Doctrinally appropriate
Rumsfeld and torture redux
June 19, 2007 29 comments
In the New Yorker, Seymour Hersh writes about General Taguba, who was assigned to investigate Abu Ghraib and then forced to resign. The article, studded with gems of Unspeak, encouraged me to sketch the following brief glossary, which may be used in parallel with it:
Doctrinally appropriate techniques: torture.
Strategic interrogation techniques: torture.
Setting the conditions for successful exploitation of the internees: torturing them.
Loosen this guy up for us: torture him.
Executive action: whacking people.
Special Access Programs: plans to torture or whack people.
Preparing the battlefield: whacking people around the world.
‘Case law’ policy: reserving the right to lie. “[Rumsfeld] did what we called ‘case law’ policy — verbal and not in writing,” Taguba says. “What he’s really saying is that if this decision comes back to haunt me I’ll deny it.”
Any more that I missed?
“Preparing the battlefield” is similar to one I saw a couple of days ago by Petraeus or Gates. Evidently the “surge” up until now hasn’t been the surge, it’s been “shaping the battlefield.”
“Preparing the battlefield”. That is fantastic and, even in Unspeak terms, it is internally contradictory. It makes me think of a chef preparing for a night’s work in a restaurant. It would be terrible to discover at the last minute, when all 20 customers are clamouring for an omelette, that you have got enough eggs for three. Surely to prepare the battlefield would mean to make sure that you are not going to run out of people to whack. It connotes creating or manufacturing an enemy rather than reducing it.
This is fantastic illustration of why military people should, barring a few exceptions, be kept right out of politics. They perpetually want to extend the size of their demesne, i.e. the battlefield. In their way of thinking supermarkets and day-care centres would all be key components in the strategic landscape. You could pop down to Tesco’s to get some eggs and find a few people to whack at the same time. That would be convenience.
Richard Armitage’s painting on a big canvas: whacking lots of people around the world, and terrorizing lots of others.
Since Hersh has already quoted “doctrinally appropriate techniques,” does that mean I can mention the Spanish Inquisition?
I wasn’t expecting it, but you certainly can.
Glad to have Ratzinger’s moral clarity among us again.
That is indeed, I think, the point. The “battlefield” of the TWAT is the entire planet. I like to think of “preparing” it as a biologist might prepare a clean petri dish, scouring it of all life before introducing a new culture.
Steven,
I think you’ve nailed the distinction between how “they” and “we” define culture.
There’s also “creativity” (devising tortures), as in “These M.P. Troops were not that creative… Somebody was giving them guidance”
Oh, and the verb “condition” (torture), as in “Was it clear from your reading of the [Miller] report that one of the major recommendations was to use guards to condition these prisoners?”
Steven, I’m currently reading your book, and notice on p.86 that you write ‘Meanwhile, Palestinians continue to kill Israeli civilians in suicide bombings and rocket attacks, and Israelis continue to shoot stone-throwing teenagers and fire missiles in the rough direction of Hamas leaders’. This, to me, sounds like ‘doctrinally appropriate’ language in itself. You lead with ‘killings’ caused by ‘suicide bombings and attacks’ – extreme violence carried out by Palestinians against Israelis – and end with, ‘shootings’ and ‘fired missiles’ – vague, acts of implied self defence on the part of the Israelis against the violent Palestinians. Did the ‘shooting of stone throwing teenagers’ not result in any deaths? Was nobody killed by the missiles fired roughly in the direction of a target? Come on now…
Paul, if you were, in a fit of pique to throw a rock at me and I was in turn to give you a double-tap in the sternum with my M4 carbine, or fire missiles at the appartment block in which you reside in order to whack you, these constitute attacks, yes?
Steven’s used that language pretty purposefully to highlight some of the more callous and brutal actions of the IDF; in the latter cases the language is highlighting the disproportionate nature of the Israeli response, in part for comparison with the disregard for civillian life shown by a suicide bomber or a Qassam-lobber — shooting teenagers for throwing rocks is brutal and inhumane, regardless of wether the injuries are fatal, and firing missiles at someone’s rough location (especially in urban areas) is almost certain to result in casualties, most likely other than the target him/herself.
(I could just as easily imagine someone complaining that suicide bombing isn’t ‘killing’ but ‘murder’ and that the ‘rocket attacks’ were ‘bombardments’ or the like)
So the charges are:
1. “killings” vs “shootings”
2. “rocket attacks” vs “firing missiles”
On 1 you might have some play, Paul in that it is possible to shoot someone without killing them, but I think ordinary language is working against you. If I say “I shot the sheriff”, I think only a very few people would not assume that the sheriff’s dead. I would have to say that there is such a gap between this and real Unspeak that it has to be regarded as qualitative rather than quantitative.
But on 2, I really can’t see your point at all. A rocket and a missile are basically the same things, and the way in which you attack someone with a missile is to fire it at them.
fire missiles in the rough direction of Hamas leaders is fantastically chilling, no? It suggests a sort of judgement of guilt by proximity, a profoundly incurious and indiscriminate use of force. If it weren’t demonstrable (and if Steven hadn’t also exiscerated the whole smart/precision bomb concept elsewhere) I’d be tempted to call it anti-Israeli rhetoric.
The first footnote in the sentence Paul quotes (#55) directs the curious reader, or at least the reader more curious than Paul, to a news report of two stone-throwing teenagers having indeed died after being shot by “IDF” forces. So I can’t really see how the sentence can be judged as trying to Unspeak anything. (See also pp122-3.)
Steven, I am indeed curious, hence picking up your book in the first place, and hence rising to your challenge on p.13…’at least more curious than Paul’? You don’t even know me…so, I’m not entirely sure where that comes from…
I simply wanted to highlight the paragraph in question, as it directly draws attention to killings at the hands of Palestinians, and relies on footnotes to mention killings at the hands of Israelis. To kill by bombing or rocket attack – Palestinian. To shoot at (killed or not, who knows? Being shot at, does not automatically result in death) or fire missiles in the direction of a slightly vague target, somewhere ‘in that direction’ (is anybody killed? Who knows?) – Israeli. Oh, checking the footnotes, we find the Israelis killed 2 teenagers. You’re correct in saying the more curious reader would find the footnotes, but the paragraph in question draws direct attention to deaths at the hands of the Palestinians.
Hence, potentially ‘doctrinally appropriate’, if the doctrine is to draw attention to acts of aggression on the part of the Palestinians, and to deflect attention from similar acts on the part of the Israelis…
DSquared – a rocket and a missile are the same, but in the paragraph in question…
Richard – It is chilling. As indiscriminate as suicide bombing, effectively exploding something near a vague target, not giving a monkey’s who gets ‘whacked’…but, anti-Israeli? I don’t think so…criticising the policy of exploding things indiscriminately is not anti-Israeli or anti-Palestinian…saying it’s to ‘whack Hamas leaders’ hardly legitimises it…
DSquared, your point that ‘if I say “I shot the sheriff”, I think only a very few people would not assume that the sheriff’s dead’ confuses me in this context. “I shot the sheriff” might be said to one group to appease them (bandits, perhaps, or the anti-sheriff part of town), and no effort might be made to correct them if they do indeed assume the sheriff is dead, all the while he is actually recuperating nicely in hospital…indeed, if you had been retained to kill the sheriff, and when asked, you replied, “I shot the sheriff”, knowing he was still alive, thinking that most people would assume you had killed him, and your employer made the mistake of assuming that you had killed him, are you not engaging in ‘unspeak’ (or, at the very least, in the opening stages of a classic Hollywood double-cross!)? I was under the impression that decoders of ‘unspeak’ would assume nothing…maybe I assumed wrongly…
Of course I do not “rely on footnotes” to mention the killings. The killings are mentioned right there in the main text: “Israelis continued to shoot stone-throwing teenagers…”. Lest you wonder whether all such people who were shot managed to survive, the footnote #55, which I am glad to see you have now consulted, clears up any doubt.
The curious reader who has checked the second footnote of the sentence you cite, footnote #56, certainly knows. I commend footnote #56 to you, as it cites a news story about a missile fired at a Hamas leader that missed and killed passers-by in the street. Another such incident is mentioned on pp132-3. (Not, as I erroneously wrote above, 122-3.)
Do you consider that that is in fact the doctrine of Unspeak? It would be an odd opinion: you have no doubt noticed that the word “killing” has already been used for Israeli killings of Palestinians on page 78, so it can hardly be argued that the word is being avoided.
Steven, the paragraph in question does rely on footnotes to mention the killing of Palestinians. ‘Meanwhile, Palestinians continue to kill Israeli civilians in suicide bombings and rocket attacks, and Israelis continue to shoot stone-throwing teenagers and fire missiles in the rough direction of Hamas leaders’ is a direct quote. Nowhere in that paragraph does it directly mention the killing of ‘stone-throwing teenagers’, only the ‘shooting’ of. ‘I didn’t kill him, officer. I just shot him. His death was entirely accidental.’ Or, in the spirit of your recent entry, ‘I didn’t torture him, I just loosened him up a little…’
Granted, the quote points to a footnote that mentions the death of two teenagers, but again, this is not directly expressed in the paragraph quoted, as is the case for the results of Palestinian actions.
The same can be said of the missile quote…missiles fired ‘in the rough direction of’ could miss the target altogether, and explode in the middle of nowhere, harming nobody. In this case, again the paragraph points to a footnote that builds on the firing ‘in the direction of’, but my point is that the language used in the paragraph could be used to deflect from the actions of the Israelis. ‘We fired in the direction of, but we really meant to miss…just to put the wind up them a little…just to loosen them up…what a shame we missed and hit passers-by…’ A ‘rocket attack’ implies something far more targeted and successful in its intentionally destructive results than missiles fired ‘in the rough direction of’…after all, a missile test is fired in the rough direction of somewhere…any subsequent deaths would, of course, be described as ‘accidental’…we also have a name for ‘suicide bombing’, instead of describing it as ‘bombs carried by a person and exploded in the rough vicinity of’…
Again, the quote points to a footnote that elaborates on the situation, but the direct quote leaves the situation more open… If I was someone looking for a quote from your book that ‘played up’ the actions of Palestinians, but played down the actions of Israelis, I could pick this one…I’m not someone doing that, and I’m sure that this is not what you’re doing, of course…
And to the last point, no, I do not think that this (aggravating divisions between these two specific groups) is the doctrine of Unspeak, and I’m not trying to suggest that this is what you’re doing (I respect and admire what you’re doing, and your ability to dissect the language in the perceptive way that you’re doing…clearly doing a better job of it than I am! – my bungling attempts are clearly the work of a novice, at best!)…but that those who do follow such a doctrine, of using the language of playing down the acts of one group, whilst playing up the actions of another to further a specific agenda, might think and speak using such language…insurgence instead of resistance springs immediately to mind…
Thanks for reponding to my posts…sorry if they’re ‘torture’!…
…in the first paragraph, a direct quote if it includes ‘from helicopters’…sorry…
And if it’s in the past tense rather than the present…
I’m with Leinad at #10 and Richard at #12: at least that’s what I, along with they, think the language there is doing. I don’t have an especially privileged perspective on whether it’s Unspeak or not (it would not do to plead authorial intentions), but I don’t think I would pounce on someone else who used “shooting” v “killing”, especially when, as noted, Israelis have already been described as “killing” Palestinians a few pages earlier. You might have a better case if there were no footnotes, or if the footnotes cited news stories in which shot teenagers happily survived and errant missiles harmed no one.
Could that language nonetheless be taken out of context, stripped of its footnotes, and used by an unscrupulous person for nefarious rhetorical purposes? You are right to draw attention to that possibility.
I’m glad you’re enjoying the book otherwise!
“…and fire missiles in the rough direction of Hamas leaders“
I’m 100% with Richard at #12 here. Chilling, and verging on laconic black humour. I don’t know about authorial intentions, but I would never have suspected that this statement could be taken to imply any lack of intent to kill the Hamas leaders in question. The point I believe Steven was making was that if you carry out a “targeted assassination” by firing a missile at an individual in the middle of a crowded street, can you really be surprised that a few innocent bystanders get blown to bits in the process (especially if you miss)? Not only that, but once you accept that a few bystanders are going to be blown to bits before you fire the missile, you don’t even need it to be terribly accurate to make the assassination a “success.” It just needs to make a big enough bang.
I must shamefacedly admit I have not yet read your book. (I have some great excuses for this, by the way.) Now I do have to buy it to see if you discuss the origin of unspeak terms. Reading this I think: Where in the HELL and HOW do they come up with these? They are fabulously twisted and chilling. Are they different in kind from say, baseball terminology? What I mean is, is the social origin different? Maybe I’m wrong but with baseball I think it is a bunch of guys constantly talking about baseball that create an in-group language. Is that what happens here? Or is there an official source? (That last question might be a little out of left field and not in your book.)
Of course, these are all quite a bit like mafia speak (as you allude to in ‘whacking’). The similarity between the current U.S. civil and military leadership and the mafia is something that Taguba himself mentions.
by the way, is there something doctrinally inappropriate about the Murakami review, which appeared a couple of weeks ago in print?
(btw, I loved your review of Landsberg in the Guardian on Saturday; I am actually currently pitching a book themed around phoning up various manufacturers, government departments etc and asking them the real answers to the questions “answered” in Freakonomics etc).
Glad you approve! That sounds like an excellent book idea. There was more about the Landsburg book that annoyed me than I could go into, so maybe will post something.
I did put the Murakami review up eventually, but on rereading it, I see that the Guardian edited a “blonde” to “blond”, no doubt assuming that a tough love-hotel manager could not possibly be a woman. Which is, in a way, doctrinally inappropriate.
Ozma – these are interesting questions. The book has some answers in some cases, but not in others. There’s a news story about which I will shortly post that illustrates the process quite nicely in one recent case.
oh no, there it is, I am apparently suffering review-blindness
On editing “blonde” to “blond” — have they not read their own style guide?
… or maybe you were using “blonde” as an adjective, in which case they were applying their style guide correctly?
Good point, although I’m not sure I agree with the style guide. If “blond” is the adjective for hair, it doesn’t necessarily follow that it should be the adjective for a woman with blond hair, since not all of her will be blond. We don’t call a woman with red hair a “red woman”.
no, but we might call her a redhead: I think it’s quite common usage to just say “a tall blonde” or “a petite brunette” and leave the context to determine whether you’re talking about a woman or a lamp.