to cross-cultural understanding. Every canyon isn't an occasion to build a bridge. Sometimes we must refuse to understand. Torture, for instance, is always wrong, at American or Libyan or Saudi hands. Kindness and sympathy can't wash away blood.
I don't care if Hillary equivocates about how quickly she'll get us out of Iraq, or a dozen other things. Lately, I prefer calculating to hopeful, in its broadest sense. It's a dangerous, complicated world. As long as she's on my side, let's send forth a wolf to meet the wolves.
Is anybody else disturbed by how race is playing out in this election? -- the messianic message sent out by Obama's team that because of genetics he's got some third world and cross-cultural insight, as if his black skin alone were a bridge. Maybe it is. Maybe not. And god knows we could use one. In terms of race, the U.S. moves one step forward, three back, as they say.
Sure, queers know best about homophobia, women about misogyny, people of color about racism. But does that suffering give each person of color, each woman, each queer some special insight, some gift? Does it make us better? Is that experience enough to turn us into experts on how to extract the nation from its divisions? No, not by itself.
Bigotry is just as likely to leave us wounded and embittered as enlightened. Some turn the pain inward. There are plenty of queer homophobes -- most of them in the U.S. Congress. And Africa and Latin America are full of men like Robert Mugabe who with his dark skin hasn't built any bridges at all between white and blacks, rich and poor. In fact he burns bridges as fast as he can, along with the houses of the opposition, usually with troublesome black dissidents inside. Skin only gets you so far.
The election of a black president in the U.S. would be historic, an important symbol of what people of color can accomplish, and maybe it will build something, a footpath, maybe, but god only knows if it will give him the good sense to walk over it or not. Because race doesn't say anything about Obama himself. That kind of biological determinism, thinking race or sexual identity or gender gives you any qualities at all is the flip side of all the 'isms. In fact, it reinforces them.
In the Democratic primary, besides the question of skin, there's the related issue of sheer beauty. Obama apparently embodies every good thing in that glorious, virtuous face girls shriek over. White ones especially (polls show) are creaming their pants at rallies for the handsome guy in a way that reminds me of those erotic neocolonial French films that are always set on a yacht or some tropical island with drums beating so a white woman can screw her black stallion under the palm trees or up against a mast.
Are they screaming for Obama the candidate, or some erotic fantasy? It may help him win the Democratic nomination, but what effect will this tactic have in the long run? Another black man reduced to his body? Will they turn on him when he fails, as they all do, will they blame his race?
In the U.S., we speak incessantly of faith, but we're more literal-minded than ever. Virtue embodies itself in beauty, potential in skin. The CIA apparently only believes information, "intelligence," when it's bought with blood and screams.
What's a dumpy, matronly Hillary to do in that milieu? She stuffs her significant ass in tailored suits, wears her flaws out there like wrinkles. Experience is etched in her body, when we only want the brand new because it resembles perfection.
As a voter, I'm beginning to lean towards her, like I'd prefer to buy an apartment, if I had the money, that needed work. You can see all the existing problems that haven't been hidden under plaster and paint.
And unlike Obama, she can't pull off the hopeful ingénue. Time has made her cautious. A real politician. She splits hairs and prevaricates, but she has her bottom lines. Saudi Arabia's an important U.S. ally, but a couple weeks ago she very publicly condemned the rape of a woman there and the victim's subsequent sentencing to jail and lashes. After all, she shouldn't have been in a car with a man not her husband or brother. She shouldn't have been out at all.
Hillary didn't buy it, didn't make one gesture to cross-cultural understanding. Every canyon isn't an occasion to build a bridge. Sometimes we must refuse to understand. Torture, for instance, is always wrong, at American or Libyan or Saudi hands. Kindness and sympathy can't wash away blood.
I don't care if Hillary equivocates about how quickly she'll get us out of Iraq, or a dozen other things. Lately, I prefer calculating to hopeful, in its broadest sense. It's a dangerous, complicated world. As long as she's on my side, let's send forth a wolf to meet the wolves.
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