[URBANTH-L]REV: Sriram on Kassimeris, ed., Warrior's Dishonour:
Barbarity, Morality, and Torture in Modern Warfare
Angela Jancius
jancius at ohio.edu
Tue Oct 30 18:00:44 EDT 2007
H-NET BOOK REVIEW
Published by H-Human-Rights at h-net.msu.edu (October 2007)
George Kassimeris, ed. _Warrior's Dishonour: Barbarity, Morality, and
Torture in Modern Warfare_. Aldershot: Ashgate, 2006. 243 pp. List of
contributors, index. $89.95 (cloth), ISBN 6-7546-4799-4.
Reviewed for H-Human-Rights by Chandra Lekha Sriram, Chair in Human
Rights, School of Law, University of East London
_Warrior's Dishonour_ is an edited volume that seeks to do just what
the subtitle suggests: make sense of barbarity and torture in modern
warfare. However, its sweep is somewhat wider and narrower than this:
it includes discussions of conflicts that well predate the modern
era, and there is relatively little discussion of morality in the
volume. As with most edited volumes, the quality of the chapters is
somewhat variable. However, taken as a whole it is a useful
contribution to contemporary debates about the appropriate conduct of
war, the use of torture, and the degree to which warfare has in some
sense changed (in the modern era, or after the events of September
11, 2001). The contributors are all based in the United Kingdom,
which means that the volume offers what might be a slightly different
approach than work emerging from the United States on these topics.
Most notably, nearly all of the contributors rely, explicitly or
implicitly, upon constructivist postmodern, or cosmopolitan
theoretical approaches. A common theme running through the volume is
the utility of barbarity and torture in conflict--not for rational
ends such as victory, but the dehumanization of the enemy "other" and
the construction of the protagonist "us" as heroic or otherwise
righteous.
The volume proceeds in five parts. Part 1 presents what are termed
"Stories of Atrocity" ranging from the historic (conflicts in the
British Isles in the mid-seventeenth century) to the contemporary
(the tactics of the Lords Resistance Army in Northern Uganda). The
historic sweep of these pieces helps to dispel the myth that the
barbarity we see in conflict today, whether inflicted by Al-Qaeda or
by U.S. troops in Abu Ghraib, is in any sense new. The chapters lay
bare the degree to which there is an enduring tension between the
essential violence of warfare, and the tendency for it to escalate,
and the so-called warrior's code, meant to restrain behavior. The
tendency of conflict to escalate, the chapters suggest, means that
even in the absence of barbaric goals, and indeed even where very
clear rules prohibit barbaric behavior, it can still emerge. This is
due in part to the tendency of training, military rhetoric, and the
conduct of war to depersonalize the enemy, making abuses far easier--
not necessarily the conscious intentions of soldiers or their
leaders. Torture and barbarity in this sense do serve a purpose: to
demonstrate power and to reaffirm the torturer's self-conception
rather than to obtain evidence or a military advantage.
The second section, on barbarity as strategy, seeks to explain
barbarity in contemporary warfare, and again to dispel the myth that
there is something "new" and especially barbaric about contemporary
conflict. The authors suggest that the extraordinary brutality
witnessed in Sierra Leone against civilians, for example, was not
merely driven by the supposed nature of the conflict as a "resource
war." One chapter in this section and some elsewhere in the volume
find that the predisposition to barbarity is hardly restricted to
fighting forces or prison guards; several landmark controlled
psychological experiments have demonstrated the alarming willingness
of individuals to abuse other people who have been categorized as
prisoners in these experiments. Barbarity is in some sense essential
to war, and not alien to human nature; it is for this reason that
rules, such as international humanitarian law, are created to contain
the barbarity.
The chapters in section 3, on the barbarity of contemporary culture,
deal squarely with the conflict in Iraq and the abuses in Abu Ghraib
and on Guantanamo. Several chapters engage in a close analysis of
Bush administration language and policy. The claim that the abuses in
Abu Ghraib were the actions of a few bad apples acting outside their
mandate is rebutted by the fact that the Justice Department sought
during this period to simultaneously re-define torture, suggest that
it was legal in some instances, and to exclude many being held by the
United States from the protections afforded them as POWs by
international humanitarian law. This defense is further challenged
with evidence from the rhetoric of the Bush administration, rhetoric
that sought at once to vilify "the enemy" by labeling it evil, while
at the same time labeling Americans, and virtually any Americans, as
heroic. Several pieces point finally to the evidence that ranking
officers were aware of abuses, and did not seek to stop them,
suggesting at least implicit support for their use. If this argument
is correct, then whether or not there were clear orders from senior
political or military officials to abuse prisoners, they set the
stage and turned a blind eye to the consequences.
Part 4, war crimes and human rights, considers attempts to treat
barbarity in war as a crime, through the use of international
criminal accountability. The construction of victimhood is treated as
particularly problematic, for many atrocities have been perpetrated
in the name of "not being victims ever again." Further, while victims
are often rhetorically central to the pursuit of international
criminal accountability, the fact that a person has been victimized
does not necessarily mean that a crime has been committed in
international law, and even if it has victims have not then played a
significant role in international criminal tribunals. This is not
particularly surprising, the chapters note, given the state-centric
nature of international law and the continued necessity of state
consent for such institutions to function.
The final section of the volume considers arguments for the
justification of torture, presented most notably in recent years by
Alan Dershowitz in his argument for limited torture as authorized
through judicial torture warrants. The chapters deal less with
whether torture actually "works," although neither suggests that it
is particularly effective in gaining accurate information, and more
with the debate over whether, if it worked, it could be justified.
Each critiques in part Dershowitz' ticking time bomb scenario, and
utilitarian or at least consequentialist response.
Taken together, these essays represent a thoughtful set of
reflections upon barbarity in contemporary conflict, and in
particular an attempt to explain the propensity for barbarity and
torture even where it is proscribed and would appear to serve no
function, or even to be counterproductive. They should be of interest
to those interested in torture, international criminal accountability
generally, and debates about the conduct of the global war on terror.
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