Should anyone still be baffled by the utter collapse of USA moral authority in the dark world of global politics, we recommend a close reading of a recent report submitted by a noted forensic psychiatrist, Dr. Emily Keram, as part of a renewed effort to secure the release of Shaker Aamer, a British resident still being held at Guantanamo Bay without charge, despite having been cleared for release for the past seven years. Below, we focus on quotes from Shaker Aamer himself, as he describes his experience of torture at the Bagram detention facility to Dr. Keram:
As we have proposed elsewhere, torture is not a means of acquiring intelligence; torture is a teaching delivered by the powerful, to destroy utterly any semblance of subjective identity, agency and autonomy. As Mr. Aamer tells Dr. Keram,
Systems of torture are constantly in the process of refinement, with humans serving as laboratory animals inside the behavioral maze. How does this differ from the monstrous activities of the Nazi doctors? Even kindness is refashioned as an implement for inflicting deep psychic damage:
THE MARRIAGE OF REASON AND SQUALOR
From Bagram and Kandahar, Mr. Aamer was then taken to further indefinite detainment at Guantanamo Bay, where the complicity of medical personnel became ever more perverse:
Will that also be our defense, when we are finally held accountable for these actions? That we were possessed by evil djinn? In the attempted destruction of human beings like Shaker Aamer, we have also destroyed ourselves.
From our perspective up here in the crow’s nest of Desperado Philosophy, the battle over who gets to say “I” has never been more vivid; and the ones who stand above have never been more afraid.
Desperado Philosophy 