Last Friday, for the umpteenth time, our mailman stuffed a copy of The New Yorker in the wrong mailbox—ours.
This time, instead of diligently and promptly taking it to the rightful subscriber, I actually took it home and read some of its content first.
One of the articles, a short one, in “The Talk of the Town” section, really got my attention.
Not because it was written in the sophisticated, refined, “haute culture” fashion that I had always assumed to be the style of that magazine.
Rather, it struck me because of its “linguistic” and moral clarity.
Because the article, “Interrogating Torture,” is based on facts and neither demonizes nor absolves those who ordered torture or just “followed orders,” respectively.
The author, Philip Gourevitch, editor of The Paris Review and co-author of “The Ballad of Abu Ghraib,” makes his case against torture and for getting to the truth—to the real culprits—in a dispassionate manner that leaves no margin of doubt with most reasonable people.
For example, on whether some of our “enhanced interrogation techniques” amount to torture:
…six hooded Iraqi prisoners…were brought to the Military Intelligence cellblock and handed over to Corporal Charles A. Graner, Jr. …Graner set to work. When one of the prisoners resisted, Graner later told Army investigators, “I bashed him against the wall.” Running hooded prisoners into walls was also standard practice at Abu Ghraib, but this prisoner fell to the floor, and blood ran out from under his hood, and a medic was summoned. In the logbook, Graner wrote that the prisoner required eight stitches on his chin. He helped sew the stitches himself, and he had one of his soldiers photograph the bloodstained scene.
On whether lower-ranking personnel felt that they were following orders:
Graner clearly felt that he had nothing to hide…Graner also said that, in addition to medics and his superior officers, lawyers from the Judge Advocate General’s Corps frequently visited the cellblock and saw the abuse that went on there. Graner interpreted their presence to be “implied consent that this was all O.K.,” he said.
On the “rogue soldiers did it” excuse, after Abu Ghraib:
At that time [five years ago], the Administration claimed that Graner was the mastermind of the abuse represented in the photographs, and that they showed nothing more than the depravity of a group of rogue soldiers who had fallen under his sway. Yet it became almost immediately apparent—and has been confirmed repeatedly in the years since…that the Abu Ghraib photographs showed not individuals run amok but American policy in action.
On questions raised by thinking Americans on torture itself and on its effectiveness:
…Americans have come increasingly to understand that it is equally appropriate to ask: Why are we doing such things to ourselves? Why dismantle the laws that have made our country worth fighting and dying for against states that torture? Former Vice-President Dick Cheney has said that we must torture because it is effective. That is, at best, a false argument: a crime is not absolved just because it works. (After all, terrorism can be effective.) President Obama, in his press conference last week, cut through the noise to the essence of the issue. Torture, he said, “corrodes the character of a country.”
On whether, and how “to hold the true masterminds”—Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld and their top lawyers—accountable for their policies:
…prosecution and punishment are not necessarily the best means to eradicate the rot from a political system, because in adjudicating systemic crimes political compromise is inevitable. It is practically impossible, and politically intolerable, to contemplate holding to account every corrupted officer in the chains of command that ran between the White House and the guardhouse at Abu Ghraib or at Bagram Airbase. A full and public reckoning of the historical record might be less cathartic but would ultimately be more valuable than a few sensational trials.
On “show-punishing” the grunts and absolving the leaders:
Still, to date the only Americans who have been prosecuted and sentenced to imprisonment for the criminal policies that emanated from the highest levels are ten low-ranking servicemen and women—those who took and appeared in the Abu Ghraib photographs, and embarrassed the nation by showing us what we were doing there. Charles Graner is the only one remaining in prison, serving ten years. His superior officers enjoy their freedom, and C.I.A. interrogators, who spent years committing far worse acts against prisoners than Graner did even in the darkest days at Abu Ghraib, have been assured immunity.
Finally, “There can be no restoration of the national honor if we continue to scapegoat those who took the fall for an Administration—and for us all.”
There are other good articles in The New Yorker this week: A very practical article on building and owning a better razor—how about a five-bladed one?—and on building a better mousetrap; a couple of very down-to-earth pieces about swines, “swines” and the swine flu—can’t get much more down-to-earth than that. Also, about someone who may be in heaven—Sammy Davis, Jr.—looking down, very concerned, at the upcoming auction of one of his Jewish memorabilia, a 12.3-inch-tall, sterling-silver menorah.
And, of course, many, many more.
Through my “accidental reading,” I have come to realize that The New Yorker is not as posh and ritzy as I had thought it was.
If and when the mailman starts putting The New Yorker in the right mailbox, my days of illicit reading will be over and, who knows, I may have to start a subscription.
The author is a retired U.S. Air Force officer and a writer.