Weighing Detention and Democracy Posted by Suzanne Nossel

The report in today's New York Times seems to make it official:  for all of the power of the American media, American products, the lure of democracy and the "public diplomacy" efforts made over the last few years, the U.S.'s image in the Muslim world is increasingly defined by the abuses at Guantanamo Bay and other U.S. detention facilities around the world.   One of the key points of proof cited is:

In one of Pakistan's most exclusive private schools for boys, the annual play this year was "Guantánamo," a docudrama based on testimonies of prisoners in Guantánamo Bay, the United States naval base in Cuba.

The play is not something Pakistani teachers dreamed up.  It was written by British dramatists Victoria Brittain and Gillian Slovo (the article does not mention that Gillian Slovo is the daughter of Joe Slovo - one of the most prominent leaders of the anti-apartheid movement in South Africa; I believe Slovo was the highest ranking white person in the ANC). 

This is a good illustration of a point discussed here a week or so back:  that so-called liberal anti-Americanism -- the sort of righteous indignation of Germans, Canadians, Australians and even Brits - - can bleed over to influence attitudes in parts of the world where anti-Americanism can get violent.  So we shouldn't be so quick to dismiss our friends' distaste for what we do as minor spats between friends that will have no larger impact.

A series of events and revelations this week have laid bare the dark side of the inroads the U.S. has supposedly been making in the Arab and Muslim worlds.   Hamid Karzai has expressed shock over gory revelations in yesterday's Times about the torture that proceeded deaths of two Afghani prisoners in the notorious Bagram detention center maintained by U.S. troops in Afghanistan. 

Despite autopsy findings that the two men had died of homicide, army investigators originally proposed closing the cases without bringing any criminal charges.   It took two years for senior army personnel to get to the truth, leading to charges against seven soldiers.   From the sound of things, only when the New York Times got onto the case, did the army realize they wouldn't get away with utter inaction.

Karzai has said that the Afghan government now wants custody of all detainees held in-country.  Given the supposed intelligence value of these suspects and sources, its hard to imagine the U.S. military acceding.

The consensus now seems to be that Newsweek's retraction of the Koran flushing story had little impact, because it was accompanied by confirmation that, toilets aside, desecration of the holy book was one among many appalling violations to the rights and dignity of Guantanamo inmates.

I believe that some progress toward greater freedom is underway in the Middle East, and that this may eventually affect the broader Muslim world.    I say so based on the accounts of people from the region and people who know the region well and have traveled there recently.  Its this sort of statement, excerpted from a very interesting op-ed on enfolding Islamists into democracy written by Egyptian human rights activist, dissident and now presidential candidate Saad Eddin Ibrahim that convinces me:

Whether we are in fact seeing an "Arab spring" or a mirage depends on where you stand. Many in the Middle East, having been betrayed in the past, cannot be blamed for fearing that this is an illusion, and remembering other spring stirrings of democracy - like Budapest in 1956, Prague in 1968 and Tiananmen Square in 1989 - that were brutally crushed while the world looked on.

For me, however, something about events of the past few months feels new and irreversible. Too many people in too many places - Egypt, Iran, Lebanon and elsewhere - are defying their oppressors and taking risks for freedom. Across the region the shouts of "Kifiya!" - "Enough!" - have become a rallying cry against dictators.

I find Fouad Ajami's assessments, in this April article and in a more recent Wall Street Journal op-ed likewise convincing.  Like Ajami, I believe the Bush Administration's policy - mainly ousting Saddam and freezing out Arafat - have played an important role in this.

But the revelations about egregious human rights violations being perpetrated and condoned or at least swept under a rug at U.S. detention facilities put all the progress at risk:

- They embolden radicals who hate the U.S. and make it easier for them to recruit and mobilize;

- They sow doubts among ordinary citizens about what many see as U.S. values - ideas like liberty and democracy become tainted by association with lawlessness, brutality, lack of respect for religion and human dignity and lack of accountability.

The question at this point is whether its two steps forward one step back, or the opposite.  Is the progress being made toward democracy ultimately more powerful than the impact of these revelations?  The Administration's answer is a resounding yes - how can anyone doubt that liberalization at long last in the Arab world matters more than a few bad apples at Abu Ghraib and Bagram and Guantanamo.

One part of the answer may lie in a concept introduced by Shibley Telhami.  It's the notion that each population must be understood through their "prism of pain."  The prism is the thing most compelling and distressing to them, and provides the lens through which they tend to view everything else.  For Jews the prism might be the Holocaust.  For African Americans perhaps slavery.  For many Arab Muslims the Israeli occupation.   For Americans in recent years, 9/11.

My suspicion is that the abuses at the U.S. led detention centers are viewed through a prism of pain tied to the experience of repression throughout the Muslim world.  All these peoples have lived under repressive governments, for which abuse of detainees was one among untold forms of human rights abuses.   

Through this lens, albeit perhaps distorted, acts of repression look much larger than acts of liberation.  Going on that theory, it may take a lot more than a few elections to undo the damage being inflicted by a group of army interrogators and those that give them their orders.

Comments

[TCinLA]

American troops are now accused of the same kinds of torture carried out against American flyers by the North Vietnamese 45-40 years ago - crimes that EVERYONE: pro-war, anti-war - saw as barbaric.

These wannabee SS-stormtroopers masquerading as Americans, from that worthless Aggie "General" Geoffrey D. Miller - our own little Heydrich - on down should be stood up against a wall and shot.

And George Bush, the chief perpetrator of these crimes against humanity, will only ever do something "good" for America when he rides his bicycle over a cliff during another one of his drunken stupors.

As someone who served his country honorably, these scum make me puke.

[Cal]

I fail to see why everyone sees the freezing out of Arafat as a big deal. Whether the Palestinians have a democracy or a dictatorship is largely irrelevant to their main concern: the desire for statehood. The Israelis are going to take the West Bank regardless.

(Bush's hero, Sharansky, was behind the attempted land seizures in East Jerusalem, even as he lectures Arabs about the importance of the rule of law and allowing people a voice in how they're governed.)

The truth is Bush and Sharon have largely frozen out Abbas as well, which is partly why Hamas is favored to win the next elections.

[tristero]

Unfortunately, due to the extreme stress soldiers and guards endure, some human rights abuses in prisons in war zones are unavoidable (although the sheer extent of them in Bush's wars all but confirms that torture of prisoners was ordered from the top of the command).

When military "solutions" to the world's problems are considered, the long term corrosive effects of these abuses should be factored into the equation of whether it is worth going to war.

[rosignol]

the U.S.'s image in the Muslim world is increasingly defined by the abuses at Guantanamo Bay and other U.S. detention facilities around the world. One of the key points of proof cited is:

In one of Pakistan's most exclusive private schools for boys, the annual play this year was "Guantánamo," a docudrama based on testimonies of prisoners in Guantánamo Bay, the United States naval base in Cuba.

The play is not something Pakistani teachers dreamed up. It was written by British dramatists Victoria Brittain and Gillian Slovo

-----

Okay... so the US's image in the muslim world is determined by a play at an elite pakistani school that was written by British playwrights.

This is considered a 'key point of proof'?

This is reasoning worthy of the NPR whine-and-cheese crowd.

The point would have been made if it was written by _Pakistanis_- or at least muslims- and was a mass-market success in the middle east, but that's not what you've got.

[Jeff V.]

I think you're right to note that U.S. efforts at "public diplomacy" have failed in the U.S. This should not be very surprising. The Arab street would never trust anything that is officially the product of the U.S. government. Many have bemoaned the fact that funds have been cut for these types of programs (such as the recent article in Foreign Affairs), but I think these cuts simply reflect the fact that such "public diplomacy" is ineffective in the context of virulent anti-Americanism that is so prevalent in the Middle East.

Here's an idea: what about good, old-fashioned use of money and CIA to financially and logistically support moderate politicians in the Middle East? If you read "Ghost Wars," as any serious student of contemporary middle eastern affairs should, you will note that Saudia Arabia and Pakistan used oil money and the ISI, respectively to prop up hard-line Islamist parties and politicians in Afghanistan. A steady dose of this support, over 20 years, turned the Afghan political scene from one that was relatively balanced between religious hard-liners, Afghan nationalists, and tribal leaders into one that was dominated by religious hard-liners (i.e. the Taliban). The U.S. did not then (and presumably, does not now) provide similar financial and logistical support to moderate Afghan nationalists. Why does it not do so, not only in Afghanistan, but throughout the Middle East? Would such a policy not be much more cost-effective and much less destabalizing than invading random Middle Eastern nations under false pretenses?

[terry greenberg]

Using the phrase "so-called liberal anti-Americanism" to describe objections by Canadians (and some Europeans) to particular US policies and actions is a highly unfortunate and inaccurate use of terminology. Most of our (Canadian) stated objections are no different from those expressed by progressive Americans, who share Canadian concerns that the US is losing its international moral authority. Canada needs a respected and effective champion for democracy and human rights in the US, and we are being no more "anti-American" than you are when we express our concerns that this is being lost under the current leadership of the US. Patriotic Americans must speak up when they see their country being damaged, and Canadians who support these US patriots, while obviously not themselves "US patriots", certainly do not deserve to be called "anti-American".

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Using the phrase "so-called liberal anti-Americanism" to describe objections by Canadians (and some Europeans) to particular US policies and actions is a highly unfortunate and inaccurate use of terminology

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