Amending Arendt: Camp X-Ray Reveals Banal Evil

Posted on March 23, 2004 in Atrocity Morals & Ethics

It’s politics Tuesday!

What “allegedly” happened in Camp X-Ray wasn’t torture: it was sexual harassment, not unlike what Catherine McKinnon and others saw happening to women in the American workplace:

Prior to their early work, sexual harassment had been interpreted largely as an instance of males’ sexual pursuit of women in the workplace or classroom, a normal biological attraction of males to females. MacKinnon, Brownmiller, and other scholars argued that sexual behaviors in the workplace or the classroom were not normal, but were instances of discrimination against women. They noted that the women receiving these unwelcome sexual advances were in inferior positions and roles and that the behaviors served to “keep women in their place.”

Awareness of harassment now extends to same-sex relationships in the workplace and more general threats issued in the name of “workplace harmony” by unbridled managers. Women know what I am speaking of when I mention how their complaints are quickly treated as “lies” or dismissed as a “he said/she said” situation. And I hold that the recent conversation at The Gutless Pacifist on the issue of Camp X-Ray followed a similar pattern when this excerpt from a Daily Mirror story was presented:

Jamal’s most shocking disclosure centred on the use of vice girls to torment the most religiously devout detainees.


Prisoners who had never seen an “unveiled” woman before would be forced to watch as the hookers touched their own naked bodies.


The men would return distraught. One said an American girl had smeared menstrual blood across his face in an act of humiliation.


Jamal said: “I knew of this happening about 10 times. It always seemed to be those who were very young or known to be particularly religious who would be taken away.

The Pentagon has, not unexpectedly, denied the complaints. What bothered me more was the way that Christian pacifists dismissed this complaint by a Muslim male. “He might have a grudge” was advanced as if it were a killing argument against the story. They added that the Mirror was a “tabloid” which further cemented, in their minds, the probability that the story was a lie. The Pentagon was quoted in support of the notion that this was a “he said/he said” story, despite everyone’s knowledge of the U.S. Government’s record of subversion and distortion when it comes to atrocity and torture. Reasonable doubt was pulled entirely too far: the victim was put on trial and I spoke up to that.

Two days later, readers of the blog were treated to a lecture on “niceness” by a blog author who jumped in to defend the guy who made the “grudge” statement. Again, women who have faced sexual harassment in the workplace know this ploy well.

Why did this happen? First, I think that the fact that the witness was a Muslim played a part. The people evaluating the claim were Christian pacifists. Their knee-jerk reaction in the name of “caution” was all too clearly– if subtly and unconsciously — religiously motivated in my mind.

Second, like John Kerry and many other liberals, pacifists have been cowed into the position of seeing the problem as the Government sees the problem. “What we have here are all kinds of rumors and stories flying around” is the official line. The victims stand alone against the monolith. Because of their nationality, their religion, their political status as “terrorists”, and their inability to communicate when they are inside the camp, too many of us mouth the line “they might be lying” to keep the terror of this uncontrolled government from visiting them.

These former prisoners might be telling the truth.

Third, people do not like it when their devotion to their professed conscience is questioned. It may have to do with religious beliefs that hold that once you have Faith you can be counted sinless. In any case, it hurts to be told that you’re not as virtuous as you would like to be. I note that the revelation of imperfection does not deny anyone the right to speak out against atrocity, to demand investigation, to call for change. This ethical myth constitutes a logical fallacy that only serves to give those who have corrupt consciences power over the rest of us.

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Yule Heibel got me started on this recapitulation of my position on the Camp X-Ray story. In a comment on her blog, I wrote:

Do we discount evidence against the Holocaust because the people in question are angry about what the guards did to them and to other people, I asked?

That analogy naturally provoked outrage because the person whose views I questioned was a liberal, but right wingers get just as irate. My point is that we’ve allowed these stupid values to color our preliminary judgements too much. We should call for investigation and avoid making prejudicial statements against the alleged victim until they are proven to be a liar.

When a government throws up an apparatus to block investigation by independent outside parties, that’s reason to be very suspicious. What you describe, my friend, is what I see happening in the Good Old USA now and even liberals are showing entirely too much caution when judging the claims of outsiders and critics of the administration.

Why is this happening? They are afraid of losing face if the guy is proven to be a liar.

A few weeks ago, I made reference to a favorite book of mine, Hannah Arendt’s Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil. Arendt concluded after watching Eichmann’s performance before the Israeli court that the motivating force behind Eichmann’s actions was not a passion to fulfill Hitler’s dream, but a mundane, commonplace desire to please his superiors. She got totalitarianism wrong, she admitted. It didn’t brainwash people into unthinking automatons as World War II propaganda by Disney and others conditioned us to believe. It merely positioned them.

The liberals whose first word was to call for “caution” when viewing these words and those who ran to their defense have been set in their place by the relentless propaganda machine of the Bush Administration and its backers. It’s not that they buy into the Bush lies and distortions entirely: it’s that they’ve been made afraid of paying a price. As I said to Yule, they are afraid that this fellow might turn out to be a liar and that will reflect badly on them.

Which misses out entirely on the purpose of investigation and vigorous questioning of authority: it’s not to win at any cost, but to see that Truth is served. I won’t weaken the call for an investigation by suggesting that this fellow might be lying. To do that plays into the hands of those who do not want a fair and thorough investigation of the Bush Regime. I note that the pattern of rebuttal sounds too much like the pattern which is used to harass victims of sexual harassment into silence. The prime source for the insistance that this fellow is lying is the same institution that brought us the 1991 Tailhook Scandal and the My Lai Massacre. I think we have a criminal record worth investigating here.

Those who jumped to suggest that Jamal al-Harith’s testimony might be motivated by a “grudge” do not themselves qualify as evil people. (I note that the fellow with whom I had the meat of the argument shares my view that this requires an independent investigation. He characterized me as “tearing [him] a new asshole”. Didn’t mean to be that rough.) Propaganda-bred timidity in the face of resistance by corrupt authority to such claims aids and abets Evil. I think we need to be more firm, more insistant, more protective of our rights. We need to speak out honestly and educate people about the rights and wrongs involved in the handling of this affair. We’re going to sound mean to some. That’s a price we shall have to pay if we want justice, if we want to establish a precedent that will last for those of the next generation and the ones following it.