The Oscars have ignited important human rights debates linked to two prize-winning movies: “Zero Dark Thirty” and “Lincoln.” Love or hate the movies, the discussion swirling around them has made this one of the most human rights-centric Oscars since “Taxi to the Dark Side” (about the decision and effect of the Bush Administration’s use of torture) won Best Documentary in 2008.
As predicted, “Zero Dark Thirty” was shut out of best picture, which shared a single award (with “Skyfall”) for sound editing. I found the movie riveting, disturbing (making the implicit argument, false by all reliable accounts, that torture played a role in Osama Bin Laden’s death) and ultimately a story-telling failure. The snub for what began as an Oscar sure thing seemed very intentional.
Tellingly, in his confirmation hearings, new CIA chief John Brennan told senators
A torture scene in “Zero Dark Thirty”
that torture (or in his rhetorical evasion “enhanced interrogation techniques” including nudity and stress positions) produced little if any (he wasn’t specific on this) valuable intelligence. In his words, a 300-page summary of a recently completed 6,000-page classified report by committee Democrats was “rather damning” on the supposed utility of torture.
Yet “Zero Dark Thirty” does leave viewers with the impression that torture helped lead the US to Osama Bin Laden. I agree with Tim Egan’s critique of the movie that “several larger truths — the many intelligence mistakes, the loss of focus and diversion of resources, and the fallout from the folly of the Iraq war — are missing. This is a crucial point, because the film is likely to end up as the most popular version of the singular trauma in the first decade of the 21st century. It’s obvious, now, why the C.I.A. was cooperative with the filmmakers: it couldn’t have asked for better product placement.”
Also, I was struck by how none of the Americans had families while many of the Muslims, including Osama, did. It’s as is we exist only to work and hunt while “they” actually have personal lives that they defend with their (in the movie) detestable embrace of terrorism.
In early February, the Open Society published Globalizing Torture, a comprehensive and staggering report on the US program to fly suspects around the world to be tortured either directly or by proxy. The 54 governments identified in the report as having taken part in the extraordinary rendition program spanned Africa, Asia, Australia, Europe, and North America, and include: Afghanistan, Albania, Algeria, Australia, Austria, Azerbaijan, Belgium, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Canada, Croatia, Cyprus, the Czech Republic, Denmark, Djibouti, Egypt, Ethiopia, Finland, Gambia, Georgia, Germany, Greece, Hong Kong, Iceland, Indonesia, Iran, Ireland, Italy, Jordan, Kenya, Libya, Lithuania, Macedonia, Malawi, Malaysia, Mauritania, Morocco, Pakistan, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Saudi Arabia, Somalia, South Africa, Spain, Sri Lanka, Sweden, Syria, Thailand, Turkey, United Arab Emirates, United Kingdom, Uzbekistan, Yemen, and Zimbabwe.
It’s sounds like the most awesome study abroad tour ever. Except it wasn’t.
Many of the flights originated in North Carolina, where the CIA contractor AeroContractors works out of the Johnston County Airport.
Tarheels Against Torture (Photo credit: gnuru)
So far we’ve done nothing to account for what we’ve done. When victims try to sue, they are blocked by the Administration, which argues that the CIA’s rendition program is a “state secret.” Even if the torture program existed (which of course it did) the argument goes, there can be no trial because this would risk information that could compromise national security. As David Cole wrote recently in the New York Review of Books, “President Obama has also resisted even the appointment of a bipartisan commission to investigate and report on our descent into torture and cruel treatment; apparently he thinks such an inquiry would be too divisive.”
Our torture policy has parallels to a new and equally disturbing US policy: the use of drones to kill suspected operatives in the “war on terror.”
Reaper Pilots Take Control at Kandahar Airfield (Photo credit: Defence Images)
The debate over the rights implications of drone strikes is heated, and that’s where most current attention has been focused. It seems clear that the Obama Administration is under-reporting the number of people killed in drone strikes, and so far has refused to make public the legal justification for targeting individuals or criteria for when and how drone strikes are authorized, raising serious concerns about legality. According to the Drones Team at the Bureau of Investigative Journalism, as many as 2,629 people have been killed in CIA drone strikes in Pakistan since the program started, and as many as 475 were likely civilians.
If we do the math of proportionality required by international humanitarian law, 1 of every 18 “kills” are non combatants. Is that considered an “acceptable” ration by most Americans? What is that one is a citizen? Or a child? According to Eyal Weizman, at Duke recently for a series of talks, Israel considers 1 in 29 acceptable. Weizman, Professor of Spatial and Visual Cultures at Goldsmiths, University of London and Director of the Centre for Research Architecture – a “laboratory for critical spatial practices,” has written movingly on human rights in the Middle East and has documented the architectural effects of things like the wall between Israel and the West Bank and the destruction of Palestinian homes.
We are not the only ones using drones — and not everyone is using their drones in the context of the “war on terror.” China’s official newspaper, the Global Times, reported that the authorities considered using drones to kill alleged Burmese kingpin Naw Kham in early 2013, planning to “carry 20 kilograms of TNT to bomb the area.” Not exactly a precise methodology, to be sure.
A new study reported in the New York Times has opened a new challenge to the drone program. “According to a Defense Department study, pilots of drone aircraft experience mental health problems like depression, anxiety and post-traumatic stress at the same rate as pilots of manned aircraft who are deployed to Iraq orAfghanistan.”
One of the study authors, Jean Lin Otto, told the Times that she expected stress levels to be even higher than for traditional combat pilots.
“Remotely piloted aircraft pilots may stare at the same piece of ground for days,” said Jean Lin Otto, an epidemiologist who was a co-author of the study. “They witness the carnage. Manned aircraft pilots don’t do that. They get out of there as soon as possible.”
Currently, the Air Force trains more pilots for drones than for fighter jets and bombers combined. Within 2 years, the USAF will have more drone pilots than bomber pilots (fighter pilots remain the largest single group). The figures leave out the drones and pilots operating under Central Intelligence Agency command.
And what of “Lincoln” ? I loved this movie and was profoundly moved by it, not the least the result of Daniel Day Lewis’s inhabiting of the character of this complex man. Yet this movie, too, has fallen short on its history-telling and fidelity to the rights drama at the core of this period.
If the narrative penned by Tony Kushner is to be believed, white men were responsible for freeing the slaves, with no assist from the slaves themselves or free African-Americans. Ross Douthat did a very good summary of the debate, and linked to Corey Robin’s “Steven Spielberg’s White Men of Democracy,” which argues that the fight for the 13th amendment was a collective effort — but of white men, and did not include African Americans:
For all the decentering of Lincoln, for all the inclusion of multiple voices, the film studiously keeps black people in the audience—literally in the gallery, in one of the closing scenes, or in the bedroom or in the foyer, waiting, watching, attending. Black characters are almost always either looking up at their saviors (even allowing for the fact that Lincoln was tall) or wistfully after their saviors, as the latter depart for the halls of power. It’s true that the film opens with black soldiers telling Lincoln all they have done in the war, and telling him all that he should still do. Mary Todd Lincoln’s black servant speaks up every once in a while, as do some other servants. But that’s pretty much it.
So after the glamor of the dresses and the sparkle of the diamonds and the repercussions of the jokes fades, these questions — torture and the legacy of slavery and the movement that ended it — will likely remain lively.
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