Skip to content

Torture: The Movie

Torture: The Movie

March 12, 2011 SVadmin Comments 0 Comment

Cross-posted from ND2.0

by Lynn Parramore

Understanding the U.S. stance on torture requires the suspension of disbelief.**Updated 4pm, Friday.

Imagine that you’ve arrived at the local multiplex for a weekend flick. Popcorn in hand, you settle in to watch Matt Damon star in a new thriller as a young American soldier imprisoned by the government for blowing the whistle on crimes witnessed while serving in a foreign country.

INT. MILITARY PRISON CELL – DAY

(Calendar pages flip by indicating the passage of months. July. August. September. October. Etc.)

The Damon character stands naked in front of his cell. His head is bent over, and he stares blankly at the floor.

GUARD (roughly): “Are you all right? I need a verbal response.”

DAMON CHARACTER (voice shaking): “Yes, I am all right.”

The Damon character is handed his neatly folded underwear.

GUARD: “You give it back at night. Every night. Got it?”

DAMON CHARACTER: “Yes.”

GUARD (turning the lock on the cell door). “Are you all right?”

DAMON CHARACTER (weakly): “Yes, I am all right.”

CUT TO: INT. SMALL EMPTY ROOM IN MILITARY BRIG – DAY

The Damon character shuffles slowly in a figure eight pattern. He stops to scratch his foot. The guard interrupts.

GUARD: “Exercise is over! You know the rules. No stopping. Are you all right?”

DAMON CHARACTER (robotically): “Yes, I am all right.”

As our movie unfolds, we see the Damon character growing more detached from reality. Every five minutes, he is interrupted with the same question, “Are you all right?” Day in, day out. Each night, he must surrender his clothing, left naked in his cell without a pillow or blanket. Should he roll to a side of the bed where the guards can’t see him, he is immediately awakened. He is kept alone in his cell for 23 hours a day, and his only exercise is an hour of walking in a bare room. If he pauses, he forfeits the rest of his time. The Damon character grows pale; his speech becomes broken, almost indecipherable.

Gradually he becomes catatonic, awaiting a trial that has never been set.

In this Kafkaesque film, the military personnel overseeing the treatment insist to the press that they can’t explain why they strip the soldier because to do so would violate his privacy. They claim that they are isolating him and imposing bizarre restrictions out of concern for his safety. Members of the press corps don’t believe the lies. But they nod in tacit agreement. “Traitor!” they whisper. They deadpan the story, as if it were just another routine case.

If we were watching all this transpire on the screen, we would know how to interpret the story. We would intuit that the soldier is up against some version of Big Brother, the Authoritarian State. We would squirm in our seats, waiting for justice to intervene. If this were a high-quality, complex film, we might not completely sympathize with the motives of Damon’s character or totally agree with his interpretation of the crimes he witnessed. But we would root for him anyway, because as Americans we instinctively reject authoritarian control. We know that the Constitution protects citizens from the trampling of basic rights. And we sense that the violation of one is the violation of all.

Except when it happens in reality. Then we stick our heads in the sand. We make excuses. We say, “but this case is different.”

Even when we do talk, we are careful. Cautious not to sound too soft. Many journalists have covered the detention of Pfc. Bradley Manning, the suspect accused of leaking cables to Wikileaks (Manning, as yet, has been convicted of nothing). But though he has been subjected to exactly the treatment as our fictional example, most — with some brave exceptions — have been reluctant to challenge the military or the U.S. government.

But as the treatment grows more obscene, reality becomes harder to ignore. Some have suggested that the abuse violates Manning’s 8th Amendment protection from cruel and unusual punishment.  A blogger recently called it “borderline torture.” Today, we learn that a spokesman from the State Department called it “ridiculous and stupid.”

Why is it so hard time to call this treatment what it actually is? Torture.

Plain and simple.

Maybe it’s because if we did, we would have to acknowledge truths too painful to bear. We would know that what had once happened to “foreign combatants” is now happening to Americans soldiers, and maybe it will soon happen to civilians, too. So we continue the doublespeak.

“Political language,” wrote George Orwell, “is designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable, and to give an appearance of solidity to pure wind.”(”Politics and the English Language“, 1946.)

Orwellian language has justified things in our country’s history that many good citizens knew to be wrong. Slavery. The subjugation of women. The internment of Japanese Americans during WWII. Each time, many people failed to call for justice because they didn’t see the victims as full citizens. Or even fully human. Some suggest that Bradley Manning gave up his protection under the U.S. Constitution when he joined the armed forces, an affront to the sacrifice of service if there ever was one. Others have declared him guilty without a trial, an attack on our precious tradition of presumed innocence. The niceties of civilization are jettisoned. The Bill of Rights becomes just a piece of paper.

We wait and we watch as the U.S. government defends itself from whistle blowers by torturing them in plain view. What stronger evidence that there is much to blow the whistle on?

Obama the Commander in Chief, the man who said that “the U.S. does not torture,” does nothing (Update: Friday afternoon, the President personally asked the Pentagon about Manning’s treatment, but says that he was assured that the treatment is “appropriate”). Eric Holder, the country’s chief law enforcement officer, fails to intervene.

How does this story end in reality? Not well, I fear.

Lynn Parramore is Editor of New Deal 2.0, Media Fellow at the Roosevelt Institute, and Co-founder of Recessionwire.
**You can follow Lynn on Twitter at http://www.twitter.com/lynnparramore

Print Friendly, PDF & Email

Blog, Politics
Torture

Post navigation

PREVIOUS
Next Test in Wisconsin: Election of State Supreme Court Justice on April 5th
NEXT
Firefighters Shut Down Bank in Wisconsin That Supported Walker

Join Our Mailing List

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published.

CLICK IMAGE BELOW FOR MORE INFORMATION

DONATE TO THE FOOD BANK OF NEVADA COUNTY

(CLICK IMAGE)

DONATE TO NEVADA COUNTY RELIEF FUND (click image below)

Subscribe to Sierra Voices Journal

Jack Kornfield: A Steady Heart in Time of Corona Virus (Part I)

Erika Lewis, Shaye Cohn, Craig Flory – Got A Mind To Ramble

“Everlasting Arms”

Tara Brach: A Steady Heart in Time of Corona Virus (Part II)

Recent Posts

  • Bill Clinton Makes a Pathetic Attempt to Retroactively Justify His Decision to Expand NATO
  • The Ukraine War Seen “from 30,000 feet”
  • Former NATO Analyst & Top UN Official Says THIS Is The REAL Reason For War In Ukraine
  • DeSantis’ Attack on Disney Shows how Fascism Progresses Toward the Later Stages of Tyranny
  • The Man Who Predicted Russia Ukraine War

Recent Comments

  • Putin in Media Myth and Reality: Which is Which? on Ukraine War: A Bonanza for the Arms Industry
  • SVadmin on Countdown to World War III?
  • Pratima Basu on Scenes From Our Weekend at Lake Tahoe
  • IN PRAISE OF WARRIORS, NOT WAR on Celebrated to Death: Memorial Day Is Killing Us
  • SVadmin on How Suzanne Simard changed our relationship to trees

Archives

  • May 2022
  • April 2022
  • March 2022
  • February 2022
  • January 2022
  • December 2021
  • November 2021
  • October 2021
  • September 2021
  • August 2021
  • July 2021
  • June 2021
  • May 2021
  • April 2021
  • March 2021
  • February 2021
  • January 2021
  • December 2020
  • November 2020
  • October 2020
  • September 2020
  • August 2020
  • July 2020
  • June 2020
  • May 2020
  • April 2020
  • March 2020
  • February 2020
  • January 2020
  • November 2019
  • August 2019
  • July 2019
  • June 2019
  • May 2019
  • February 2019
  • January 2019
  • December 2018
  • November 2018
  • October 2018
  • July 2018
  • June 2018
  • April 2018
  • March 2018
  • February 2018
  • January 2018
  • October 2017
  • September 2017
  • August 2017
  • July 2017
  • June 2017
  • May 2017
  • March 2017
  • February 2017
  • January 2017
  • November 2016
  • October 2016
  • September 2016
  • August 2016
  • July 2016
  • June 2016
  • May 2016
  • April 2016
  • March 2016
  • February 2016
  • December 2015
  • June 2015
  • May 2015
  • April 2015
  • February 2015
  • January 2015
  • December 2014
  • November 2014
  • October 2014
  • September 2014
  • August 2014
  • July 2014
  • June 2014
  • May 2014
  • April 2014
  • March 2014
  • January 2014
  • November 2013
  • October 2013
  • September 2013
  • August 2013
  • July 2013
  • June 2013
  • May 2013
  • April 2013
  • March 2013
  • February 2013
  • January 2013
  • December 2012
  • November 2012
  • October 2012
  • September 2012
  • August 2012
  • July 2012
  • June 2012
  • May 2012
  • April 2012
  • March 2012
  • February 2012
  • January 2012
  • December 2011
  • November 2011
  • October 2011
  • September 2011
  • August 2011
  • July 2011
  • June 2011
  • May 2011
  • April 2011
  • March 2011
  • February 2011
  • January 2011
  • December 2010
  • November 2010
  • October 2010
  • September 2010
  • August 2010
  • July 2010
  • June 2010
  • May 2010
  • April 2010
  • March 2010
  • February 2010
  • January 2010
  • December 2009
  • November 2009
  • October 2009
  • September 2009
  • August 2009

Categories

  • Afghanistan
  • Aging
  • American Empire
  • Anti-Depressant
  • Arms Sales
  • Articles
  • Atlas Obscura
  • Authoritarianism
  • Black Lives
  • Black Lives Matter
  • Blog
  • Buddhism
  • Budget
  • Buskers
  • Capitalism
  • Carbon Offsets
  • Cartoon
  • China
  • Climate Change
  • Compassion
  • Constitution
  • Corona Virus
  • Corruption
  • Cosmology
  • Coup
  • COVID-19
  • Democracy
  • Depression
  • Disenfranchisement
  • Drought
  • Economics
  • Education
  • Election Fraud
  • Empire
  • Environment
  • Extinction
  • Farming
  • Fascism
  • Filibuster
  • Fire!
  • Food Insecurity
  • Foreign Policy
  • Forest Ecology
  • Forest Management
  • Fracking
  • Gardening
  • Gender
  • GOP
  • Great Movies
  • Groundwater
  • Halloween
  • Health Care
  • High Country News
  • History
  • Humor
  • Hunger
  • Idaho-Maryland Mine
  • Ignorance
  • Immigration
  • Indigenous Peoples' Day
  • Insects
  • Israel
  • Labor
  • Lobbying
  • Local
  • Lunar Influence
  • Marijuana
  • Masks
  • Medical Care
  • Men
  • Men's Issues
  • Mental Health
  • Middle Class
  • Military Industrial Complex
  • Mining
  • MMT
  • Modern Monetary Theory
  • Moral Obligations
  • Music
  • Native Americans
  • NATO
  • Neoliberalism
  • New Cold War
  • Nuclear War
  • Nutrition
  • Oligarchy
  • Palestine
  • Pandemic
  • Parenting
  • Peace
  • Pharmaceuticals
  • Physics
  • Poetry
  • Police
  • Politics
  • Populism
  • Press
  • Race
  • Religion
  • Republican Derangement
  • Reviews
  • Revolution
  • Right-wing terrorism
  • Rights of Nature
  • Rise Gold
  • Rivers
  • Romance
  • Russia
  • Russiagate
  • Science
  • Slavery
  • Sleep
  • Smoke Inhalation
  • Student Debt
  • Summer
  • Technology
  • The Hartmann Report
  • Trump Virus
  • Tuba Skinny
  • Tyranny
  • Ukraine
  • Uncategorized
  • Unipolar vs. Multipolar
  • Vaccine Refusal
  • Vaccine Safety
  • Voting
  • War
  • War on Government
  • Water
  • Watersheds
  • Wells
  • Wildfires
  • Winter
  • Women's Issues
  • Work
  • Yemen

Meta

  • Log in
  • Entries feed
  • Comments feed
  • WordPress.org
© 2022   All Rights Reserved.