War Destroys

War destroys. Or at least that's what Matt Gallagher thinks in his book Kaboom and an editorial in the New York Times.

Gallagher fought in Iraq as a soldier for the United States military. He considers himself one of the lucky ones because he returned to NYC with all his limbs and most of his mental facilities and a book deal (thus Kaboom was born!).

Even though Gallagher returned from the front lines he feels as if he left a part of himself in Iraq. Simple things like a slamming dumpster lid catapult him back in time to when he was in Iraq and "desperate not to die because of an unseen I.E.D."

Matt Gallagher in Iraq

He believes that chance is war's "dirty little not-so-secret." For veterans the dirty little secret is self-righteousness. Gallagher recounts how easy it is for veterans to fall into the trap of what civilians get or do not get.

While it may be easy for normal Americans to forget about the war in Iraq, it is impossible for the less than one percent of the population who fought over there.

Gallagher admits to succumbing to his own self-righteousness at times. However, instead of using fists or consuming mass quantities of alcohol, he took the high road. In response to people who show envy towards being able to kill Muslims, he replies that "such a black-and-white understanding of the war is what got us into so much trouble over there in the first place."

Gallagher could not be more right!

Many Americans, because of inadequate education and the natural instinct to be fearful of persons who are dissimilar, hold an opinion of Muslims and Arabs in general that is false and dangerous. Not all Muslims are terrorists and not all Americans are good people. In a polarized, fear-laden country like the U.S. we can sometimes overlook this fact.

Although the reasoning seems off, Gallagher decided, in the New York Times editorial, that he rather educate people about his experience in Iraq instead of pissing people off with a self-righteous attitude. Education is crucial when dealing with war of any kind. The more people know the better people will understand that war is not like a video game. War, according to Gallagher, is complicated, scary and extremely tolling.

Kaboom the book

He exemplifies these claims in his book Kaboom. In reading the first chapter, one realizes that Gallagher was perfectly ordinary before, during and after 9/11. He slept through the attacks and got drunk during invasions. However Iraq changed him and he will never be the young man who get drunk at frats again.

By 2005 Gallagher was in Iraq as a armored calvary officer. In sections that are brief but filled with detail about his time fighting. He writes about rolling out of wire and his interactions with the other soldiers.

Those interactions are the most interesting of all his descriptions because they illustrate how soldiers reacted to being in Iraq. Laughing was something that seemed to have happened often, which contradicts the tense situations of war.

However, upon closer inspection of the first chapter, one realizes that war is filled with contradictions. It is vital to understand that war is not as simple as the politicians make it out to be. Gallagher's book does a good job of demonstrating this. He extinguishes the disconnect (at least as much as you can) between soldiers and normal Americans who tended to forget about the wars abroad.  

Gallagher will never shed his soldier skin. It is a part of who he is now, and that means civilian life will forever be a challenge for him. However, using the knowledge of war to educate through books and editorials will go a long way to preventing him from resorting to violence and drugs like many Iraqi vets. If only every vet could be so lucky.  

Rhetoric and Torture

If you were a detainee at Guantanamo Bay during the Bush administration you likely incurred sleep deprivation, prolonged isolation, painful body positions, feigned suffocation and beatings. 

If a detainee were really lucky, according to Gregg Bloche and Jonathan H. Marks, they were subjected to "sexual provocation" and "displays of contempt for Islamic symbols." These measures were used to force cooperation. 

The tactics above constitute cruel and inhuman treatment and torture, according to the International Committee of the Red Cross.

The word choice used by the International Committee of the Red Cross is odd because it shows hesitancy in calling the above tactics torture. Putting "cruel and inhuman treatment" before torture dilutes the torture claim and makes it appear like the Committee does not actually want to call feigned suffocation torture.

Torture

But let's be honest, the above tactics, even the display of contempt for Islamic symbols (if you are Muslim) is torture. Adding the cruel and inhuman treatment is unnecessary, and it only serves to minimize the severity of the tactics used on detainees.         

While the Pentagon and the Defense Department assert that detainees' health information was not used at Guantanamo to craft interrogation strategies, Bloche and Marks found evidence to the contrary. The duo claims that in 2003 health information was available and used to craft and carry out interrogation. Psychiatrists and psychologists, since late 2002, have been using medical information in order to create extreme stress to extract intelligence from unwilling detainees.   

Could this mean that the Pentagon and the Defense Department blatantly lied to Americans? If this is true, is this even surprising?

The article found evidence to support their claim on the SouthCom Website. It said that caregivers are required to provide clinical information to interrogation teams both voluntarily and by request. If this is the case, it would mean that the Pentagon's separation between intelligence gathering and patient care is a farce. 

According to the research by Bloche and Marks by late 2002 there was growing frustration at Guantanamo because intelligence was not being gained from the detainees. This led to the creation of the Behavioral Science Consultation Team (BSCT). BSCT was tasked with developing new strategies to seek intelligence.  

In developing new strategies, the duo found strong evidence to support their claim that BSCT had access to personal health information.

BSCT methods consisted of putting detainees through tailored stressors. They would use personal medical information to learn about a detainees phobia's and use those to create situations that would lead to extreme stress. 

Proponents of this type of interrogation argue that high stress interrogation leads to unreliable information because detainees are willing to say anything to bring relief. 

Gerard Hauser's Book

Ultimately, Bloche and Marks conclude that using detainees' health information is wrong. It makes every caregiver an accessory to torture, it undermines patient trust, and worst of all it puts the prisoners in a position to experience serious abuse.  

The last reason is most effective in their overall argument because it appeals to a readers ethos. Many of the prisoners at Guantanamo Bay were not guilty of anything. Yet they were tortured nonetheless with tactics that were specially crafted to ensure that the detainee experience as much stress as possible. Doing this to a human is wrong. It is that simple. 

Gerard Hauser, in his book "Prisoners of Conscience," uses rhetorical analysis to demonstrate how framing was employed at Abu Ghraib for prisoner's bodies. He uses a similar technique to the one I used in this blog post to analyze how using particular words or phrases can frame an issue in whatever light you want. 



Hauser's chapter explores how rhetoric helped play down the atrocities that occurred at Abu Ghraib. He demonstrates how powerful words can be and how important it is to pay attention to the way politicians are framing certain issues.