One of those who has waited most desperately to discover [Guantanamo Bay’s] fate was the mother of Mohamedou Ould Slahi, a detainee, who was taken from the sandy streets outside their home in Mauritania on November 20, 2001. As he was led away for questioning, he said: “Don’t worry mom, I’ll be back soon.”…. He has been charged with no crime, but Slahi never returned. He remains locked inside the notorious naval base on Cuba’s east coast despite a 2010 judicial ruling that he should be released. If Obama were inclined to apologize for his failure to shut the facility, it would be too late for Slahi’s mother. She died in 2013. Thanks to a handwritten diary penned by her son, she lived long enough to read a breathless and heart-rending account of the sexual violence, psychological abuse, savage beatings, and outright torture suffered by her boy.
We American are certainly self-congratulatory types. We laud our freedom and equality, we shout our commitment to the rule of law from the metaphorical roof tops, and we risk a collective sprained shoulder patting ourselves on the back for our devotion to free speech and expression. Unfortunately, a convincing argument could be made that we’re also heavily invested in self-delusion. The continued operation of Guantanamo Bay and the fact that America really DOES torture speak to the truth that we are far too willing to ignore the inconvenient truth about ourselves. Turns out we’re WAY too busy congratulating ourselves for being so freakin’ awesome.
I suspect the veracity of this story is open to question. Not that I find that it defies credibility, but independent verification might be difficult to come by. The tenor and tone of it is not inconsistent with other stories that have emerged about the treatment of detainees at Guantanamo Bay. Sexual degradation is a time-honored interrogation/torture technique, but we normally think of it as something committed by men. We tend not to think of such behavior being committed by women, ESPECIALLY not against men.
‘MERICA!!!
“Today, we’re gonna teach you about great American sex. Get up!” he wrote. “The two _ took off their blouses, and started to talk all kind of dirty stuff you can imagine, which I minded less. What hurt me most was them forcing me to take part in a sexual threesome in the most degrading manner. What many _ don’t realize is that men get hurt the same as women if they’re forced to have sex, maybe more due to the traditional position of the man.”….
He claimed one of the women told him: “If you start to cooperate, I’m gonna stop harassing you. Otherwise I’ll be doing the same with you and worse every day… Having sex with somebody is not considered torture.”
Many men would look at this and wonder what the problem is with a man being “forced” to participate in a threesome with two female interrogators? THAT’S torture? Hell, that’s the DREAM of most guys, right? That might seem true…until you consider that forcing a very Conservative Muslim male to participate in sexual activities he considers to be sinful may not be a very erotic exercise. Indeed, the male involved may feel it to be degrading and offensive- and therein lies the problem. This story isn’t about randy, sex-starved female guards availing themselves of an opportunity to “get some.” It’s about engaging in behavior that Mohamedou Ould Slahi found inappropriate, degrading, and insulting to his faith. It’s about interrogators attempting to break Slahi in order to obtain intelligence from him. And yes, it’s about torture…even though “America doesn’t torture.”
The sexual degradation was evidently but one aspect of the abuse Slahi suffered at Guantanamo Bay…at the hands of Americans telling themselves they’re fighting terrorism and defending freedom. What’s left unexplained is how forcing a male Muslim to engage in non-consensual sexual activity can be construed as fighting terrorism.
So…tell me again why the terrorists haven’t won, because it appears that we’ve decided to defeat our enemy by becoming them.
