Henry A. Giroux - Hearts of Darkness: Torturing Children in the War on Terror

HEARTS OF DARKNESS

THE RADICAL IMAGINATION SERIES

Edited by Henry A. Giroux
and Stanley Aronowitz

Now Available

by Henry A. Giroux

by Henry A. Giroux

by Henry A. Giroux

Forthcoming

by Stanley Aronowitz

by Jean Comaroff and John L. Comaroff

HEARTS OF DARKNESS

TORTURING CHILDREN
IN THE WAR ON TERROR

Henry A. Giroux

First published 2010 by Paradigm Publishers

Published 2016 by Routledge
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Giroux, Henry A.

Hearts of darkness : torturing children in the war on terror /
Henry A. Giroux.
p. cm. (The radical imagination series)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-1-59451-826-3 (pbk.: alk. paper)
1. Children and warUnited States. 2. TortureGovernment policyUnited States. 3. War on Terrorism, 20012009. I. Title.
HQ784.W3G57 2010
362.87dc22

2010000838

ISBN 13 : 978-1-59451-825-6 (hbk)
ISBN 13 : 978-1-59451-826-3 (pbk)

Designed and Typeset by Straight Creek Bookmakers.

For Susan, my muse

And for Stanley Aronowitz and Howard Zinn, whose
moral courage is matched by their political wisdom

As Hearts of Darkness makes clear, torture is a cancer within an open society. It empowers a class of sadists and killers who seek greater and greater latitude to abuse helpless and often innocent victims. These sadists and killers soon make no distinction between internal and external enemies. They do not distinguish, as Henry Giroux points out, between children and adults. All human beings, even children, become dehumanized objects that are seen as embodying an external evil that must be eradicated. Torturers, intoxicated with the power to play god, swiftly fall prey to their bizarre conspiracy theories and misconceptions. The larger the fantasies, the more brutal and expansive are the methods used to extract useless and absurd fragments of information that sustain these fantasies. Those who use torture descend to the level of beasts. And the pact made between torturers and the states that routinely use torture builds terrifying international bonds of depravity and violence that mock democratic institutions. The use of torture transforms crimes into an acceptable method of law enforcement. It transforms the innocent into the guilty. It transforms a democracy into a gulag. Torture robs us of the capacity for empathy and compassion, of mutual respect, and of the rule of law, all of which are vital to the maintenance of a civil society. As soon as a civilization permits torture, it begins to die.

When an intelligence service depends on torture to extract information, it is broken. Torture is the least efficient way to gain information and is always employed by those who are as desperate as they are blind. The Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) has relied on intelligence based on torture in prisons in Uzbekistan, a place where practices include raping suspects with broken bottles and boiling them alive, according to Craig Murray, a former British ambassador to Uzbekistan. Suspects were sent there by the CIA as part of the extraordinary rendition program. But Uzbekistan is only one country among many despotic backwaters that have become Americas allies in the war on terror because they also have done away with legal impediments to abuse. Only 1 percent of the prisoners held offshore by the United States are held at Guantnamo; the rest end up in the hands of a worldwide network of torturers in countries such as Uzbekistan.

Im talking of people being raped with broken bottles, Murray said. Im talking of people having their children tortured in front of them until they sign a confession. Im talking of people being boiled alive. And the intelligence from these torture sessions was being received by the CIA, and was being passed on.

Suspects in Uzbekistans torture centers were being told to confess to membership in Al Qaeda. They were told to confess theyd been in training camps in Afghanistan. They were told to confess they had met Osama bin Laden in person. And the CIA intelligence constantly echoed these themes.

I was absolutely stunnedit changed my whole world view in an instantto be told that London knew [the intelligence] coming from torture, that it was not illegal because our legal advisers had decided that under the United Nations convention against torture, it is not illegal to obtain or use intelligence gained from torture as long as we didnt do the torture ourselves, Murray said.

But in the United States, the government no longer relies, as it did during the Cold War, exclusively on third parties to do the torturing for it. The attacks of 9/11 freed U.S. authorities from moral and legal constraints. President Barack Obama not only continues to permit the torture authorized by George W. Bush but has gone on to embrace his predecessors radical secrecy laws. Obama too oversees black sites where people, many of whom are innocent and never charged with a crime, vanish from outside view and are subjected to terrible human cruelty. The documents released from the International Committee of the Red Cross, from the U.S. Justice Departments Office of Legal Council (OLC), and from the House Armed Services Committee illustrate that torture is a tactic routinely employed by the CIA and the U.S. military. Waterboarding may be proscribed, but many other forms of torture continue, including prolonged isolation, solitary confinement, sleep and sensory deprivation, force-feeding, and an emotional technique called fear up, which involves terrifying prisoners into a state of learned helplessness. Torture is masked under complex and nuanced legalities that resemble the convoluted edicts issued by the Jesuits to legalize the torture techniques employed in the Inquisition. What is the allowable incline for a waterboard? How many calories will suffice to avoid starvation? Which insects are permitted to be used in driving a man insane? These subtle questions of degree have replaced questions of ethics.