ominous parallels
I’m not so naive as to think my country wouldn’t (or doesn’t) resort to a whole slew of undemocratic practices if it thinks it can get away with it, either within US borders or outside. That, no matter what party is in the administration. The only surprising thing is that anyone is surprised by the news from Abu Ghraib, or from the prisons in Afghanistan, or about the overzealous use of the Patriot Act within the US.
That said, something has caught my attention, as I get news filtering down to the southern cone, far from where the American soldiers and politicians plan their tortures and secret detentions. It’s that as I’ve been studying the most recent Argentine military dictatorship, and I’ve noticed an uncanny similarity to the current United States regime. Or is it vice-versa?
That a former US intelligence official would use the same language, a quarter of a century later, is disheartening: “There was a debate after 9/11 about how to make people disappear.” [New York Times, May 13, 2004].
Torture and secret detention were necessary, argued the Argentine military, because they were fighting a different kind of war, a “dirty war”. Instead of a conventional enemy, the new enemy used terrorist tactics and lived next door. In that context, extracting information from sources through torture was a necessary evil, and became common practice. The military also attempted to argue, somewhat contradictorily, that international conventions on rules of war did not apply to the detainees — defining them not as “belligerent forces” but as “bands of delinquents”.
This rationalization was in large part accepted by the public, as evidenced by the oft-repeated explanation, “it must be for something,” intoned each time another neighbor was carted away by the police. But coupled with the military government’s complete impunity of action, it allowed broad use of the “anti-terrorist” tactics, for tens of thousands of cases of people who had never committed a single violent act. Union leaders, priest or nuns who worked with the poor, or even family members denouncing the abduction of a loved one — any of these “extremists” were handled the same way as violent terrorists. All in the name of public safety. In the interests of the nation.
What can we learn from these parallels? First of all, I should point out that the circumstances are very different. To compare American treatment of some hundreds of foreign prisoners, even including possible violation of the rights of its own citizens (Arab-Americans, particularly), to Argentine case of large-scale kidnapping, torture, and murder of a sizeable portion of the population, is to compare two situations of qualitative and quantitatively very different scale.
That said, there is an ominous similarity in the attitudes of the governments in question. To argue that a particular goal requires the suspension of a normal regard for human dignity is a dangerous path.
In 1976, the government in question was a relatively small country in the southern cone of South America. Today the government that attempts to legitimate torture is the same that purports to spread democracy throughout the world. I think there’s something to be worried about.
That said, something has caught my attention, as I get news filtering down to the southern cone, far from where the American soldiers and politicians plan their tortures and secret detentions. It’s that as I’ve been studying the most recent Argentine military dictatorship, and I’ve noticed an uncanny similarity to the current United States regime. Or is it vice-versa?
Systematic torture of prisoners
In Argentina, even before the military government fell, reports described in painful detail the torture techniques used in secret detention centers. Despite the military’s attempts to blame the “excesses” on a few overzealous underlings, it quickly became clear that the torture was standard practice in concentration camps across the country.Many detainees at Guantánamo Bay were regularly subjected to harsh and coercive treatment, several people who worked in the prison said in recent interviews, despite longstanding assertions by military officials that such treatment had not occurred except in some isolated cases. New York Times, October 16, 2004
By September 2004, four months after the Abu Ghraib photographs came to light, the administration’s theory that the problem was restricted to Abu Ghraib and a few aberrant soldiers had been debunked. Indeed, on 8 September 2004, eight retired US generals and admirals wrote to President Bush noting that “no fewer than a hundred criminal, military, and administrative inquiries have been launched into apparently improper or unlawful US practices related on detention and interrogation. Given the range of individuals and locations involved in these reports, it is simply no longer possible to view these allegations as a few instances of an isolated problem”. A day after this letter, the Senate Armed Services Committee was told that there might have been as many as 100 “disappearances” in US custody in Iraq, prisoners hidden from the ICRC [International Committee of the Red Cross] at the behest of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA). [Amnesty International Report]
Prisoners held in secret, without due process
In Argentina, armed groups of people (often reported in the press as being “disguised as police officers") would pull up in front of a house, often even in broad daylight, take by force the occupant and take him or her to a clandestine detention center. Sometimes they would be returned, without explanation, but often friends and family members would never hear anything from them again. Their names would not figure on lists of prisoners, and when families filed legally to get information about the detainees, the government would deny that it had taken them prisoner. These detainees were known as the “disappeared”.That a former US intelligence official would use the same language, a quarter of a century later, is disheartening: “There was a debate after 9/11 about how to make people disappear.” [New York Times, May 13, 2004].
Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld, acting at the request of George J. Tenet, the director of central intelligence, ordered military officials in Iraq last November to hold a man suspected of being a senior Iraqi terrorist at a high-level detention center there but not list him on the prison’s rolls, senior Pentagon and intelligence officials said Wednesday.
This prisoner and other “ghost detainees” were hidden largely to prevent the International Committee of the Red Cross from monitoring their treatment, and to avoid disclosing their location to an enemy, officials said. New York Times, June 16, 2004
This prisoner and other “ghost detainees” were hidden largely to prevent the International Committee of the Red Cross from monitoring their treatment, and to avoid disclosing their location to an enemy, officials said. New York Times, June 16, 2004
In October 2003, the American Civil Liberties Union and other US organizations filed a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request seeking information on the treatment and interrogation of detainees in US custody, and the transfer of detainees to countries known to use torture. Eleven months later, US District Judge Alvin Hellerstein noted that the government had, “with small exception”, produced no information. [Amnesty International Report]
Torture and secret detention justified by a “war on terrorism”
Before its last military coup, Argentina lived years of political upheaval and violence. In the years leading to the coup, a number of violent revolutionary organizations, and later the right-wing semi-military squads that spring up in response, helped create a climate of fear. The military government exploited the public’s eagerness to live in a world not marked by violence. But the security the military brought was a false one, and the relative calm on the streets was belied by the unheard screams of tortured fellow citizens.Torture and secret detention were necessary, argued the Argentine military, because they were fighting a different kind of war, a “dirty war”. Instead of a conventional enemy, the new enemy used terrorist tactics and lived next door. In that context, extracting information from sources through torture was a necessary evil, and became common practice. The military also attempted to argue, somewhat contradictorily, that international conventions on rules of war did not apply to the detainees — defining them not as “belligerent forces” but as “bands of delinquents”.
This rationalization was in large part accepted by the public, as evidenced by the oft-repeated explanation, “it must be for something,” intoned each time another neighbor was carted away by the police. But coupled with the military government’s complete impunity of action, it allowed broad use of the “anti-terrorist” tactics, for tens of thousands of cases of people who had never committed a single violent act. Union leaders, priest or nuns who worked with the poor, or even family members denouncing the abduction of a loved one — any of these “extremists” were handled the same way as violent terrorists. All in the name of public safety. In the interests of the nation.
The Bush administration, which calls the USA Patriot Act perhaps its most essential tool in fighting terrorists, has begun using the law with increasing frequency in many criminal investigations that have little or no connection to terrorism.
A study in January by the General Accounting Office, the investigative arm of Congress, concluded that while the number of terrorism investigations at the Justice Department soared after the Sept. 11 attacks, 75 percent of the convictions that the department classified as “international terrorism” were wrongly labeled. Many dealt with more common crimes like document forgery. […]
“There are many provisions in the Patriot Act that can be used in the general criminal law,” Mark Corallo, a department spokesman, said. “And I think any reasonable person would agree that we have an obligation to do everything we can to protect the lives and liberties of Americans from attack, whether it’s from terrorists or garden-variety criminals.”[New York Times, September 28, 2003]
A study in January by the General Accounting Office, the investigative arm of Congress, concluded that while the number of terrorism investigations at the Justice Department soared after the Sept. 11 attacks, 75 percent of the convictions that the department classified as “international terrorism” were wrongly labeled. Many dealt with more common crimes like document forgery. […]
“There are many provisions in the Patriot Act that can be used in the general criminal law,” Mark Corallo, a department spokesman, said. “And I think any reasonable person would agree that we have an obligation to do everything we can to protect the lives and liberties of Americans from attack, whether it’s from terrorists or garden-variety criminals.”[New York Times, September 28, 2003]
Several months ago, peaceful activists, including a Catholic nun and members of the American Friends Service Committee, were told by the Colorado American Civil Liberties Union that their names were contained in Denver police intelligence files marked “criminal extremist.” In the wake of the discovery, Denver Mayor Wellington Webb ordered three judges to determine the fate of about 3,400 still-secret files.” [By Michael A. de Yoanna, Colorado Daily Staff Writer]
What can we learn from these parallels? First of all, I should point out that the circumstances are very different. To compare American treatment of some hundreds of foreign prisoners, even including possible violation of the rights of its own citizens (Arab-Americans, particularly), to Argentine case of large-scale kidnapping, torture, and murder of a sizeable portion of the population, is to compare two situations of qualitative and quantitatively very different scale.
That said, there is an ominous similarity in the attitudes of the governments in question. To argue that a particular goal requires the suspension of a normal regard for human dignity is a dangerous path.
In 1976, the government in question was a relatively small country in the southern cone of South America. Today the government that attempts to legitimate torture is the same that purports to spread democracy throughout the world. I think there’s something to be worried about.
previously there was Cambridge Barhopping
afterwards you have fellow travellers
por otro lado, es muy triste que despues de esta eleccion en USA la politica de la tortura y la violacion sistematica de los derechos humanos llevada adelante por esta administracion (que responde a lo mas negro de la doctrina internacional de USA) se haya visto revalidada por los ciudadanos...
vale preguntarse como en el blog sobre el pais de la libertad, de que democracias estamos hablando. [submitted on 11 Nov 04]
see the torturers are being court martialled today , Lyndie England for instance might end up for a while in jail, Charles Graner a soldier with a history of trouble is knee deep in shit at present.
this shows that something is being done about the abuses, unlike in Argentina, where 20 years after the facts, torturers, goons and rapists are still free, their crime legitimated by some even.
on the other hand, abuses have always taken place during war, whichever side the prisonner was on. medias nowadays are however much more powerful and independent than back then, but to say that what happened in Abu Ghraib is unprecedented is a gross mistake, it took place in all wars, in all times.
I’m not saying here there's no reason for concern over what happened, and i'm not trying to legitimise torture in any way but consider this: in any army you have idiots, simply because a lot of jobs in the army require people who don't have any brains, under pressure these idiots are gonna break and engage in what more than shameful behaviour. i don't know what the solution is to avoid this, but name and shame might be one.
prosecuting the offenders is also one.
lastly, can we really compare the degrading treatments inmates at Abu Ghraib had to endure to the one innocents in 1976-82 Argentina died of? [submitted on 04 Dec 04]
Moreover it is very difficult to be fair and square because information is forever distorted by versions and deliberate deceit to justify excesses all in the name of glorious “necessary” causes
In Spanish we have a cute saying that says La culpa no la tiene el chancho sino quien le da de comer.The problem is that people love to lay the blame on official “bad guys” forgetting the true complexity of international and forever imperial politics that are clever in washing their hands .
I hope you are informed of - and please accept it as an undeniable fact fact Erwan, that our small scale Argentine guerra Sucia was the result of a very American an very well planned strategy of the Cold War (Plan Condor )It is true of course that it was carried out by hundreds of Argentine assassins ,with million of neutral bystanders which we must learn to live with (sepoys there are a plenty in my land as in all others ) BUT the master plan and training and much financing was provenly non argentine Yet nobody will be as hard on Bush as a genocide of the people of Irak as on our milicos because it is morally worse to kill your own kin
By the way our top Generals were tried and locked up in greater proportion than other holocausts and genocides though many got away as usual and retired in Miami and other tropical havens .
I cant get over the anger of knowing that Mr Kissinger will never have to stand on trial nor Mr Bush for the millions of innocent muslim children his contaminated missiles kill in the name of democracy
We losers KNOW there is a double standard so incorporated in the winners mind that it has the cheek to preach righteousness back and remind us that we deserve our plight
Besides innocence there´s ignorance There´s the element of concealment and misinformation which is so easy to carry out even in this supposedly global era. Most people know that today North Korea is a ferocios fascist military regime that threatens with WMD But we arent aren´t informed of the billion of tons of napalm and other “non conventional” delicacies the American invaders dropped on their towns poisoning practically 70 %of their people only 50 years ago Undoubtedly there is a pattern of immoral conduct in all empires This forgotten horror evidently explains the Korean determination to make it clear that they are NEVER going to be caught off guard and be the easy victim again .
I am an Argentinian who was educated in the USA in the 60´s -to values I share and hold true such as democracy and and equality of opportunities and legal and human rights for all people BUt I now KNOW how rules apply - and most people are not satisfied with 3 or 4 courtmartiallings . We need more evidence of true unhampered justice
It caused me great shock and depression to face the fact that torture is a standard procedure and that the “big fish ” who “feed the pig” usually cover it up and get away with it -particularly back home.
Anyway I trust humankind can and should face truth if it intends to grow in ethical besides on material goals- I hope this will happen because if not the next time no one will survive to tell the tale according to his interpretation. [submitted on 10 Feb 05]
I share some of the feelings of Maria Luz, but I don't think that the United States had such great influence over the Argentine military and, in a way, she's doing much the same as Erwan. She doesn't want to think so badly about Argentina, so blames the United States for monstrous and he doesn't want to think so badly about the United States. Both seek comfort in comparisons. I do the same thing myself. But I get more and more depressed the more I read, as Maria Luz has done, about the effects caused by U.S. policy in North Korea, for example. But, at least, there isn't a horrendous SILENCE here as there was in Argentina. They were extraordinary times that I still haven't come to grips with. These are more ordinary times — a mighty power behaving that way all mighty powers have behaved throughout history — and there is some questioning here. Not much, but some. I like Maria Luz idea of facing the truth, but I don't think that she, I or anyone, knows the truth.I hestitate to say so, because I think the United States should face the most stringent criticism, but based on my experience, she and derrotado go too far in seeing the United States as a teacher of torture or as the originator of Plan Condor. It's very hard not to believe what we want to believe, and the facts are, after all, elusive and slippery. [submitted on 16 Feb 06]