Book Review: The Dark Side

Jane Mayer sums up her book on "The Inside Story of How the War on Terror Turned into a War on American Ideals" with the opinion of Phillip Zelikow, a historian and lawyer who had been Executive Director of the bipartisan 9/11 Commission and then aide to Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice. His view:

In time, [Zelikow] predicted, the Bush Administration's descent into torture would be seen as akin to Roosevelt's internment of Japanese Americans during World War II. It happened, he believed, in much the same way, for many of the same reasons. As he put it, "Fear and anxiety were exploited by zealots and fools." (335)

The Dark Side describes this "descent into torture." It's a disturbing look at the way "zealots and fools" in the Bush Administration – folk like Cheney, Addington, and Rumsfeld, along with a slew of people seduced or bullied by their rhetoric (it's hard to say where Bush falls in this list – driving policy, or seduced by it) – created quasi-legal justifications for the use of torture against suspected terrorists – many, if not most, of whom were innocent, sometimes obviously so – and then subverted Congress's and the Supreme Court's attempts to reign in the abuses.

Mayer's title comes from an appearance by Cheney on Meet the Press just a few days after 9/11 (Sept. 16, 2001, to be precise):

"We'll have to work sort of the dark side, if you will," Cheney explained.... "We've got to spend time in the shadows in the intelligence world. A lot of what needs to be done here will have to be done quietly, without any discussion, using sources and methods that are available to our intelligence agencies – if we are going to be successful. That's the world these folks operate in. And, uh , so it's going to be vital for us to use any means at our disposal basically, to achieve our objective." (9-10)

I'm embarrassed to admit that in the immediate shadow of 9/11, I wouldn't have been too dismayed by such rhetoric. The "fear and anxiety" that Zelikow points to, and the sense of helplessness, made it easy to want a strong response, even one that dealt with the bad guys on their terms. But, like many, I (finally!) grew increasingly uncomfortable when bits and pieces of what this "dark side" comprised found its way into the press: the "black sites" (secret CIA prisons), "extraordinary rendition" (exporting suspects to countries know to use torture), Guantánamo and its lack of due process for "unlawful enemy combatants," and – of course – Abu Ghraib.

Even so, I had no clue about the breadth and depth of the Administration's disregard for the rule of law. The problem is that any one of these issues, though raising serious concern, could be dismissed as a mistake, maybe even a right-minded one. But Mayer's book brings all these issues together, building a narrative that demonstrates a concerted expansion and abuse of executive power that flouted international law – not to mention U.S. law and the Constitution that executive power is supposedly sworn to uphold.

Waterboarding offers a good case study for what I'm talking about here. There was lots of discussion – in Congress, in the press – about whether or not waterboarding should be considered torture. Some people decried the practice unequivocally; for example, though I'm not a fan, John McCain made his opposition perfectly clear, even while other Republican candidates waffled around him:

All I can say is that it was used in the Spanish Inquisition, it was used in Pol Pot's genocide in Cambodia, and there are reports that it is being used against Buddhist monks today [in Myanmar].... It is not a complicated procedure. It is torture." (171)

Others supported waterboarding, in theory and/or practice, arguing that – in carefully supervised conditions, or with a short enough duration, or with the right motives – it does not rise to the level of torture and should therefore be part of U.S. interrogators' arsenal.

Mayer's book, though, suggests that this focus on waterboarding actually served as a distraction. Alberto Mora – General Counsel of the Navy and, in fact, a strong Bush supporter – reviewed transcripts of one interrogation and concluded that the media "focused too narrowly" on allegations of torture, especially on waterboarding (the "sine qua non of criminality"). The problem, for Mora, is the notion of "state-sanctioned cruelty":

"If cruelty is no longer declared unlawful, but instead applied as a matter of policy, it alters the fundamental relationships of man to government. It destroys the whole notion of individual rights. The Constitution recognizes that man has an inherent right, not bestowed by the state or laws, to personal dignity, including the right to be free of cruelty. It applies to all human beings, not just in America – even those designated as 'unlawful enemy combatants.' If you make this exception, the whole Constitution crumbles." (219)

Focusing attention on waterboarding drew attention away from larger, more important issues, both at a macro and a micro level. At the micro level, it drew attention away from the (appalling) laundry lists of sanctioned interrogation techniques, in which each item might pass muster, but in combination with others – often the practice – clearly crossed the line. (I must emphasize that each item might pass muster; many items in these lists are decried by human rights groups as being clearly examples of torture.) And at the macro level, it drew attention away from deeper human rights questions about whether we even want to be playing in the neighborhood of what Mora called "cruelty" – and not cruelty in an abstract, touchy-feely sense, but as a Constitutional issue of human rights.

As with the issue of waterboarding, it's easy to get lost in individual issues – losing sight of the forest, as the cliché goes, for the trees. Mayer's book brings the forest into focus, highlighting patterns that can only materialize when seen in relationship to a larger set of issues.

In the end, Mayer convinced me that historian Arthur Schlesinger Jr. is right:

When asked what he thought of President Bush's policy on torture, he peered over his glasses and paused [ah, purple prose!]. Schlesinger's The Imperial Presidency had described Richard Nixon as pushing the outer limits of presidential power.... With his trademark bow tie askew, Schlesinger considered, and finally said, "No position has done more damage to the American reputation in the world – ever." (9)