Screaming silence:
when words don't count

By Dan Smith

Global Beat Syndicate

WASHINGTON--The problem seems to have begun--if there was a beginning--when literary deconstruction became more than an academic "field" in our "postmodern" era.

If it seems that I am saying, "this started without starting," it is because U.S. society has uncritically incorporated the meaning and methodology of literary deconstruction into our broader national and international discourse, and then tried to short-circuit the process.

In oversimplified terms, "deconstruction" is the process of textual analysis to uncover all possible meanings by re-arranging relationships (e.g., relative importance) among structural elements, and then non-judgmentally, and non-hierarchically, highlighting the differences. (Wags assert that the process theoretically produces unlimited variations and outcomes leading to an infinity of meanings - which is to say the result is meaningless.)

One example of deconstruction is the well-known example of President Clinton's response to a question in his grand jury deposition about his relationship with Monica Lewinsky: "It depends on what the meaning of the word 'is' is. If 'is' means 'is and never has been' that's one thing - if it means 'there is none,' that was a completely true statement." Imagine the difference for arms control negotiations--or the evaluation rejecting Saddam Hussein's December 2002 denial that he had unconventional weapons that led to war--if policy makers had to differentiate between "is and never has been" and "there is none."

Which brings up the latest tumult over a series of memos dated 2002 and 2003 emanating from the Justice Department, the CIA, senior Pentagon officials, and even Bush's White House Counsel in which they embarked on what can only be seen as an attempt to deconstruct - circumvent - the meaning of   "torture."

The administration would have the world believe that torture is really not torture unless the "right" (really the wrong) circumstances exist. Thus, the memos assert, if physical pain is not "severe" or is a mere by-product of efforts to elicit information from a detainee, then there is no question of whether the acts constitute torture. The Justice Department memorandum published early this month in the Washington Post implies that there is a threshold of pain that must be crossed for torture to exist, pain "equivalent in intensity to the pain accompanying serious physical injury, such as organ failure, impairment of bodily function, or even death." Similarly, psychological assaults that do not result in "significant" long-term damage (which could not be known until the "long-term" is reached) are not torture.

These opinions, together with the claim that the president in his role as commander-in-chief is not bound by either U.S. or international rules prohibiting torture, run directly counter to what the Army teaches its interrogators, counter to what U.S. practice has been for more than three decades, and counter to what the nations of the world, including the United States, have agreed to in the Geneva Conventions. If the United States claims exemption or immunity for "national security," what is to prevent other commanders-in-chief from doing the same?

The Justice Department memo also is inherently contradictory. On one hand, it contends that an act taken out of the context in which it occurs would be "difficult" to brand as torture. Yet it lists objectively (without context) seven techniques that the courts have ruled to be torture regardless of context.

Attorney General John Ashcroft, appearing before the Senate Judiciary Committee June 8, stated that President Bush had never issued orders that "would require or direct" violations of the Geneva Conventions against torture. But the very fact that the administration even considered the possibility of ignoring the Conventions, let alone developed and circulated "rationales" within the interagency structure in Washington, reveals the obvious contempt in which this administration holds international and even U.S. law.

It is also obvious that those who authored and reportedly acceded to the confidential memos have never undergone real, "un-deconstructed" torture--nor do they expect ever to be subjected to torture in any context. Most probably they will never encounter or seek out anyone who has suffered torture. Neither do they seem to have given even a thought to the torture U.S. service members might have to endure in reciprocal application of their legalistic deconstruction. Nonetheless, they might get some idea of what torture is like by contemplating Edvard Munch's terrifying painting, "The Scream."

That's a life silently deconstructed to the extreme.

The FCNL is a public interest lobby that seeks to bring the concerns, experiences and testimonies of Friends (called Quakers) to bear on national policy decisions.