Shame, bitter, and painful

[pecunium]

I've been on vacation for about two months now, and I am glad my hair is long, and my face shaggy, because right now I am ashamed of my profession, and don't want the world to see me for what I am, unless I tell them.

It isn't that I'm a soldier, not exactly. It's that I'm an interrogator, and while only MPs and officers (who don't do interrogations) have been implicated, it was said to be in the interest of people in my line of work.

It's hard to write this... so much of my spleen has been vented other places. I feel dirty, unclean, with spotted hands. What has been alleged is indefensible, if it was done (and I am certain it was) they deserve public humiliation.

The Regiment in square: The NCOs and Officers called out; the NCO's stripes ripped from their sleeves, the epaulets from the Officers shoulders, the rattle of the drums, and the painfully brittle sound of swords being broken in the hard light of an afternoon sun.

The terrible roll of the drums as the offenders are read off the rolls and out of the Army, and away to the brig.

And the casing of the colors, no music to march away, just the funeral pace of the drums tattoo, dull and heavy at the slow march.

Comments

How can you keep the standards up?

[(Anonymous)]

Terry: this is Geoff Arnold (http://geoffarnold.com) from the ASML here). I was deeply moved by this piece. And I thought about the procedures and standards you've described for interrogation, and I imagined negotiating the zone between empathy and dehumanization. And then I found myself thinking about the article I read earlier this evening, here - http://tinyurl.com/3caaz - about Lynndie England, the young woman in the notorious photo from Abu Ghraib. And cognitive dissonance blew everything away. If people like Lynndie are involved, how can any of what you describe work? It's like sand in the vaseline, to quote David Byrne (or whoever).

Re: How can you keep the standards up?

[pecunium.livejournal.com]

The problem isn't her, per se.

In case you'd not guessed, I've been doing a lot of reading, and no small amount of writing, on the topic.

Forgive me for not being more clever (and you can't imagine how happy I am this has not surfaced as a topic on ASML, because I would probably have to de-lurk and that could get very ugly), but I am going to point you to a few places I've been writing, and make you find the comments.

http://nielsenhayden.com/makinglight/archives/005106.html#005106

http://nielsenhayden.com/electrolite/archives/005118.html#005118

http://nielsenhayden.com/electrolite/archives/005107.html

The way it works is to not do what was done. Give the Englunds, and the Graners direction, keep them on a leash, and they won't do the things they did.

But let cowboys and idiots make them part of the process, reward them when they have terrorized people, tell them what good work they are doing, and the postive feedback cycle will destroy them, and everything they touch.

That is what was done. MG Miller came in and said they needed to be made part of the process. The MPs had to help in setting the stage for the interrogation (this is a bad idea, in so many ways).

Added to that the area they were in was isolated from the rest of the prison, and no one else was allowed in there. It was a recipe for disaster.

When the MPs are there to see the prisoners don't hurt the interrogators, not the reverse, and are charged with seeing to the well being of the prisoners, then the system works.

We get told not to tell MPs to do thing, like hit prisoners, because that ruins everyone. The MP, the interrogator, and the prisoner, because he is now uneasy everywhere he goes. The booth needs to be a special place, a world apart.

Ritual, and tradition are important.