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January
29, 2002
Gary Leupp
Why
This War Was, and Remains, Utterly Wrong
Alexander
Cockburn
The
Birds of Kandahar
Patrick
Cockburn
Afghan
Opium Trade
Back in Business
January
28, 2002
Larry
Chin
Brosnahan
for the Defense
Mokhiber/Weissman
Tyranny
of the Bottom Line
George
E. Curry
Civil
Rights Nominee Called Affirmative Action "Racist"
Sen. Russ
Feingold
Campaign
Finance Reform?
Think Enron
John Chuckman
Liberal?
Media?
January
27, 2002
Mokhiber
and Weissman
Enron's
Drip, Drip, Drip
Tom Turnipseed
MLK
Jr.'s Dream Perverted
January
26, 2002
Norman
Madarsz
Adieu,
Bourdieu
January
25, 2002
National
Lawyers Guild
Know
Your Rights
Alexander
Cockburn
You
Call This Terrorism?
CounterPunch
Wire
Cal
Energy Crisis Hoax:
It Wasn't A Shortage,
It Was a Shakedown
Tariq
Ali
Kashmir,
Klinghoffer,
the Kurds and Chomsky
Nadine
Strossen
Protecting
MLK Jr.'s Legacy:
Justice and Liberty After 9/11
January
24, 2002
Robert
Fisk
Turkey
Targets Chomsky
Dean Baker
Lying
on Top:
Ken Lay One of Many
David
Vest
Idiot
Wind
January
23, 2002
Terry
Waite
Guantanamo
Prisoners:
Justice or Revenge?
Molly
Secours
The
Case of Abu-Ali:
Racism and the Death Penalty
Robert
Jensen
Speak
Out, Get Slimed
January
22, 2002
Brendan
Cooney
Moby-Dick
and the Hunt
for Osama bin Laden
Rick Giombetti
Progressive
Pols for Enron?
Judith
Resnik
Invading
the Courts?
Kevin
Alexander Gray
The
Crisis in Black Leadership
January
21, 2002
Marjorie
Cohn
Will
Walker's Words
Be Used Against Him?
Ahmad
Faruqui
MLK
Jr. and the Palestinians
January
19. 2002
Jordan
Green
Enron
Stole Our Future
January
18, 2002
Tom Turnipseed
The
Enron Model
Walt Brasch
Enron
at the White House
CounterPunch
Wire
Human
Rights Group Says Guantanamo Prisoners Must
Be Treated as POWs
January
17, 2002
Gideon
Levy
Bulldozing
Rafah
Uri Avnery
That
Weapons Shipment
January
16, 2002
John Chuckman
The
Angel and the Pretzel
Lawrence
McGuire
Subverting
the
Geneva Convention
Kathy
Kelly
An
Open Letter to
Richard Perle on Iraq
January
15, 2002
George
Monbiot
Greenpeace,
Lord Melchett
and the Business of Betrayal
Jack McCarthy
Follow
the Pretzel
William
Blum
Atta
and the Times:
Follow the Changing Story
Edward
Said
Emerging
Alternatives
in Palestine
January
14, 2002
David
Vest
Open
Bag. Eat Pretzels.
Patrick
Cockburn
Collapse
of Georgia
Ignored by the World
Mokhiber/Weissman
Enron's
Accountants:
When In Doubt, Shred It
January
13, 2002
C.G. Estabrook
Why
We Kill People
January
12, 2002
Cockburn/St.
Clair
Forbidden
Truths
January
11, 2002
Lee Balllinger/Dave
Marsh
Neil
Young's Duet with Ashcroft
January
10, 2002
Tom Turnipseed
Bush,
Enron, UNOCAL
and the Taliban
St. Clair/Cockburn
Greenpeace
to Greenwash?
Hans von
Sponek
Iraq:
Is There an Alternative
to Military Action?
Jim Lobe
Israeli
Human Rights Group Assails Army
Marina Mayakova
Russia's
Top Military Astrologer Predicts More Attacks from OBL
January
9, 2002
David
Vest
The
Super-Burqa
and the Big Tent
ND Jayaprakash
Winnable
Nuclear War?
Rafiq
Kathwari
Kashmir
Will Make Ground Zero Look Like a Bonfire
January
8, 2002
Prudence
Crowther
Sting
Like a B-52
Nelson
Valdés
Al-Qaeda
at Guantanamo Bay
John Chuckman
Dark
Tales from the
Ministry of Truth
Richard
Corn-Revere
Do
We Fear Freedom?
Joan Hoff
The
Nixon You Haven't Heard
January
7, 2002
Lawrence
McGuire
Confusing
Economic Tales About Argentina
Wael Masri
They
Are Taking
Our Rights Away
Philip
Farruggio
Better
Medicine
A Photographic Journal of Life
in an Afghan Refugee Camp
By Judith Mann
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January
29, 2002
The Great Pretzel Swallower's
Guantánamo S/M Porn PR Disaster
By Dr. Susan Block
I was beginning to accept The War for what the
Great Pretzel Swallower had proclaimed it to be (in so many malapropisms):
a Fight for my Freedom to Party. A fight for my freedom to
fly, shop, drink champagne, wear miniskirts and, of course, have
lots of sex. If any values were worth defending, these were.
Sure, we seemed to be bombing more out
of revenge for our wounds and lust for a nice friendly place
to lay our pipeline than anything the least bit noble. But at
least we gave the impression that we were trying to conduct
a relatively "humane" war. I was impressed with our
government's apparent concern for the Afghan people (unlike Vietnam).
We tried not to kill civilians, though sometimes, of
course, when you're bombing the crap out of a country, it can't
be helped. We dropped food packets; too bad they looked just
like landmines, confusing the now-dead or maimed children who
grabbed them. We helped women get on the road to liberation;
who doesn't want to see what's under that burqa? We encouraged
Afghans to play long-forbidden music, and hey, everybody loves
music-except those Evil-Doer, No-Fun Talibans.
In short, we not only won The War on
the Battlefield (though not many of our guys stepped onto an
actual battlefield-too dangerous), but we were winning the War
of World Opinion. That is, we were doing some topnotch PR.
Then I saw The Picture. You know, the
one that appears to have been taken on the set of a gay male
heavy S&M training film or a Robert Mapplethorpe photograph.
About eight or nine submissives are shown kneeling, their knees
grounded into the gravel, their legs crossed and shackled under
them, their arms manacled in front, their hands bizarrely mittened.
They are blindfolded with black, high-tech-looking goggles,
earplugged (or are those earphones?) and practically gagged
with surgical masks and electrical tape, their day-glo orange
outfits blowing in the Cuba Libré breeze, revealing sections
of their naked flesh. One of the Orange Men appears to be losing
his pants. Obviously, he can't pull them up.
Above this trussed-up, sensory-deprived
platoon of bad boys stand two taut Marines (a third is in the
distance), clad in crisp camouflage, their heads shaved around
the sides, a modern spin on the Medieval bowl-cut. The Marine
closest to the camera is leaning over the Orange Men in a casually
menacing posture. And, in what's probably just an innocent juxtaposition
of objects, a long fence pole seems to be emerging from his pants.
And yes, if you squint, it looks like an elongated erection,
slim but stiff, towering like a sword over his helpless, senseless
captives.
Big Stick, indeed.
The shocking part is that this Guantánamo
S&M scene was not snapped by a plucky journalist's lens.
The Pentagon officially released it. This is what they want
us to see. Does that mean that this is the mild stuff?
This is where they just plug up their ears, not their
other orifices?
Maybe the Pentagon released The Photo
because it's so racy. Maybe they wanted our hearts to
race, our spirits to soar at the image of our Marines boldly
dominating and humiliating The Enemy. Maybe this is the Revenge
of the Raving Castrati after the pain and phallic humiliation
of 9.11.
Maybe the shrinks at the Pentagon think
we'll feel better about ourselves upon seeing a young US Marine
with a Big Stick in his pants lording it over a harem of hapless,
hogtied Orange Men made to bow down before their Masters in utter,
abject-and in the case of Orange Man #2 and possibly #3, even
bare-assed--submission.
Is this Pentagon Porn?
Doubtless, for some Americans, it is.
I myself haven't been able to stop staring at The Photo for
the last two days, and that's not just because I'm writing this.
Actually, I started writing this because I was staring at it,
even finding it to be, I confess, weirdly erotic in that perverse
way that Hardcore Male-on-Male Sado-Masochistic Porn often is.
Actually, the original photograph is
a voyeur's delight. The photographer invites the viewer/voyeur
to peer through a hole in a barbed wire fence, to sneak a peak
on some state-of-the-art torture, heavy bondage, a little sense
denial, maybe some brainwashing (what are they listening to on
those earphones anyway?), a bit of wretched mortification.
The Orange Men look like extreme submissives
into heavy sensory deprivation. Except they aren't "into"
it. Though, maybe, they are. After all, we're told that they're
suicidal, so heavy masochistic fetishes would go with that.
But the fact is that we don't know what they're into. We don't
really know who they are. We don't seem to know what to do with
them. We don't even know what to call them.
"Whatever they are, they're not
Prisoners of War!" chorused the Great Pretzel Swallower
(GPS) and Ayatollah Asscraft, not eager to give these Evil-Doers
any extra privileges.
So, what are they, Prisoners of Love?
In a way. Consensual S&M (Sadomasochism) and D&S (Dominance
and Submission) relationships are often very loving, because
the Masochist actually enjoys enduring the pain, and the Submissive
longs to surrender to the Master or Mistress whose primary concern
is the welfare of their Submissive/Masochist. Nonconsensual
S&M is pretty much the opposite, though sometimes, as in
cases of domestic violence, the partners feel a kind of toxic
love for each other.
It sure looks like a twisted, toxic lovefest
going on behind that fence.
Here's another message this photo sends
to the world: American soldiers are civilized. They're high-tech.
They don't storm into villages and rape the women (too dangerous!)
like those funky Serbs and Northern Alliance guys. No. The
American military (perhaps a bit gayer than most, what with all
the homo-erotic recruitment advertising), prefers to express
its testosteronic bloodlust by kidnapping residents of the offending
country, then dressing them up in garish, creepy little S&M
outfits, and making them get down on their knees and grovel for?
Well, those photos won't be released by the Pentagon.
But I hear that NYPD Officers Volpe and Bruder are giving a special
seminar at Guantánamo Bay Naval Base on how to use a plunger
handle as an interrogation tool (unconfirmed sources). Talk about
Giuliani Time
But enough about minor players. As I
study The Photo, I can't help but think of our avenging hero,
our smirking leader, the Great Pretzel Swallower, wounded in
action while watching TV. I could never imagine our Commander-in-Chief
in battle (too dangerous!), but I can easily see him in the role
of the cocky Marine with the pole in his pants, as President
of Yale's mystical, medievalesque Skull & Bones Society,
subjugating the freshmen initiates in some quasi-ceremonial parody
of the heroic and obscene rites of war.
Then there's the embarrassing fact that
we never did catch Osama. So we got these guys who we're vaguely
referring to as higher-ups in the Taliban and Al Qaeda network.
Notice how the fantasies about Bin Laden and what we were going
to do to him have disappeared? I had my own fantasies of forcing
him to have a sex change operation, then sending him back to
the Taliban to live as woman. But no more. Now Osama appears
to have either died quietly of kidney failure or slipped away
to the suburbs of Zürich. This is not a sexually
satisfying ending. This doesn't make an American feel his dick
at all! So here we are then, putting these Orange Men through
their paces. They are our "Osama Surrogates." Our
terrorist punching bags. Our bitches. Our Thanatos Therapy.
Like the woman at home beaten by her husband when he loses a
fight at work.
Another reason for calling them Prisoners
of Love: As reported by Molly Ivins, Retired US Army General
Bernard Tranor said "Well, they like to spend a lot of time
on their knees anyway."
Oh, yeah. On your knees. I know
you love it. I'm your Mecca now, baby. Pray to me.
But calling them Prisoners of Love is
kind of sappy, and implies some modicum of consent. So, they're
calling them "detainees." Sounds rather French and
not so bad, like being a "guest." Remember when that
other Evil-Doer Saddam Hussein called American hostages "guests"?
That went over real well.
This is not going over well either, this
hardcore Pentagon Porn. After all, one person's porn is another
person's outrage. Government leaders and people around the world
are outraged by The Photo, disgusted by our cocky, international
law-breaking display of power over our virtually kidnapped captives.
Aroused or not, they are not amused. Suddenly, we are losing
the PR War.
Quick, Rummy, get re-write! Fire the
dude who released The Photo! What happened to the old Pentagon
PR team that brought us food packets and smart bombs? Did they
all go on vacation? Do they think this War is over? This is
just soooo embarrassing. Not for the stupid Taliban with the
bare asses. For us. It's one thing to be exposed. It's another
to expose yourself.
America is choking on this one like a
pretzel we chewed too fast.
"Probably unfortunate" was
how Rummy dryly described the incident, then protested that the
detainees weren't trussed up in their S&M outfits all that
long, and we shouldn't jump to conclusions from this one
photo. Perhaps, we should see their other outfits. Perhaps,
we should see their cages.
We're told their conditions are not "comfortable"
(why should a terrorist be comfortable?), but they are "humane."
They are being fed bagels and cream cheese (not so culturally
sensitive, but never mind), granola (is that for the Marin County
Talib?) and Fruit Loops. Hey now, some of their starving refugee
relatives would give up their Kalishnakovs to get their lips
around a plastic spoonful of Fruit Loops.
Desperately seeking spin, and having
gone a little fruit loopy, Rummy, Asscraft and the gang have
tried calling the Orange Men "illegal combatants."
But illegal according to which law? The country they were living
in was invaded. Maybe they were on the wrong side, maybe they
didn't have uniforms, and maybe war itself should be illegal,
but as long as it isn't, those guys are as much legal warriors
as any. And if they've done something illegal, why haven't they
been charged?
Americans are not exactly storming the
Pentagon over this, but some are pretty appalled. A coalition
of lawyers, clergy and professors, led by LA civil liberties
attorney Stephen Yagman (best known for cases involving police
abuse), and including former Attorney General Ramsey Clark and
USC law professor Erwin Chemerinsky, filed a petition in a US
District Court demanding that the detainees be identified, taken
before a court and told of the charges against them. What, give
them due process? Well, why not? They're not Prisoners of War.
While we try to figure out what they
are and what to do with them, we are holding them like sheep
bound for slaughter or chickens in a coop. Rummy says all the
S&M gear was for safety purposes only. The warden at Camp
X-Ray, Colonel Terry Carrico, was a bit more forthcoming, saying
he was determined at all times to maintain what he called "positive
control" over the prisoners. If that includes mind control,
it explains the earphones.
We hear that they are here to be interrogated.
That's when they try to get the chickens in the coops to lay
eggs of information, rewarding them with extra Fruit Loops and
chicken feed if they tell tales that will, without a doubt, be
used against them.
Yes, I know, these are Evil-Doers, terrorists.
They're dangerous. They could hurt somebody. I sure wouldn't
want any of them busting in on my broadcast studio, guns cocked,
like about 20 members of the LAPD did a couple years ago (yes,
my lawsuit is still pending. Email me at liberties@blockbooks.com
if you want to get involved).
Rummy, ever the avuncular pragmatist,
reminds us that these guys are not just bad, they're frenzied
lunatics, every one of them a bomb waiting to go off, a dickhead
ready to explode, a Hannibal plotting to bite off your face if
you loosen his surgical mask, ready to take you down if you take
off his mittens, able to hypnotize you with his eyes if you remove
his blindfold. Maybe so. But don't all violent prisoners have
that potential? Should we treat all violent or potentially violent
prisoners like this? Apparently, some folks at the Pentagon
think we should. And if you've ever been through Men's Central
Jail in LA, you know that that's how it's already done (though
the blindfolds and earphones are illegal).
It's enough to make you toss your cookies.
But I have to chuckle when I think of some of my sex therapy
clients, the guys with the extreme submissive male/male fantasies-and
there are a lot of them--who have been looking at The Photo and
going day-glo green with envy. Some have already called asking
for a "Guantánamo Roleplay." The desire to
be a victim-a terrorist martyr--is as at least as strong as the
desire to be a hero, a winner, a tyrant. It's all an embrace
of Thanatos, Death (either killing or dying), as opposed
to Eros, Love, Sex, the Life Force, the Bonobo Way. Far
better to roleplay it with a sex therapist (or your lover) than
play it for real on the World Stage.
Now, don't get me wrong. Legal or not,
I don't trust these detainees for a second. I don't like their
philosophies, their religious fanaticism,their attitudes toward
women, or their culture of violence (their behavior would be
at least as sadistic if the positions were reversed).
And I don't like their mangy beards.
But we can't play S&M games with
people just because we don't like them. We can't kidnap them,
torture them, and hold them captive without saying what we're
going to do with them. Well, we can, and we are. And we shouldn't,
and we know we shouldn't, but we will. At least, until
somebody figures out what the hell to do with the bastards.
But what about in the meantime? We can't kill them. We can't
really torture them because the whole world is watching. We
can't put most of them on trial. We can't get much evidence
on any of them (unlike the Israelis who collected mounds of evidence
on the Nazis that they "kidnapped" and tried for war
crimes). We probably can't get them to say much of any value
in terms of preventing further terrorist attacks, and in any
case, we can't interrogate them forever. Rummy! Get re-write!
We're about to choke on a pretzel we can't cough up!
It's all about exerting power through
Thanatos instead of Eros. Since the Horror of
9.11, everyone's been praying to someone. Now it's my turn.
I pray to Eros, Aphrodite, Darwin, Gandhi, Margaret Sanger,
my Mom and Josephine Baker: Let us follow the Bonobo Way and
stop acting like baboons. Let us stop eroticizing violence and
war, and try eroticizing sex and peace. It's much safer. At
this point in our evolution, it might even be better, PR-wise.
Amen. And A-women too.
Dr. Susan Block
is a sex educator, host of the Dr. Susan Block radio show, and
author of Being a Woman. Visit her website at: http://www.drsusanblock.com/
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