February 10, 2007
Breaking Silence
Eric Fair, an Arabic linguist and "contract interrogator" in Iraq in 2004, writes in the Washington Post:
A man with no face stares at me from the corner of a room. He pleads for help, but I'm afraid to move. He begins to cry. It is a pitiful sound, and it sickens me. He screams, but as I awaken, I realize the screams are mine.That dream, along with a host of other nightmares, has plagued me since my return from Iraq in the summer of 2004. Though the man in this particular nightmare has no face, I know who he is. I assisted in his interrogation at a detention facility in Fallujah. I was one of two civilian interrogators assigned to the division interrogation facility (DIF) of the 82nd Airborne Division.....
Despite my best efforts, I cannot ignore the mistakes I made at the interrogation facility in Fallujah. I failed to disobey a meritless order, I failed to protect a prisoner in my custody, and I failed to uphold the standards of human decency. Instead, I intimidated, degraded and humiliated a man who could not defend himself. I compromised my values. I will never forgive myself.......
While I was appalled by the conduct of my friends and colleagues, I lacked the courage to challenge the status quo. That was a failure of character and in many ways made me complicit in what went on. I'm ashamed of that failure, but as time passes, and as the memories of what I saw in Iraq continue to infect my every thought, I'm becoming more ashamed of my silence.
The Stanford prison experiment (watch the movie) and Stanley Milgram's studies of obedience to authority at Yale have shown us that "good" people can be induced to do "bad" things all too easily. We must understand that we all have the capacity to behave sadistically. Recognizing those impulses within ourselves can help us not to act on them. Both of these experiments had negative effects on the participants and would never meet the criteria for the ethical treatment of human subjects in psychological experiments today.
Torture, and the trauma that results from it, does not only affect the victim. Eric Fair's nightmares mark him as a man of conscience. In addition to having all the symptoms of post traumatic stress disorder, he has profound remorse and guilt as a result of his behavior. Sociopaths have neither. Our president, for example, has assured us on numerous occasions that he is sleeping soundly.
It takes courage to break the silence and speak out in shame . I hope that Mr. Fair's public disclosure of his experiences will help him to find some meaning in his actions, as he uses them to teach all of us about the dreadful consequences of torture and war.
Photo note: Twisted and tattered