It's common for people to refer as Abu Ghraib as a scandal, and to consider it as a blemish that the Administration would have avoided if it could. What it the pictures that injured America's image around the world, and inflamed the insurgency, were
supposed to be released?
Tin foil? Correct me over the fold...
Some months ago, Naomi Kline wrote a great piece in the Nation explaining the use of torture as a means of psychological manipulation - not only, or even primarily, of prisoners, but of the population in general. In short, instances of torture descirbe to members of a society what they might expect should they fall out of accord with their government.
We have places for people like you.
In order to accomplish this impact, evidence of torture must not only exist, but be undeniable. In relation to this evidence, the Government positions itself in the classic Good Cop/Bad Cop posture. Hence the Adminsitration declares its abhorrence of torture, and yet reserves the right to apply it.
By condemning torture the Administration establishes its own innocence; while copious evidence of torture serves to intimidate a population. This is one of the ways that States practice terror while asserting their passion for the war against it. In general, this practice of 'fighting against' the very terror you mean to employ is the perfection of terrorism. Or as Socrates would term it: injustice.
At least as far back as Plato's Republic people have been aware that the most effective social evil is that social evil that presents itself as good. Socrates' initial proof of the superiority of 'justice' over 'injustice' hinges on the fact that over time, people will cease transacting with a person who fails to deal fairly. This is the Achilles Heel of selfishness: eventually nobody will deal with you, and so regardless of your intentions they can never manifest. Society, in short, is a self-correcting, cybernetic, system, that naturally rewards the good and diminishes the evil. This functioning can be seen echoed in a definition of virtue as old as Plato and still current in Islamic philosophy. There is only one virtue: to water the fruit trees and not the weeds.
But what if a weed can seem to you a fruit tree, while a fruit tree can seem a weed? This is the question, in essence, that undoes Socrates' very neat initial establishment of the superiority of justice, leaving a nebulous uncertainty into which flows the farcical non-answer of the Ideal Republic.
If the unjust person can be so perfectly unjust that they seem just, then the self-correcting dynamic of the tit-for-tat network is thwarted; and the system preserves what it would eliminate and eliminates what it would preserve.
We come, then, to the question: is deceit a legitimate tool of Statecraft?
A month or so ago I happened to watch a movie from the 70's called 'The Final Countdown,' in which the nuclear-powered aircraft carrier U.S.S. Nimitz is miraculously transported back to the area around Pearl Harbor, on December 6th, 1941 - the day before that Day which will Live in Infamy. After slowly coming to understand, and accept, the reality of their situation, the crew is plunged into a debate over what to do about it. Should they stop the attack on Pearl Harbor or not?
Their allegiance is clear. Regardless of the time they live in, the sailors of the Nimitz are still American soldiers. Yet some are uncertain about how their interference in History will impact the world. Perhaps some things were meant to be, and changing them will have negative consequences that cannot be foreseen.
Ultimately, they choose according to their basic allegiance, which trumps all metaphysical uncertainties. Yet metaphysical uncertainty, in the form of a mysterious temporal storm, ultimately decides things for them. Before they can intercept the attacking Japanese planes, the storm that deposited them in 1941 reappears to whisk them back to their own time. History preserves itself; and in the end we learn that their adventure had in a sense already occurred, even though it seemed to them that they had some choice about it.
It was interesting to juxtapose that script with the recent Ben Affleck attrocity, Pearl Harbor, which ran on television the night after I rented Final Countdown. Of particular interest was the scene in that movie in which a supposed FDR, wheeled around by his faithful manservant, is informed of the attack on Pearl Harbor. We see the nameless official messenger approach the President and lean to his ear. Then suddenly the camera angle shifts and we're looking from the floor beneath his wheelchair; out past one wheel as the stack of papers he'd been reviewing falls to the floor, dropped from his hands by the force of utter shock. My God.
He is the picture of perfect innocence -- the President just as Americans like him: wise as a serpent yet innocent as a dove.
According to transactional psychology, emotional gratification comes from transition in the roles. We are gratified when the trustworthy leader transforms into the avenging savior, who then transforms agressor into victim and the victim into the one who is saved.
So, in terms of Pearl Harbor, the United States must be a land of complete innocence, split by naked aggression into victims who need saving and saviors entitled to kick some ass. The Pearl Harbor Drama is perhaps the primary script. And so how do we deal with the knowledge that FDR not only let Pearl Harbor happen, but in a sense made it happen on purpose?
That's what I think 'The Final Countdown' is about. It's a rationalization of foreknowledge, even if unconsciously so. From the perspective of Empire, deceit is a legitimate tool of Statecraft, as it serves to create realities on the ground which serve to bring about irreversible historical changes. Once the war is started, you can't go back and unstart it. 'The Final Countdown' adds a fictional exclamation point to this fact. Saying that even if you had a time machine you still couldn't change history, because history is meant to be. Thus does deceit become Fate.