{"id":233714,"date":"2023-04-24T12:00:11","date_gmt":"2023-04-24T11:00:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/?p=233714"},"modified":"2023-04-18T03:42:58","modified_gmt":"2023-04-18T02:42:58","slug":"ron-desantis-yet-another-cog-in-guantanamos-torture-machine","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/2023\/04\/ron-desantis-yet-another-cog-in-guantanamos-torture-machine\/","title":{"rendered":"Ron DeSantis: Yet another Cog in Guantanamo\u2019s Torture Machine"},"content":{"rendered":"

17 Apr 2023 – <\/em>Recently, there have been troubling\u00a0revelations<\/a>\u00a0about Florida Governor Ron DeSantis \u2014 a leading 2024 GOP presidential aspirant \u2014 concerning his conduct as a Navy JAG officer at Guantanamo Bay. His responsibilities at the detention facility apparently included responding to claims of mistreatment from the war-on-terror prisoners there. Relatively few of these detainees had any connection with al Qaeda, and many had simply been handed over to US forces in exchange for\u00a0bounty payments<\/a>. But DeSantis seemingly\u00a0 viewed<\/a>\u00a0them all as wily and unrepentant terrorists.<\/p>\n

Of particular note, DeSantis was at Guantanamo in 2006 during the brutal forced-feeding of prisoners engaged in a\u00a0mass hunger strike<\/a>. Years later, DeSantis acknowledged<\/a> that, as a legal advisor, he had suggested this intervention as a countermeasure to what he described as the detainees\u2019 \u201cwaging jihad\u201d \u2014 by refusing to eat. When interviewed last month, DeSantis emphasized<\/a> that he \u201cdidn\u2019t have authority to authorize anything\u201d and that Guantanamo was \u201ca professionally-run prison.\u201d His first claim \u2014 sidestepping personal responsibility \u2014 may contain elements of truth; his second is outrageously absurd.<\/p>\n

As a general matter, the forced-feeding of mentally competent individuals violates<\/a> \u00a0international standards of medical ethics and\u00a0constitutes<\/a>\u00a0inhuman and degrading treatment. This was especially so in the case of the Department of Defense, which opted to employ extreme, punitive measures \u2014 even described as\u00a0torture<\/a>\u00a0by United Nations investigators \u2014 when force-feeding the prisoners at Guantanamo. These measures\u00a0\u00a0included a\u00a0restraint chair<\/a>\u00a0that immobilized the detainee\u2019s entire body for hours at a time, and the use of\u00a0tubing<\/a>\u00a0that was inserted through the nose into the stomach and then removed and reinserted multiple times each day, often causing sharp pain and bleeding. A defense attorney for Guantanamo prisoners subjected to forced-feeding has\u00a0written<\/a>,\u00a0\u201cOnly a sadist could impose and witness such treatment without grave concern and soul-sickness.\u201d\u00a0It\u2019s hard to argue with that blunt assessment. But there are also two larger truths we shouldn\u2019t overlook.<\/p>\n

First, even though DeSantis has disingenuously\u00a0characterized<\/a>\u00a0the detainees as master manipulators who all claimed to be \u201cKoran salesmen,\u201d the hunger strikers were actually protesting an unconscionable\u00a0system<\/a> of indefinite detention and ruthless interrogation that relied on daily abuse \u2014 solitary confinement, physical beatings, sexual humiliation, and more. This routinized cruelty didn\u2019t solely involve guards and interrogators. It also depended upon guidance from\u00a0 health professionals<\/a>,\u00a0<\/em>who seemingly abandoned their fundamental \u201cDo No Harm\u201d principles to accommodate a White House insistent that the prisoners had no\u00a0entitlement<\/a>\u00a0to humane treatment.<\/p>\n

These abusive conditions and techniques have left many Guantanamo prisoners \u2014past and present \u2014 with deep\u00a0psychic wounds<\/a>. Survivors of torture often \u00a0experience<\/a>\u00a0overwhelming feelings of shame, helplessness,\u00a0and disconnection as a result of having been subjected to mistreatment at the hands of another human being. Frequently, the victims of such traumas are also haunted by depression, anxiety, and PTSD; by nightmares and flashbacks; and by a lasting sense that safety and solace will never be achieved. Viewed from this perspective, the hunger strikes that DeSantis witnessed \u2014 and apparently dismissed as terrorist tactics \u2014 are better understood as the prisoners\u2019 desperate and despairing attempts to regain some semblance of control over their lives and circumstances, even at the risk of starvation.<\/p>\n

The second larger truth is this: accountability for Guantanamo\u2019s horrors has never been a priority for our country\u2019s elected leaders. No US president has ever taken meaningful steps on this front. George W. Bush, of course, never sought to discipline those responsible for the torturous policies his own administration authorized. Barrack Obama took action to end torture \u2014 but when it came to accountability, he\u00a0decided<\/a>\u00a0\u201cwe need to look forward as opposed to looking backwards.\u201d\u00a0Donald Trump clearly had no interest in such matters, promising instead to\u00a0bring back<\/a>\u00a0waterboarding and\u00a0\u201ca hell of a lot worse.\u201d\u00a0And although Joe Biden has expressed a desire to close Guantanamo, he\u2019s now building a second, multi-million-dollar\u00a0courtroom<\/a>\u00a0there for military commission prosecutions in which detainees have limited\u00a0due process rights<\/a>.<\/p>\n

So then how do Ron DeSantis\u2019 alleged up-close-and-personal connections to prisoner abuse years ago really matter? It would be na\u00efve to think that his political prospects will suffer. Indeed, he may even gain in popularity among voters who embrace his authoritarian mindset, share his disdain for protecting the rights of the vulnerable, and believe his misleading characterizations of the prison and the prisoners at Guantanamo.<\/p>\n

But the attention DeSantis\u2019 story has brought to Guantanamo can still do some good. Ideally, it can spark broader public interest in an examination of the facility\u2019s shameful 21-year history: how its detention and interrogation operations have dishonored the values this country has long professed to hold dear; how the prisoners there became defenseless victims of state vengeance run amok; how the perpetrators of torture and abuse \u2014 and their masters \u2014 have eluded any form of accountability; and how essential it is to close Guantanamo and throw away the key.<\/p>\n

_______________________________________________<\/em><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a> Roy Eidelson is a member of the TRANSCEND Network<\/a> and was a member of the American Psychological Association for over 25 years, prior to his resignation. He is a clinical psychologist and the president of Eidelson Consulting<\/a>, where he studies, writes about, and consults on the role of psychological issues in political, organizational, and group conflict settings. He is a past president of Psychologists for Social Responsibility<\/a>, former executive director of the University of Pennsylvania\u2019s Solomon Asch Center for Study of Ethnopolitical Conflict, and a member of the Coalition for an Ethical Psychology<\/a>. Roy is the author of <\/em>Political Mind Games: How the 1% Manipulate Our Understanding of What\u2019s Happening, What\u2019s Right, and What\u2019s Possible<\/a> and can be reached at reidelson@eidelsonconsulting.com<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

17 Apr 2023 – There have been troubling revelations about Florida Governor Ron DeSantis \u2014 a leading 2024 GOP presidential aspirant \u2014 concerning his conduct at Guantanamo Bay. Of particular note, DeSantis was at Guantanamo in 2006 during the brutal forced-feeding of prisoners engaged in a mass hunger strike.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":110813,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[40],"tags":[703,867,417,133,1854,530,1810,1464,112,2159,572,70,965,2686,492],"class_list":["post-233714","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-transcend-members","tag-al-qaeda","tag-anglo-america","tag-bullying","tag-cia","tag-crimes-against-humanity","tag-cuba","tag-enhanced-interrogation","tag-guantanamo","tag-pentagon","tag-rogue-states","tag-torture","tag-usa","tag-war-crimes","tag-war-of-terror","tag-war-on-terror"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/233714","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=233714"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/233714\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":233715,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/233714\/revisions\/233715"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/110813"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=233714"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=233714"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=233714"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}