{"id":51412,"date":"2014-12-22T12:00:31","date_gmt":"2014-12-22T12:00:31","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/?p=51412"},"modified":"2015-05-05T21:27:09","modified_gmt":"2015-05-05T20:27:09","slug":"u-s-tv-provides-ample-platform-for-american-torturers-but-none-to-their-victims","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/2014\/12\/u-s-tv-provides-ample-platform-for-american-torturers-but-none-to-their-victims\/","title":{"rendered":"U.S. TV Provides Ample Platform for American Torturers, But None to Their Victims"},"content":{"rendered":"

16 Dec 2014 – <\/em>Ever since the torture report was released last week<\/a>, U.S. television outlets have endlessly featured<\/a> American torturers<\/a> and torture proponents<\/a>. But there was one group that was almost never heard from: the victims of their torture, not even the ones recognized<\/a> by the U.S. Government itself as innocent, not even the family members of the ones they\u00a0tortured to death<\/a>. Whether by design (most likely) or effect, this inexcusable omission radically distorts coverage.<\/p>\n

Whenever America is forced to confront its heinous acts, the central strategy is to disappear the victims, render them invisible. That\u2019s what robs them of their humanity: it\u2019s the process of dehumanization. That, in turns, is what enables American elites\u00a0first\u00a0to support atrocities, and then, when forced to reckon with them, tell themselves that\u00a0– despite some isolated and\u00a0well-intentioned\u00a0bad acts \u2013 they are still really good, elevated, noble, admirable people. It\u2019s hardly surprising, then, that a\u00a0Washington Post\/<\/em>ABC News poll released<\/a> this morning found that a large majority of Americans believe torture is justified even when you call it \u201ctorture.\u201d Not having to think about actual human\u00a0victims makes it easy to justify any sort of crime.<\/p>\n

That\u2019s the process by which the\u00a0reliably repellent Tom Friedman seized<\/a> on the torture report to celebrate America\u2019s unique greatness. \u201cWe are a beacon of opportunity and freedom, and also [] these foreigners know in their bones that we do things differently from other big powers in history,\u201d the beloved-by-DC<\/a> columnist wrote after reading about forced rectal feeding and freezing detainees to death. For the opinion-making class, even America\u2019s savage torture is proof of its superiority and inherent Goodness: \u201cthis act of self-examination is not only what keeps our society as a whole healthy, it\u2019s what keeps us a model that others want to emulate, partner with and immigrate to.\u201d Friedman, who himself unleashed one of the most (literally) psychotic defenses<\/a> of the Iraq War, ended his torture discussion by approvingly quoting John McCain on America\u2019s enduring moral superiority: \u201cEven in the worst of times, \u2018we are always Americans, and different, stronger, and better than those who would destroy us.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

This self-glorifying ritual can be sustained only by completely suppressing America\u2019s victims. If you don\u2019t hear from the human beings who are tortured, it\u2019s easy to pretend nothing truly terrible happened. That\u2019s how the War on Terror generally has been \u201creported\u201d for 13 years and counting: by completely silencing those whose lives are destroyed or ended by U.S. crimes. That\u2019s how the illusion gets sustained.<\/p>\n

Thus, we sometimes hear about drones (usually to celebrate the Great Kills) but almost never hear from their victims: the surviving family members of innocents whom the U.S. kills or those forced to live under the traumatizing regime of permanently circling death robots. We periodically hear about the vile regimes the U.S. props up for decades, but almost never from the dissidents and activists imprisoned, tortured and killed by those allied tyrants. Most Americans have heard the words \u201crendition\u201d and \u201cGuantanamo\u201d but could not name a single person victimized by them, let alone recount what happened to them, because they almost never appear on American television.<\/p>\n

It would be incredibly easy, and incredibly effective, for U.S. television outlets to interview America\u2019s torture victims. There is certainly no shortage of them. Groups such as the ACLU<\/a>, Center for Constitutional Rights<\/a>, Reprieve<\/a>, and CAGE UK<\/a> represent many of them. Many are incredibly smart and eloquent, and have spent years contemplating what happened to them and navigating the\u00a0aftermath on their lives.<\/p>\n

I\u2019ve written previously<\/a> about the\u00a0transformative\u00a0experience of meeting and hearing directly from the victims of the abuses by your own government. That human interaction converts\u00a0an injustice from an abstraction into a deeply felt rage and disgust. That\u2019s precisely why the U.S. media doesn\u2019t air those stories directly from the victims themselves: because it would make it impossible to maintain the pleasing fairy tales about \u201cwho we really are.\u201d<\/p>\n

When I was in Canada in October, I met Maher Arar for the second time, went to his home, had breakfast with his wife and two children. In 2002, Maher, a Canadian citizen of Syrian descent who worked as an engineer, was traveling back home to Ottawa when he was abducted by the U.S. Government at JFK Airport, held incommunicado<\/em>\u00a0and interrogated for weeks, then \u201crendered\u201d to Syria where the U.S. arranged to have him brutally tortured by Assad\u2019s regime<\/a>. He was kept in a coffin-like cell for 10 months\u00a0and\u00a0savagely\u00a0tortured until even his\u00a0Syrian captors were convinced that he was completely innocent. He was then uncermoniously released back to his life in Canada as though nothing had happened.<\/p>\n

When he sued the U.S. government, subservient U.S. courts refused even to hear his case, accepting the Obama DOJ\u2019s claim that it was too secret to safely adjudicate. The Canadian government released the findings of its investigation, publicly apologized for its role, and paid him $9 million. He used some of the money to start a political newspaper, which has since closed. He became an eloquent opponent of both the U.S. War on Terror and the Assad regime which tortured him as part of it.<\/p>\n

But all you have to do is spend five minutes talking to him to see that he has never really recovered from being snatched from his own life and savagely tortured at the behest of the U.S. Government that still holds itself out as the Leader of the Free World. Part of him is still back in the torture chamber in Syria, and likely always will be.<\/p>\n

Nobody could listen to Maher Arar speak and feel anything but disgust and outrage toward the U.S. Government \u2013 not just the Bush administration which kidnapped him and sent him to be tortured, but the Obama administration which protected them and blocked him from receiving justice, and the American media that turned a blind eye toward it, and the majority of the American public that supports this. But that\u2019s exactly why we don\u2019t hear from him: he isn\u2019t on CNN or Meet the Press<\/em> or Morning Joe<\/em> to make clear what Michael Hayden and John Yoo really did and what the U.S. government under a Democratic president continues to shield<\/a>.<\/p>\n

There are hundreds if not thousands of Maher Arars the U.S. media could easily and powerfully interview. McClatchy this week detailed<\/a> the story of\u00a0Khalid al Masri, a German citizen whom the U.S. Government abducted in Macedonia, tortured, and then dumped on a road when they decided he wasn\u2019t guilty of anything (US courts also refused to hear<\/a> his case on secrecy grounds). The detainees held without charges, tortured, and then unceremoniously released from Guantanamo and Bagram are rarely if ever heard from on U.S. television, even when the U.S. Government is forced to admit that they were guilty of nothing.<\/p>\n

This is not to say that merely putting these victims on television would fundamentally change how these issues are perceived. Many Americans would look at the largely non-white and foreign faces recounting their abuses, or take note of their demonized religion and ethnicity<\/a>, and react for that reason with indifference or even support for what was done to them.<\/p>\n

And one could easily imagine such interviews quickly degenerating\u00a0into a blame-the-victim spectacle. When Fareed Zakaria this week interviewed former Guantanamo detainee (and current detainee rights advocate) Moazzem Begg, Zakaria demanded<\/a> that Begg condemn ISIS even though Begg kept explaining that he was \u201cabused cruelly, inhumanely and degradingly\u201d by the U.S. Government, that \u201cpictures of my children are waved in front of me while I\u2019m being beaten and tortured and abused by people who claimed to be the bastions of freedom and democracy and human rights,\u201d and that \u201cwhatever the situation was, the Taliban and the ISIS, they didn\u2019t torture me. They didn\u2019t put me into dungeons. They didn\u2019t beat me. They didn\u2019t threaten to, you know, abuse my family. They didn\u2019t do that to me. So I can only talk to my experience.\u201d<\/p>\n

What this glaring omission in coverage does more than anything else is conclusively expose the utter fraud of the U.S. media\u2019s claims to \u201cobjectivity\u201d and \u201cneutrality.\u201d Outlets like The Washington Post<\/em> and NPR\u00a0still\u00a0<\/em>justify their refusal to call these torture tactics \u201ctorture\u201d by invoking precepts of \u201cneutrality\u201d: we have to show all views, we can\u2019t take sides, etc.<\/p>\n

But that\u2019s pure deceit. They don\u2019t show all sides. They systematically and quite deliberately exclude the victims of the very policies of the U.S. Government they pretend to cover. And they do that because including those victims would be too informative, would provide too much information, would be too enlightening. It would, for many people, shatter the myths of American Goodness and the conceit that even when Americans do heinous things, they do it with Goodness and Freedom in their hearts, with a guaranteed and permanent status as superior. At the very least, it would make it impossible for many people to deny to themselves the utter savagery and sadism carried out in their names.<\/p>\n

Keeping those victims silenced and invisible is the biggest favor the U.S. television media could do for the government over which they claim to act as watchdogs. So that\u2019s what they do: dutifully, eagerly and with very rare exception.<\/p>\n

_________________________________<\/p>\n

Email the author: glenn.greenwald@theintercept.com<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n

Go to Original \u2013 firstlook.org<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Whether by design (most likely) or effect, this inexcusable omission radically distorts coverage. Whenever America is forced to confront its heinous acts, the central strategy is to disappear the victims, render them silenced and invisible. It is the biggest favor the U.S. television media could do for the government over which they claim to act as watchdogs.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[62],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-51412","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-media"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/51412","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=51412"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/51412\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=51412"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=51412"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=51412"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}