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In comments yesterday, someone (I can't find it now) mentioned the case of Alyssa Peterson, one of the first female soldiers to die in Iraq, who committed suicide shortly after witnessing an interrogation session that was more a beating than anything else.
Peterson is emblematic of countless other Americans--in uniform and out--who were confronted with the imperative to torture and otherwise violate the moral and legal principles we are supposed to stand for, and who reacted by fighting back against that imperative.
It's known that PTSD is primarily a response to experiencing and participating in the infliction of violence on others. It is primarily a conscience-based affliction, not a fear-based one. And those who suffer from it all too often do take their lives, as Alyssa Peterson did, or else spend many dark days contemplating doing so.
Every single torturer who is given a pass by Obama's embrace of the Nuremberg Defense represents another insult another attack on those who did not willingly go along, whether or not they found a way to effectively remove themselves from becoming part of the machinery of evil. Every single torturer who is given a pass by Obama's embrace of the Nuremberg Defense represents another bullet in Alyssa Peterson's body, another insult to her honor, her integrity, and her good name.
We need to know about her story, to understand what Obama is doing to her memory, her humanity, her integrity, with every pass he gives to those who tortured when we she refused to.
In March of last year, Editor and Publisher editor Greg Mitchell wrote in Huffington Post:
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Looking back at all of the sad, tragic and unnecessary deaths in Iraq that I have written about in the past five years, it is hard to identify one that stands out. But one death does still haunt me, above all others.
Alyssa Peterson was one of the first female soldiers killed in Iraq -- and she died by her own hand after objecting to interrogation methods used on prisoners. A cover-up, naturally, followed....
She was only the third American woman killed in Iraq, so her death drew wide press attention. A "non-hostile weapons discharge" leading to death is not unusual in Iraq, often quite accidental, so this one apparently raised few eyebrows. The Arizona Republic, three days after her death, reported that Army officials "said that a number of possible scenarios are being considered, including Peterson's own weapon discharging, the weapon of another soldier discharging, or the accidental shooting of Peterson by an Iraqi civilian." And that might have ended it right there.
But in this case, a longtime radio and newspaper reporter named Kevin Elston, not satisfied with the public story, decided to probe deeper in 2005, "just on a hunch," he told me in late 2006 (there's a chapter about it in my new book). He made "hundreds of phone calls" to the military and couldn't get anywhere, so he filed a Freedom of Information Act [FOIA] request. When the documents of the official investigation of her death arrived, they contained bombshell revelations. Here's what the Flagstaff public radio station, KNAU, where Elston now works, reported: "Peterson objected to the interrogation techniques used on prisoners. She refused to participate after only two nights working in the unit known as the cage. Army spokespersons for her unit have refused to describe the interrogation techniques Alyssa objected to. They say all records of those techniques have now been destroyed."
Hundreds of phone calls, and that was just beginning. Yet, even today, very little is known about Peterson's death, and the conditions that lead up to it. And this is not just the case with Peterson's death. It is the story of our entire involvement in Iraq. Our entire involvement in the "war on terror". We have barely scratched the surface of the horrors that have been perpetrated in our names, the horrors that countless thousands of decent Americans like Peterson have to live with to this day. Holding the guilty accountable is not a matter of petty vengeance, or even abstract justice. It is also, in a very real sense, an act of healing for those who suffer like Peterson did, because they are the ones with the consciences to be haunted by what they've witnessed, and been forced to be a part of.
The next month, Mitchell wrote about it again:
The death of Alyssa Peterson, which I chronicled here last month, is unspeakably sad, and what was fully in her mind will never be known, especially since her parents apparently knew little about her death until years after it happened. The press, which has rarely challenged the official version of Iraq fatalities, has not probed the incident, to this day (although it is featured in two chapters in my new book on Iraq and the media). But this tragedy also begs the question: Which interrogation techniques drew her ire?
And were they of such a nature that this might explain why this young woman of Mormon faith and, reportedly, good nature would suddenly turn a gun on herself?
The official Army investigation notes that all papers relating to the interrogations have been destroyed. But what do we know about what was going on in Iraq in 2003, beyond credible claims that treatment of prisoners was being "Gitmo-ized"?
He then turns to a new source of information, insight, and reflection, another female translator, who briefly met Peterson, shortly before her suicide:
Perhaps the most specific testimony that may relate to Alyssa Peterson comes from another Arabic-speaking female U.S. soldier who also served in the 101st Airborne at that time in the same region of Iraq. She even wrote a book partly about it. This is former Army sergeant Kayla Williams, author of the 2005 memoir, Love My Rifle More Than You. Much of the media publicity about the book focused on her accounts of sexual tension or harassment in Iraq, but it also holds several key passages about interrogations.
In the book, Williams, now 30 and out of the Army, described how she had been recruited to briefly take part in over-the-line interrogations. Like Peterson, she protested torture techniques -- such as throwing lit cigarettes at prisoners -- and was quickly shifted away. But she told me that she is still haunted by the experience and wonders if she objected strongly enough.
Williams and Peterson were both interpreters -- but only the latter was in "human intelligence," that is, trained to take part in interrogations. They met by chance when Williams, who had been on a mission, came back to the base in Tal Afar in September 2003 before heading off again. A civilian interpreter asked her to speak to Peterson, who seemed troubled. Like others, Williams found her to be a "sweet girl." Williams asked if she wanted to go to dinner, but Peterson was not free -- maybe next time, but of course time ran out....
One reason that the path Obama has chosen is so wrong, and why vigorous de-Nazification is needed instead, is precisely so that the health, sanity and survival of the best among us no longer depend on such brief and unfortunately ineffectual encounters. Rather, the virtue of soldiers such as Peterson and Williams needs to be made central, rather than peripheral. Their brief meeting needs to be institutionalized. Their bond of common humanity and integrity needs to be the foundation on which the defense of our nation is built. Because nothing less, nothing else can truly defend us.
Mitchell continues, taking us into what Williams herself experienced in the way of horrors perpetrated in our names:
Shortly after that, Williams (a three-year Army vet at the time) was sent to the 2nd Brigade's Support Area in Mosul, and she described what happened next in her book. Brought into the "cage" one day on a special mission, she saw fellow soldiers hitting a naked prisoner in the face. "It's one thing to make fun of someone and attempt to humiliate him. With words. That's one thing. But flicking lit cigarettes at somebody -- like burning him -- that's illegal," Williams writes. Soldiers later told her that "the old rules no longer applied because this was a different world. This was a new kind of war."
Here's what she told Soledad O'Brien of CNN on Sept. 26 of this year: "I was asked to assist. And what I saw was that individuals who were doing interrogations had slipped over a line and were really doing things that were inappropriate. There were prisoners that were burned with lit cigarettes.
"They stripped prisoners naked and then removed their blindfolds so that I was the first thing they saw. And then we were supposed to mock them and degrade their manhood. And it really didn't seem to make a lot of sense to me. I didn't know if this was standard. But it did not seem to work. And it really made me feel like we were losing that crucial moral higher ground, and we weren't behaving in the way that Americans are supposed to behave."
As soon as that day ended, after a couple of these sessions, she told a superior she would never do it again.
In another CNN interview, on Oct. 8, 2005, she explained: "I sat through it at the time. But after it was over I did approach the non-commissioned officer in charge and told him I think you may be violating the Geneva Conventions. . . . He said he knew and I said I wouldn't participate again and he respected that, but I was really, really stunned...."
These are the horrors that Williams herself saw--and refused to participate in. But, of course, could not wash from her memory, or her soul. And what does this common experience lead her to think of regarding Peterson's struggle, and her death?
It's complicated, of course. Suicide is rarely the result of a single factor, but rather of the overwhelm from an avalanche of them. Still, it's impossible that the torture she witnessed, the torture she was thrust into the middle of did not loom very large before her--along with feelings of isolation, abandonment, and betrayal--because her love of country was being turned to such dark and despicable ends.
Taking all of other unknown factors into account, what they shared in common cannot be ignored:
Properly, Williams points out that it's rarely one factor that leads to suicide, and Peterson had some personal problems, to be sure. "It's always a bunch of things coming together to the point you feel so overwhelmed that there's no way out," Williams says. "I witnessed abuse, I felt uncomfortable with it, but I didn't kill myself, because I could see the bigger context.
"I felt a lot of angst about whether I had an obligation to report it, and had any way to report it. Was it classified? Who should I turn to?" Perhaps Alyssa Peterson felt in the same box.
"It also made me think," Williams says, "what are we as humans, that we do this to each other? It made me question my humanity and the humanity of all Americans. It was difficult, and to this day I can no longer think I am a really good person and will do the right thing in the right situation." Such an experience might have been truly shattering to the deeply religious Peterson.
Referring to that day in Mosul, Williams says, "I did protest but only to the person in charge and I did not file a report up the chain of command." Yet, after recounting her experience there, she asks: "Can that lead to suicide? That's such an act of desperation, helplessness, it has to be more than that." She concludes, "In general, interrogation is not fun, even if you follow the rules. And I didn't see any good intelligence being gained. The other problem is that, in situations like that, you have people that are not terrorists being picked up, and being questioned. And, if you treat an innocent person like that, they walk out a terrorist."
Or, maybe in this case, if an innocent person witnesses such a thing, some may walk out as a likely suicide.
The death of Alyssa Peterson is by itself a powerful reason for the necessity of de-Nazifying America. Prosecuting those who willingly tortured when she refused to participate is the very least we can do to honor her memory, her honor and integrity, her love of country. For how can her love of country be sustained if we do not make our country worthy of such love again?
Her death alone is reason enough. We do not need any more.
And yet, there is so much more. So many tens, if not hundreds of thousands who suffer from PTSD. Not all of them do so because of being exposed to torture. Probably only a small fraction of them do, at least in formal settings. And yet, what has the Iraq War been, if not one long extended torture session, with subjects who had nothing whatsoever to do with 9/11?
Let Alyssa Peterson stand for all of them, all the good and trusting Americans who believed in their country, believed in their leaders, and found themselves horribly betrayed. We owe it to those whose motives really were good and pure to hold accountable those whose motives were not.
It is the only way possible to restore the possibility that good and pure motives can have a worthy object to serve. |
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