Securing the homeland: torture, preparedness, and the right to let die.

• Date: 22 March 2006
• Author: Monahan, Torin
• Published date: 22 March 2006
• Author: Monahan, Torin

MODERN SECURITY REGIMES ARE DEFINED BY EXTREMES. PRACTICES OF SPYING, torture, indefinite detention, and preemptive war represent favored responses by the United States to the threats of insecurity introduced by terrorism. But insecurity as a unifying concept has expanded vitally since September 11, spreading into domains of public health and disaster management, among others. Interestingly, whether for the mitigation of potential terrorist threats, avian flu pandemics, or hurricanes, executive privilege and individual responsibility prevail as dominant framing mechanisms for necessary response. In addition, responses to insecurity are increasingly technologized and militarized, whether in the form of technological surveillance, command-and-control organizational structures, or pervasive cultures of secrecy. These are not simply discrete actions played out on the level of nation-state policy. Instead, the field for social practice and conceptions of appropriate governance are transforming rapidly in this climate of absolute threats. It is appropriate and necessary, therefore, to assess the implications of security regimes upon public institutions, modes of governance, and forms of life. This article begins this project by analyzing the discourses surrounding torture and disaster preparedness in the United States.

Logics of Torture

In the U.S.'s protracted "war on terror," politicians and the media have mobilized fear of devastating, indiscriminate attack upon civilian populations to justify extreme police actions and security operations, both within and beyond the country's borders. The suspension of law--or technically the movement of ethically ambiguous or morally reprehensible activities to zones outside legal jurisdiction--enables a false semblance of social order predicated upon universal rights, which still exist in principle, while obliterated in practice.

The most disturbing incarnations of such extralegal zones are seen in the (almost invisible) practices of extraordinary rendition, or transfer of "enemy combatants" to prisons in countries where they are tortured in "black sites" (Cole, 2005). These are concentration "camps" in the deepest sense of the word: they strip away rights, knowledge, and humanity, reducing people to a state of "bare life" (Agamben, 1998), whereupon language, consciousness, and civilization cease to exist (Scarry, 1985). This should not be altogether surprising given the more-or-less visible legal and military strategies leading to such camps.

The discourses surrounding the treatment of enemies in the "war on terror" reveal a great deal about the contemporary culture of control. The questions facing policymakers and security personnel include the messy particulars of sordid exceptions: What kinds of torture techniques are permissible, when, where, and applied to whom? Under what circumstances can we assassinate enemies, even if they are not in combat zones? Under what conditions can we detain individuals, perhaps indefinitely, without due process? These are some dominant questions in what Pierre Bourdieu (1977) would call the "universe of discourse." Such questions beg a set of meta-questions, however, that lie outside public debate: What does it mean that these are seen as the questions of today? What do they say about our values, the state of democracy, or our system of governance? What do they indicate about how we perceive and valuate others? How do they serve to rationalize historical and ongoing complicity in terrorist practices by nation-states? Unfortunately, root questions of this sort remain on the periphery of the universe of discourse when policymakers instead concern themselves with rationalizations for torture.

The contours of the policy problems concerning the treatment of enemies in the "war on terror" are well defined in policy reports like Protecting Liberty in an Age of Terror (Heymann and Kayyem, 2005). The content for this policy report was cultivated through "closed-door" conversations with notable advisors under the aegis of Harvard University's "Long-Term Legal Strategy Project for Preserving Security and Democratic Freedoms in the War on Terror." The forum giving rise to the report included 17 U.S. advisors, such as Robert McNamara, Michael Chertoff, and Rand Beers, along with half-a-dozen "observers" from the United Kingdom. This report is completely unlike secret documents such as the now infamous "torture memos" constructed by John Woo, Alberto Gonzales, and others to legally justify executive powers to detain and interrogate subjects without due process or adherence to the Geneva Convention. Because the Harvard report aims to preserve democratic practice, the conclusions it reaches about acceptable interrogation techniques are all the more revealing and disturbing.

The goal of Protecting Liberty in an Age of Terror is to establish clear guidelines for executive powers and their oversight. To this end, it advocates for various methods of accountability, transparency, and "accurate reassessments," by which it means that sunset provisions and periodic evaluations should be instituted because "broad new executive powers should not be allowed to survive any longer than the extraordinary danger that justifies them" (Heymann and Kayyem, 2005: 7). Most of the recommendations of the report seem to be reasonable, serious, and well thought out. Examples include: "Without exception, the United States shall abide by its statutory and treaty obligations that prohibit torture"; "Any U.S. person and any person within the United States who is seized or arrested outside a zone of active combat shall be detained only on criminal charges"; "Any requirement that a nonjudicial demand, such as a National Security Letter, be kept secret shall be valid for only sixty days"; and so on.

On the surface, such recommendations appear to prioritize the protection of civil liberties over the predilections of the executive branch (or the military and intelligence apparatuses). Curiously, however, the recommendations are quickly qualified in their explanatory text, providing for all kinds of exceptions. The most often used mechanism for qualification is to change the terms of the practices being discussed. For instance, although there should not be any exceptions to the proscription of "torture," "highly coercive interrogation" (HCI) techniques may be completely justifiable and legal. HCI techniques could include things like "putting on smelly hoods or goggles, wall standing for long periods of time, subjection to noise, deprivation of sleep, deprivation of food and drink, deprivation of medical treatment" (Ibid.: 175-176), and so on. Because these techniques, even in combination...