Alistair John
posted 26 September 2007

It would be nice to label Bad Men, an extensive account on the absurdities of America's intelligence-cum-internment network, aimed at a mainstream audience, as timely. But that would mask the fact that it is long overdue. While literature on the abominable camps at Guantanamo Bay has been produced - most recently and notably by former detainee Moazzam Begg - considering the gravity and nature of the events at Guantanamo, the output is still relatively minor and the effect on public attitudes rather weak. Over the half-decade of their existence, the camps at Guantanamo have become part of our society's furniture. Indeed, public reaction to the camp at Guantanamo is not dissimilar to that of the smoking ban, where even those opposed to it complement their private antipathy with public apathy that borders on endorsement.

To that end, and on the face of things, Bad Men may prove the most effective work produced yet. It does not contain any shocking new allegations, and is certainly not what could be called whistle blowing. That the American forces have permanently crippled, physically and psychologically, those in their custody, that they have manipulated language to hide this, and that their indictments against those they have scarred contain devastating inconsistencies with documented fact, have been disseminated quite thoroughly over the past five years. But it is one thing to hear an allegation of a crime and quite another to hear the testimony of the victim. Clive Stafford Smith is one of a band of lawyers representing the Guantanamo detainees and, with unique access to the incarcerated, he provides us with extended and comprehensive accounts of the crimes alleged.

The question, inevitably, is where does one start? It is perhaps an achievement of sorts that that anyone could have perpetrated so many disgraces of so many descriptions in the guise of such noble ideas. And to write about the abuses at Guantanamo Bay requires a sort of Sophie’s Choice – whose tragic story, in a sea of tragic stories, do you choose rescue from the shadows? Obviously, one tends to go to the most extreme - and in that respect, one would start with Binyam Mohamed, whose story includes accounts of multiple beatings, forced heroin injection and penile mutilation while in American custody. But this would be to ignore the experiences of the numerous other detainees – and moreover, discussing specific injustices almost obscures the central fact that the detainees are, on top of everything else, imprisoned without charge and still with little prospect of release.

Mohammed’s case highlights just how felicitous the United States authorities have been on the question of torture. Indeed, the worst physical torture described in the book took place not at Guantanamo, but in the CIA black sites and secret bunkers littered in the sovereign states of murky allies. America can thus deny ultimate responsibility – if the question is ever raised. To be sure, physical abuse is a facet of life at Guantanamo Bay. One of Smith’s clients, Sami al-Laithi, alleges that he is now wheelchair bound due to the Emergency Reaction Force, a full strength riot squad in full strength riot gear, who are charged with removing ‘volatile’ prisoners from their cells, a task accomplished with slams to the floor. But Guantanamo messes with the mind far more than it does with the body, and it is here that the wit, self-deprecation and charm of the author are most welcome.

The value of these qualities should not be underestimated, and Stafford Smith proves particularly effective in alleviating the urge to bash one's head repeatedly against a wall, a regular consequence to reading about the procedures at Guantanamo Bay. Indeed, although, in the infamous equation of an anonymous US Governmental Lawyer, Guantanamo exists in the legal equivalent of outer space, it exists conceptually in the nebulous hinterland where absurdist comedy and absurdist drama merge and blur. Again, citing one case above the rest is nigh impossible, but the Combatant Status Review Tribunals deserve special mention - Kangaroo Courts where, when a ‘Not Guilty’ verdict is inexplicably passed, the defendant ends up not free but merely in wearing a differently coloured prison uniform.

It bears stating that the book is not ‘just’ a collection of the detainees’ experiences. The second chapter is devoted to interviews with some of America’s leading intellectual advocates of torture. The shadow of one of these, Michael Levin, a professor of philosophy and key advocate of the absurd 'ticking bomb' theory, hangs over the rest of the book. Ultimately, Bad Men is a thorough demolition of the idea that torture is a valuable tool, by reference to repeated examples of the proposition in practice. Bad Men portrays Guantanamo Bay as having less utility than a broken clock. But of course we all knew that, didn't we? And it remains difficult to understand how those operating the network are still awaiting the revelation and remaining staunch in their belief that a naval base on the edge of Cuba is the frontline in the War on Terror. Which raises the pertinent question of for how much longer Guantanamo Bay will linger on.

Again, the allegations made in this book against the United States are not new, and the apathy of the general public to Guantanamo may well be the rational response when faced with an intractable situation of such extremity. But Clive Stafford Smith is an optimistic realist. He devotes an appendix outlining what the reader can do to help excise this blot from our conscience. They are all pretty small and simple things, but then the trickle of releases of prisoners at Guantanamo has been a result of numberless small actions. Ultimately, Bad Men is merely the latest product of a now unstoppable process of disclosure, which was entrenched as soon as the first detainees at Guantanamo were released. The one conclusion such disclosure tends ones towards is simple. Namely, that Guantanamo Bay and the Secret Prisons – institutions that have engulfed so many resources and shredded so many lives - are as much a disaster to its perpetrators as it is to its prisoners. Because of this process, and the publication of books of this sort, the conclusion will soon prove unavoidable, and the apathy of wider society to Guantanamo Bay frankly untenable.