tag:theconversation.com,2011:/us/topics/torture-memos-12565/articlesTorture Memos – The Conversation2021-02-12T13:18:47Ztag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1549192021-02-12T13:18:47Z2021-02-12T13:18:47Z‘The Mauritanian’ rekindles debate over Gitmo detainees’ torture – with 40 still held there<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/383883/original/file-20210211-19-3pvj54.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=8%2C8%2C5455%2C3628&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">The Office of Military Commissions building in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, was where much legal activity about the detainees' cases was handled.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://newsroom.ap.org/detail/GuantanamoBailBombings/4c47cc7aab4f4a398ba0357df737c89f/photo">AP Photo/Alex Brandon</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>“The Mauritanian,” directed by Kevin Macdonald, is the first <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ADhqzBjvOf8">feature film</a> to dramatize how the war on terror became a war in court. </p>
<p>As a <a href="https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=deS6k74AAAAJ&hl=en&oi=ao">sociologist of law and a journalist</a>, I have spent the past two decades researching and writing about the kinds of legal battles the film accurately portrays. My research has included 13 trips to observe military commission trials at the U.S. Navy base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. </p>
<p>The film stars Tahar Rahim as a Mauritanian named Mohamedou Ould Slahi who is captured and held at the Guantanamo detention center, where many suspected terrorists were sent. Jodie Foster and Shailene Woodley play Nancy Hollander and Teri Duncan, Slahi’s attorneys. Benedict Cumberbatch plays Lt. Col. Stuart Couch, who is assigned to prosecute Slahi’s case.</p>
<p>Hollander is, in real life, among the hundreds of lawyers I interviewed for my forthcoming book, “The War in Court: The Inside Story of the Fight against Torture in the War on Terror,” from the University of California Press. This book traces the work of lawyers who fought the U.S. government over the post-9/11 torture program and how, against the odds, they won a few key battles and changed the way the United States waged the war on terror.</p>
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<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/383884/original/file-20210211-14-1uejntb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="A view of part of the Guantanamo detention site" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/383884/original/file-20210211-14-1uejntb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/383884/original/file-20210211-14-1uejntb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=418&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/383884/original/file-20210211-14-1uejntb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=418&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/383884/original/file-20210211-14-1uejntb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=418&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/383884/original/file-20210211-14-1uejntb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=525&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/383884/original/file-20210211-14-1uejntb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=525&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/383884/original/file-20210211-14-1uejntb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=525&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<span class="caption">A photo reviewed by a military official before being made public shows U.S. military guards walking within the Camp Delta military-run prison in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://newsroom.ap.org/detail/Guantanamo20thHijacker/92102b0028a0463582e820db20635df8/photo">AP Photo/Brennan Linsley</a></span>
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<h2>Challenging secret detention</h2>
<p>In November 2001, after the events of Sept. 11, President George W. Bush’s administration issued an order creating a process by which <a href="https://fas.org/irp/offdocs/eo/mo-111301.htm">people suspected of ties to terrorism</a> would be detained and held, and potentially tried. This would not be the customary process, where they’d be tried in federal court, but instead before a new military commission system.</p>
<p>In December, the Guantanamo naval base was designated the main site for long-term detention and interrogation of men suspected of having ties to terrorism. Prisoners captured in Afghanistan and elsewhere <a href="https://global.oup.com/academic/product/the-least-worst-place-9780195371888?cc=us&lang=en&">began arriving there</a> on Jan. 11, 2002.</p>
<p>Guantanamo was selected because it was under full control of the military and relatively close to the mainland, but outside the U.S. and therefore <a href="https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/guantanamo-bay-why-was-it-set-what-are-controversies-and-why-obama-looking-close-detention-camp-a6891516.html">beyond the reach of American courts</a> – or so the Bush administration assumed. </p>
<p>The idea was that if the detainees were not on U.S. soil, they would have no legal right to seek a judge’s order of habeas corpus. That principle is a <a href="https://www.law.cornell.edu/wex/habeas_corpus">centuries-old protection against unlawful imprisonment</a> and a <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/3663134?seq=1">cornerstone of the rule of law</a>. It allows a prisoner to claim he is being unlawfully held captive, and to require the government to prove to a judge that there is reason to continue to hold him. </p>
<p>Nearly everything about the detainees was deemed classified, including their names and the very fact that they were in U.S. custody. In February 2002, though, the Center for Constitutional Rights, a left-leaning legal organization, teamed up with two death-penalty lawyers, Joseph Margulies and Clive Stafford Smith, to <a href="https://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/542/466/">file a habeas petition in federal court</a> on behalf of several detainees who were known to be in Guantanamo. </p>
<p>That lawsuit demanded the U.S. government explain why it was holding those men. It was the <a href="https://www.simonandschuster.com/books/Guantanamo-and-the-Abuse-of-Presidential-Power/Joseph-Margulies/9780743286862">opening shot</a> of what would become a war in court. In June 2004, the Supreme Court ruled that Guantanamo prisoners did, in fact, have habeas rights.</p>
<p>That same month saw the publication of <a href="https://www.thetorturedatabase.org/search/apachesolr_search">Justice Department memorandums and Pentagon policy directives</a> exposing the fact that torture of terror suspects, including Guantanamo detainees, had been authorized by the White House. Together, the ruling and the documents, which became known as the “<a href="https://thenewpress.com/books/torture-memos">torture memos</a>,” galvanized lawyers to volunteer to represent Guantanamo detainees. Their work involved searching for information to challenge the government’s basis for detaining their clients – including evidence that they were tortured in custody.</p>
<h2>Presumed guilty</h2>
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<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/383882/original/file-20210211-21-1mmsxtq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/383882/original/file-20210211-21-1mmsxtq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/383882/original/file-20210211-21-1mmsxtq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=825&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/383882/original/file-20210211-21-1mmsxtq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=825&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/383882/original/file-20210211-21-1mmsxtq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=825&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/383882/original/file-20210211-21-1mmsxtq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1037&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/383882/original/file-20210211-21-1mmsxtq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1037&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/383882/original/file-20210211-21-1mmsxtq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1037&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Mohammedou Ould Slahi, held without charge at Guantanamo Bay for 14 years.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Mohammedou_Ould_Salahi.jpg">International Committee of the Red Cross via Wikimedia Commons</a></span>
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<p>When that Supreme Court ruling came down, Slahi was one of the <a href="http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/foreigners/2013/04/mohamedou_ould_slahi_s_guantanamo_memoirs_a_timeline_of_a_detainee_s_life.html">most “valuable” detainees at Guantanamo</a>. He had been arrested in Mauritania in November 2001, at the request of the U.S. government, on suspicion that he had recruited <a href="https://www.counterextremism.com/extremists/marwan-al-shehhi">Marwan al-Shehhi</a>, one of the hijackers of United Flight 175, the second of two airplanes to hit the World Trade Center in New York City on 9/11. </p>
<p>Slahi was <a href="https://www.hrw.org/report/2008/04/07/double-jeopardy/cia-renditions-jordan">handed off to the CIA and then sent to Jordan</a>, where he was brutally interrogated for seven months by Jordanian authorities in the service of global U.S. investigation into 9/11. In July 2002, the CIA sent him to the Bagram prison in Afghanistan before sending him to Guantanamo the following month.</p>
<p>Slahi’s case was one of the first slated for prosecution under the <a href="https://georgewbush-whitehouse.archives.gov/news/releases/2001/11/20011113-27.html">military commission system</a>, which let prosecutors use evidence that would never be allowed in U.S. courts, <a href="https://yalebooks.yale.edu/book/9780300189209/terror-courts">including coerced confessions and hearsay</a>.</p>
<p>Couch, the prosecutor, was personally tied to Slahi’s case because he was a close friend of the pilot on the plane that al-Shehhi had hijacked. He was told that Slahi had confessed to everything he was accused of. Couch <a href="https://www.wsj.com/articles/SB117529704337355155">insisted on seeing the evidence himself</a>.</p>
<p>He would not like what he found.</p>
<h2>Learning dirty secrets</h2>
<p>When attorney Hollander met Slahi in 2005, she knew very little about him or his case, and had only a <a href="https://nymag.com/news/features/17337/">short window of opportunity</a> to persuade him to sign a paper authorizing her to represent him. Her meeting, like other detainees’ talks with their lawyers, <a href="https://nyupress.org/9780814785058/the-guantanamo-lawyers/">took place in the same rooms</a> in Guantanamo where prisoners were interrogated, replete with monitoring devices.</p>
<p>Slahi, who had taught himself English while in detention, accepted Hollander’s help and began writing her <a href="https://online.wsj.com/public/resources/documents/couch-slahiletter-03312007.pdf">long letters explaining what had happened to him</a> – but as the film’s audience learns, not everything. </p>
<p>Hollander, even as Slahi’s lawyer, had to fight the government to get his case files, which at one time included more than 20,000 pages that were almost completely blacked out to hide information that had been classified, including details of Slahi’s detention and the circumstances of his confessions.</p>
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<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/383886/original/file-20210211-23-1aifq65.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="A cell at Guantanamo" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/383886/original/file-20210211-23-1aifq65.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/383886/original/file-20210211-23-1aifq65.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/383886/original/file-20210211-23-1aifq65.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/383886/original/file-20210211-23-1aifq65.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/383886/original/file-20210211-23-1aifq65.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/383886/original/file-20210211-23-1aifq65.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/383886/original/file-20210211-23-1aifq65.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The U.S. military approved the release of this photo of a cell at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://newsroom.ap.org/detail/Guantanamo/9229e4a30cf44cf19034d784ec3d1faf/photo">AP Photo/Alex Brandon</a></span>
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<h2>Torture and lies</h2>
<p>The movie’s climax comes when both attorneys – prosecuting and defending – get their long-sought documents. The pages reveal the big secret about Slahi’s case: He was brutally tortured on <a href="https://www.armed-services.senate.gov/imo/media/doc/Detainee-Report-Final_April-22-2009.pdf">direct orders from Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld</a>.</p>
<p>All Guantanamo detainees were <a href="https://bridge.georgetown.edu/research/factsheet-torture-at-guantanamo-bay-detention-camp/">subjected to abuse, humiliation and harassment</a> as part of their interrogations. But Slahi was also subjected to 70 days of what the government called “special measures” – which included a mock execution in which he was taken out to sea in a boat and threatened with drowning. </p>
<p>His captors also <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2016/jun/02/guantanamo-bay-hearing-mohamedou-slahi-diary">constructed an elaborate deception</a> that his beloved mother had been arrested and was on her way to Guantanamo where she would be <a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2013/02/imagine-the-worst-possible-scenario-why-a-guantanamo-prosecutor-withdrew-from-the-case/273013/">raped by other detainees</a>. Only after those experiences did Slahi begin to “confess” to every accusation laid against him.</p>
<p>Hollander knew the government would not want to make public the evidence that his alleged confessions were coerced through torture, and pushed harder for Slahi’s release. Part of that effort included publishing Slahi’s letters as a book, “<a href="http://guantanamodiary.com/">Guantanamo Diary</a>,” which became a best-seller. </p>
<p>Couch decided <a href="https://www.ccohr.incite.columbia.edu/v-stuart-couch">not to prosecute Slahi</a> because the confessions wouldn’t pass legal muster. Accused by the chief prosecutor of being a traitor, Couch was one of several military lawyers who <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20080531102523/http://www.newsweek.com/id/137627/output/print">quit the military commissions for ethical reasons</a>.</p>
<h2>The long road home</h2>
<p>In 2010, Hollander’s fight paid off – or so it seemed – when a <a href="https://www.aclu.org/cases/slahi-v-obama-habeas-challenge-guantanamo-detention">federal judge ordered Slahi’s release</a>. But the <a href="https://www.aclu.org/legal-document/slahi-v-obama-governments-opposition-petitioners-motion-show-cause">Obama administration appealed</a>, and it would be another six years before Slahi was allowed to return home to Mauritania. He spent a <a href="https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/u-s-releases-mohamedou-ould-slahi-author-guantanamo-diary-n667776">total of 14 years</a> in U.S. military custody without facing a single criminal charge. </p>
<p>The movie has a happy ending, with scenes of the real Mohamedou Slahi home in Mauritania smiling as he reviews translations of his book into many languages – and with photos of him and <a href="https://www.miamiherald.com/news/nation-world/world/americas/guantanamo/article212337644.html">one of the guards, who had befriended him</a>, visiting in Mauritania. </p>
<p>But there is no happy ending at Guantanamo, which remains open. Of the 779 men and boys ever held there, <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/projects/guantanamo/detainees/current">40 prisoners remain</a> – including six who, like Slahi, were cleared for release years ago. </p>
<p>[<em><a href="https://theconversation.com/us/newsletters/politics-weekly-74/?utm_source=TCUS&utm_medium=inline-link&utm_campaign=newsletter-text&utm_content=politics-important">The Conversation’s most important politics headlines, in our Politics Weekly newsletter</a>.</em>]</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/154919/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Lisa Hajjar received research funding from the University of California.</span></em></p>The release of a new movie calls public attention to the US government’s treatment of prisoners at Guantanamo Bay, and what the detainees’ future might be.Lisa Hajjar, Professor of Sociology, University of California, Santa BarbaraLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/393082015-04-29T09:57:19Z2015-04-29T09:57:19ZAn ethics lesson for psychologists: don’t participate in torture<p>The Senate’s Report on the CIA’s Detention and Interrogation Program (commonly known as the torture report) released in December 2014, confirmed that doctors and psychologists were complicit in the torture of detainees. </p>
<p>Two psychologists, unnamed in the report, but confirmed to be James Mitchell and Bruce Jessen, designed some of the “enhanced interrogation” techniques. Other psychologists monitored interrogations. </p>
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<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/78446/original/image-20150417-3256-1wlf5oi.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/78446/original/image-20150417-3256-1wlf5oi.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/78446/original/image-20150417-3256-1wlf5oi.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=778&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/78446/original/image-20150417-3256-1wlf5oi.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=778&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/78446/original/image-20150417-3256-1wlf5oi.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=778&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/78446/original/image-20150417-3256-1wlf5oi.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=978&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/78446/original/image-20150417-3256-1wlf5oi.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=978&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/78446/original/image-20150417-3256-1wlf5oi.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=978&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<span class="caption">US Senate Report on CIA Detention Interrogation Program.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File%3AUS_Senate_Report_on_CIA_Detention_Interrogation_Program.pdf">By US Senate Select Committee on Intelligence via Wikimedia Commons</a></span>
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<p>A few weeks after the release of the report the president of the American Psychological Association (APA) <a href="http://www.apa.org/news/press/releases/2014/12/senate-intelligence.aspx">stated</a> that because Jessen and Mitchell are not members of the APA, the organization has no jurisdiction over them and cannot sanction them in any way. But Mitchell and Jessen weren’t the only psychologists to violate ethical standards, and the APA has yet to fully denounce psychologists’ participation in torture. </p>
<p>Why the organization has not taken any action against any psychologists, including those within its own ranks who worked closely with government officials, is anyone’s guess. </p>
<p>But it raises two interesting questions. </p>
<p>Do the ongoing and significant financial ties between Department of Defense and the APA play a role? And what are psychology students and medical students taught about military medical ethics?</p>
<h2>APA allowed psychologists to take part interrogations until 2013</h2>
<p>Enhanced interrogation techniques (EITs) included practices like waterboarding, cramped confinement, sleep deprivation, and requiring detainees into “stress positions,” among others. Medical staff monitored the health of detainees during interrogations. Without their presence, the DOD would have had no way of even remotely claiming these interrogations were safe.</p>
<p>The use of these enhanced interrogation techniques <a href="http://blogs.wsj.com/washwire/2014/12/09/list-of-approved-enhanced-interrogation-techniques/">was authorized</a> in a <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/ref/international/24MEMO-GUIDE.html">series of memos</a> from Justice Department in 2002 and 2005. One of the memos stated that Taliban detainees did not qualify as prisoners of war, therefore the <a href="http://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2012/02/the-torture-memos-10-years-later/252439/">Geneva Convention did not apply</a>.</p>
<p>In 2005 the APA hurriedly <a href="https://www.apa.org/pubs/info/reports/pens.pdf">issued a report</a> justifying and allowing psychologists to participate in interrogations in the war on terror.
(To be clear, these interrogations were not simply asking a prisoner a question and hoping for a response, but included sessions in which shackled prisoners were taunted, exploited, threatened, and physically harmed in a multitude of ways.)</p>
<p>No doubt this was done partly to protect those psychologists who’d already participated in “enhanced interrogations,” but also to continue to allow psychologists to do so. Although many psychologists protested, <a href="http://ethicalpsychology.org/">including members of the APA</a>, this decision cemented and furthered the longstanding ties between the APA and the defense department. </p>
<p>The report was <a href="https://www.apa.org/pubs/info/reports/pens.pdf">rescinded in 2013</a>, but the APA still allows psychologists to participate in interrogations in some circumstances. Many activists within psychology and otherwise feel that because of this, nothing has changed. </p>
<p>The APA’s 2005 decision also stood in sharp contrast to the <a href="http://www.amednews.com/article/20060703/profession/307039957/7/">American Medical Association</a> (AMA) and the American Psychiatric Association. In 2006 both organizations issued strong statements prohibiting physician participation in interrogations as a violation of medical ethics.</p>
<p>When the <a href="http://www.ama-assn.org/ama/pub/physician-resources/medical-ethics/code-medical-ethics/opinion2067.page?">AMA</a> and the <a href="http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:MXxM76YkwR4J:www.psychiatry.org/file%2520library/advocacy%2520and%2520newsroom/position%2520statements/ps2006_interrogation.pdf+&cd=1&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us">American Psychiatric Association</a> issued these statements almost instantly physicians were pulled off of interrogation teams given that they could no longer monitor them or participate in them in any way whatsoever. </p>
<p>However, given that there were no prohibitions about the participation of psychologists on interrogation teams, they remained in those sessions and possibly still do to this day, even though the Obama administration <a href="http://www.nbcnews.com/id/28574408/ns/politics-white_house/t/obama-names-intel-picks-vows-no-torture/#.U3oorihQOR8">declared</a> an end to torture years ago.</p>
<p>Had the APA followed the lead of the AMA and the American Psychiatric Association and prohibited psychologists from participating, the entire interrogation program may likely have ended years earlier than it did.</p>
<p>Why? Because the Department of Defense knows that having some health-care personnel present during interrogations confers a certain amount of legitimacy to interrogations and allows them to proceed.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/78447/original/image-20150417-3261-chiwen.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/78447/original/image-20150417-3261-chiwen.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/78447/original/image-20150417-3261-chiwen.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/78447/original/image-20150417-3261-chiwen.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/78447/original/image-20150417-3261-chiwen.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/78447/original/image-20150417-3261-chiwen.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/78447/original/image-20150417-3261-chiwen.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The Pentagon.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/mjbaird/105586525/">Michael Baird</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/">CC BY-SA</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>The APA and the DOD – a long and close relationship</h2>
<p>The relationship between the Department of Defense (DOD) and the APA goes back decades. During both world wars, the APA recruited psychologists into military service to evaluate new recruits, assist in treating soldiers with post-traumatic stress and provide guidance on interrogating captured enemy soldiers. </p>
<p>Over the last half century the DOD has funneled hundreds of millions of dollars to psychologists for research and assistance. Today, the Veterans’ Administration is the single biggest provider of psychology internships in the country. And <a href="http://joh.sagepub.com/content/44/3/615.full.pdf+html">7% percent of APA members</a> work for or with the DOD. </p>
<p>No matter how extensive the ties between the DOD and psychology, psychologists should know that participation in torture violates every accepted international ethical code of conduct and the duties of health care personnel in particular.</p>
<h2>Possible changes to military ethics policies</h2>
<p>In late March, Vice News <a href="https://news.vice.com/article/pentagon-panel-proposes-sweeping-changes-that-could-impact-guantanamo-force-feeding">reported</a> that the federal committee advising the Secretary of Defense on health policy recommended changes to military ethics guidelines. One suggested change would:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>“allow military healthcare workers to bow out of performing medical procedures that would violate their profession’s code of ethics, or their religious and moral beliefs. Personnel that decline to participate in the procedures should not face retribution.” </p>
</blockquote>
<p>This is important because in the past any health-care worker in the military who refused to participate in force-feedings or other procedures considered unethical by virtually every ethical code faced significant consequences. These could include court martial or dishonorable discharge with loss of all veterans’ benefits.</p>
<p>But the potential change means it is critical for psychologists (and other health-care workers) to know what their military ethical responsibilities are.</p>
<h2>Military medical ethics aren’t being taught in schools</h2>
<p>The next generation of practitioners appear to know little about military psychologists’ ethical responsibilities. </p>
<p>When my colleagues and I <a href="http://joh.sagepub.com/content/44/3/615.full.pdf+html">surveyed 185 students</a> in 20 clinical psychology graduate programs in 2014, we found that 74% had received less than one hour of instruction about military medical ethics. We <a href="http://www.baywood.com/hs/ijhs374.pdf">conducted a similar study</a> of medical students in 2007 and found that 94% had received less than one hour of instruction about military medical ethics. </p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/78464/original/image-20150417-3256-1lnuv8n.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/78464/original/image-20150417-3256-1lnuv8n.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/78464/original/image-20150417-3256-1lnuv8n.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=941&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/78464/original/image-20150417-3256-1lnuv8n.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=941&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/78464/original/image-20150417-3256-1lnuv8n.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=941&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/78464/original/image-20150417-3256-1lnuv8n.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1183&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/78464/original/image-20150417-3256-1lnuv8n.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1183&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/78464/original/image-20150417-3256-1lnuv8n.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1183&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Students aren’t being taught about their ethical obligations under the Geneva Convention.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/archivesnz/14676813964/">Archives New Zealand</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/">CC BY-SA</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>In answer to particular questions about the appropriate treatment of prisoners, situations in which the Geneva Conventions apply, and scenarios in which military personnel are expected to disobey unethical orders from superiors most of the clinical psychology students responded incorrectly. </p>
<p>The students also didn’t know that international codes of conduct mandate that they refuse unethical orders from superiors and that the only things they can demand from prisoners are name, rank, and serial number – even if they think that a certain prisoner has valuable information.</p>
<p>Based on our findings, we came to two main conclusions. Psychology students learn little about the professional standards that constrain unlawful and unethical practices. At the same time, these students have a misplaced sense of complacency about their knowledge of such matters.</p>
<p>This is troubling, since psychologists who don’t understand their ethical obligations are less prepared to disobey unethical orders. They’re more likely to comply when they’re ordered to assist in interrogations that violate international standards.</p>
<p>Psychologists who are asked to participate in unethical behavior need to refuse and speak out against such requests.<br>
The continued existence of the detention center at Guantanamo, where abuse continues in the <a href="http://www.newsweek.com/nurses-guantanamo-may-get-option-force-feeding-316055">form of force-feeding</a>, will likely go down as one of our nation’s most egregious ethical lapses. The role of health-care providers in this setting is especially troubling.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/39308/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>J. Wesley Boyd does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Why hasn’t the American Psychological Association prohibited members from participating in interrogations? And what are future psychologists learning about military medical ethics?J. Wesley Boyd, Assistant Clinical Professor of Psychiatry, Harvard Medical School; Assistant Clinical Professor of Psychiatry, Harvard UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/367112015-01-26T15:47:35Z2015-01-26T15:47:35ZThe terrifying philosophy behind Guantanamo torture<p>There are many incredible things about the <a href="http://www.thebookseller.com/news/guantanamo-diary-launch-canongate">diary</a> recently published by Guantanamo Bay detainee <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/jan/16/-sp-guantanamo-diary-exposes-brutality-us-rendition-torture">Mohamedou Ould Slahi</a>. It contains over 2,500 redactions, and was only published after a <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/jan/16/guantanamo-diary-a-classified-handwritten-manuscript">six-year legal battle</a>. Its author was cleared for release in 2010 but still languishes in Guantanamo, and is unlikely to be released this year. </p>
<p>Among other outrages, the diary documents how Slahi, after suffering the indignity and abuse that arose from genuine renditions, was subject to a “<a href="http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/jan/16/-sp-guantanamo-diary-salt-water-stephen-fry">fake rendition process</a>” designed to make him feel he was “being transferred to some far, faraway secret prison.” </p>
<p>As part of this fake rendition, he was subjected to a beating so severe he was unable to stand, then taken out to sea on a boat for three hours and forced to drink salt water as he feared he would be killed if he refused. </p>
<p>But for all these reasons, the diary is also a document of how the corrosive worldview that governed the War on Terror era has wrought havoc, and continues to do so. Almost 14 years after the Bush administration used 9/11 as a pretext to abandon international law, drawing instead on flawed and overly simplistic <a href="http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/utilitarianism-history/">utilitarian</a> calculations, we are still only beginning to fully understand the human cost of the War on Terror – and the dangerous intellectual currents that carried it along.</p>
<h2>The pursuit of liberty?</h2>
<p>The diary should remind us that Slahi’s treatment was not an abberation; it was US policy. And that only makes sense in a very particular and distorted brand of utilitarian ethics embraced by the US and UK governments during the War on Terror years. </p>
<p>That thinking is on full display in the influential writings of conservative jurist <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2006/09/10/books/review/Bazelon.t.html">Richard Posner</a> of the University of Chicago Law School. At the height of the Bush administration’s overreach, Posner <a href="http://www.utexas.edu/law/news/2006/032806_tigar.html">wrote</a> that “civilised nations are able to employ uncivilised means, at least in situations of or closely resembling war, without becoming uncivilised in the process.” </p>
<p>Posner argues that these principles are likely to be of particular relevance “when the torture is being administered by military personnel in a foreign country” – essentially denying any moral link between what happens in the domestic sphere and what is done by the forces of such “civilised nations” in their supposed pursuit of liberty abroad.</p>
<p>Of course, even if such thinking held moral water, Posner’s argument does not cover the treatment of detainees at Guantanamo, which is effectively US territory and which is not a war zone in any conventional sense. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/69997/original/image-20150126-24549-1aay1ib.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/69997/original/image-20150126-24549-1aay1ib.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=401&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/69997/original/image-20150126-24549-1aay1ib.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=401&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/69997/original/image-20150126-24549-1aay1ib.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=401&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/69997/original/image-20150126-24549-1aay1ib.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=504&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/69997/original/image-20150126-24549-1aay1ib.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=504&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/69997/original/image-20150126-24549-1aay1ib.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=504&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">True believers.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://www.epa.eu/?71481338046933847037&MEDIANUMBER=99280199&MEDIAITEMS=8c198f16c82a381941b86521bde5bf1f82649d07&PAGING_SCOPE_4=29&MEDIAGROUP_SCOPE=1">EPA/Pablo Martinez Monsivais</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Unsurprisingly, <a href="http://www.nydailynews.com/news/politics/president-george-w-bush-defends-torture-legal-effective-michigan-speech-article-1.408526">George W Bush</a> himself saw it differently. In true utilitarian style, he has always defended the treatment metered out to Slahi and others by claiming that it “saved lives” – overriding any concern about its impact on subjects or moral status in itself. <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2014/dec/14/dick-cheney-rectal-feeding-cia-torture-report">Dick Cheney</a> is similarly blunt to this day: when asked if he would still authorise the techniques documented in the recent <a href="http://www.usnews.com/news/articles/2014/12/09/here-is-the-cia-torture-report">CIA torture report</a>, he answered “I’d do it again in a minute.”</p>
<h2>Damage done</h2>
<p>In the years since the end of the Bush administration, there have been some signs that these base calculations are running out of appeal in mainstream US politics. Equivocations have even come from <a href="http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2014/12/john-yoo-if-senate-report-is-true-cia-interrogators-are-at-legal-risk/383790/">John Yoo</a>, the legal counsel central to the creation of the so-called “<a href="http://www.nytimes.com/ref/international/24MEMO-GUIDE.html">torture memos</a>”. </p>
<p>After the release of the torture report, Yoo went so far as to admit that some of the practices documented in it were “not supposed to be done” as they had not been authorised by the Justice Department. But those reservations aren’t moral ones, nor do they show real concern for the long-term human costs of such techniques. Instead, Yoo is only troubled by the idea that the CIA went beyond its legal purview – and that some of its employees may therefore be “at risk legally”.</p>
<p>The utilitarian thinking embraced by Bush, Cheney and Yoo dominated the War on Terror, and their crude legal and philosophical calculations set the tone for terrible abuses of authority. </p>
<p>Whether that was the mistreatment of detainees at Guantanamo, the use of white phosphorus in <a href="http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/4442988.stm">Fallujah</a>, the CIA’s globe-straddling <a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/rise-and-fall-of-cias-overseas-prisons-traced-in-senate-report-on-interrogations/2014/12/11/067232b4-8143-11e4-9f38-95a187e4c1f7_story.html">black sites network</a> or the use of drones in North Waziristan to such an extent that they make <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/oct/29/pakistan-family-drone-victim-testimony-congress">children</a> who live there afraid of blue skies, the policies driven by this thinking have wreaked havoc across the globe for almost a decade and a half. </p>
<p>We will be coming to terms with the costs and consequences of these policies for years to come. But we must not forget that they were crafted with care and forethought by people who shared a particular philosophy – one whose nightmarish effects are still to be fully understood.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/36711/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Peter Finn does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>There are many incredible things about the diary recently published by Guantanamo Bay detainee Mohamedou Ould Slahi. It contains over 2,500 redactions, and was only published after a six-year legal battle…Peter Finn, Lecturer in Politics, Kingston UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/317802014-09-22T04:34:00Z2014-09-22T04:34:00Z‘Medieval’ makes a comeback in modern politics: what’s going on?<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/59551/original/pgqz9bvn-1411109664.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">The term 'medieval' is being used by politicians to denote others who do not observe modern 'civilised' rules and to whom these rules also do not apply.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/martins_nunomiguel/9733648097/in/photolist-fQ8usV-obZqYm-5mSe9-niPbZo-5Krqn7-begzyK-ncjN74-gBDr8f-iEYwK6-orW7if-dygk4z-ahq34q-g5ZSup-5VSxJS-5CHPpq-fo4wws-f43Cmv-iTao2S-eBhw-4wvNJn-f4hSkG-fmqJo8-ahnjtF-dXoypV-6kmReK-6HQKnV-c92tYQ-5rpR3Q-7HZcZy-frqfHz-aDFjmy-avgR7Q-7v1P4P-5hGNyu-FL9zS-ahsPhv-fWqNq7-h2KVq3-4R1hQ5-c25hfY-7B2e5L-agxX5k-6f9TAs-9hzbW3-4W1MMM-8fpqo8-9RnfRu-9TFkeK-g7VaCi-9GDLeP">Flickr/Nuno Martins</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/">CC BY-NC-SA</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>According to <a href="http://www.aph.gov.au/Parliamentary_Business/Hansard">Hansard</a>, in the parliament of John Howard’s first term of government the adjective “medieval” was used eight times. In the following term, however, it cropped up 46 times. What happened? Why did our members and senators suddenly need to describe things as medieval?</p>
<p>What happened was 9/11. The spectacle of planes crashing into skyscrapers prompted myriad politicians, in Australia and elsewhere, to denounce the perpetrators as “medieval”.</p>
<p>Right now, “medieval” is spiking again. In response to the footage of the beheading of James Foley, Prime Minister <a href="http://www.openaustralia.org/debates/?id=2014-08-26.41.1">Tony Abbott declared</a> in parliament:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>What we have seen in recent weeks is medieval barbarism, perpetrated and spread with the most modern of technology.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Abbott is not alone; it has become commonplace to describe Islamic State (IS, formerly ISIS or ISIL) as a brutal throwback to a murky violent past called, interchangeably, the Dark Ages and the Middle Ages. Why the Middle Ages? Why now? </p>
<p>Historians of the Middle Ages will tell you that al-Qaeda and IS bear little resemblance, in their words or deeds, to actual medieval people. The religious fundamentalism that characterises al-Qaeda and IS, for example, is a relatively recent phenomenon. Broadcasting choreographed violent spectacles as a means of creating shock and fear owes its strategy more to Hollywood and viral media than it does to the Middle Ages.</p>
<h2>So why read Islamic terror as medieval?</h2>
<p>The answer lies in the longer history of the idea of the Middle Ages as the convenient other to modernity in the Western cultural imagination. First deployed in the Renaissance, the term “medieval” was invented by scholars who wanted to celebrate the progress of their own age in contrast to the preceding centuries. Describing something as medieval has since endured as a successful form of negative branding.</p>
<p>Since the Renaissance, whenever modernity has found itself in crisis - when the shibboleths of rationalism, secularism, capitalism and the nation-state seem to be coming apart at the seams – fantasies of the medieval have suggested a mostly frightening, though sometimes alluring, vision of what the alternatives to modernity might be.</p>
<p>What are these cultural fantasies? The neo-medieval world of <a href="https://theconversation.com/explainer-game-of-thrones-the-story-so-far-24321">Game of Thrones</a> suggests a few of them, with the evident pleasure it takes in its trinity of sex, violence and chivalry. Life in the seven kingdoms is cheap. People are heroes or villains, honourable or tyrannical, noble or base. </p>
<p>This is not a world governed by the rule of law, of constitutionality, or of the nation-state. This is the place where, ultimately, both tribal affiliation and supernatural irrationality reign. Hence the dragons.</p>
<p>When commentators and politicians describe Islamic State as “medieval” they are placing the organisation opportunely outside of modernity, in a sphere of irrationality. The point being made is that they are people from a barbaric and superstitious past, and consequently have not matured into modern political actors. Medievalising IS supporters puts them a very long way away from the here and, even more pointedly, from the now.</p>
<p>The post-9/11 usage of “medieval” to describe Islamist terrorism tells us as much about vocabularies within Western political thought as it does about the ideologies of al-Qaeda and IS. Edward Said devoted his very famous book <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orientalism_(book)">Orientalism</a> to describing the Western penchant for imagining the East as outside of history, and as erotic and oppressive in the same instance.</p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/fVC8EYd_Z_g?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">Edward Said talks the context and themes of his influential book, Orientalism.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Medievalism, as the scholar <a href="http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/medievalism-and-orientalism-john-m-ganim/1102384900?ean=9781403963208">John Ganim has pointed out</a>, functions in very similar ways to orientalism, and often in tandem. It reduces the Other to unknowability, and yet makes it exotic, bewitching and, ultimately, dangerous.</p>
<h2>Why does this matter?</h2>
<p>Recent political history tells us that the stakes of this conversation are very high indeed. After 9/11, the infamous <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/ref/international/24MEMO-GUIDE.html?_r=0">Torture Memos</a> produced out of the office of the then US attorney-general Alberto Gonzales insistently labelled al-Qaeda and the Taliban as feudal and tribal. </p>
<p>The point, in doing so, was to argue that since they worked within medieval non-national structures they could be categorised as non-state combatants. This meant that they did not need to be accorded the rights granted to prisoners of war under the Geneva Convention. Medievalising al-Qaeda and the Taliban was a crucial part of the legal strategy that led to <a href="https://theconversation.com/can-obama-finally-shut-the-door-on-the-guantanamo-embarrassment-13943">Guantanamo Bay</a>.</p>
<p>Lest this seem a Western practice only, IS, for their part, are participating wholeheartedly in their own medievalist script in their <a href="https://theconversation.com/isis-does-not-have-enough-public-support-to-extend-its-caliphate-in-iraq-28940">declaration of a new Caliphate</a>. Their notion of a glorious fundamentalist Islamic Middle Age is also a fantasy. It bears little relationship to the historical record of the very complicated and diverse forms of Islamic governance that evolved in the Middle East and around the Mediterranean. The IS desire for statehood is a decisively modern one, which has its origins as much in the 1648 <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Westphalian_sovereignty">Treaty of Westphalia</a> as it does in the history of Islam.</p>
<p>All of this is to say that when politicians, commentators and indeed terrorists try to get political mileage from using the term “medieval” they should understand that this idea does not align with historical fact. Instead, it is an idea that bears and perpetuates an ideology of othering. </p>
<p>Whether it is US Secretary of State <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com.au/john-kerry-on-steven-sotloffs-killing-by-isis-2014-9">John Kerry describing</a> the beheading of Stephen Sotloff as “an act of medieval savagery”, or IS leader Abu Bakr al Baghdadi being <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/sep/07/anjem-choudary-islamic-state-isis">declared by his followers</a> as the “Caliph of all Muslims and the Prince of the Believers”, in both cases we see fantasies of the medieval being used as a shorthand to describe what is not modern or Western. It seems that it is almost impossible to think about postmodern futures without recruiting the medieval past.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/31780/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Clare Monagle receives funding from the Australian Research Council.</span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Louise D'Arcens receives funding from the Australian Research Council.</span></em></p>According to Hansard, in the parliament of John Howard’s first term of government the adjective “medieval” was used eight times. In the following term, however, it cropped up 46 times. What happened? Why…Clare Monagle, Senior Lecturer, School of Philosophical, Historical & International Studies, Monash UniversityLouise D'Arcens, Associate Professor in English Literatures Program and Australian Research Council Future Fellow, University of WollongongLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.