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Torture of Detainees and Presidential Prerogative Power

Richard M. Pious

in The Polarized Presidency of George W. Bush

This chapter focuses on the president's use of prerogative powers and the treatment of detainees in the war on terror. President Bush asserted his prerogative power in interpreting and reinterpreting ... More

This chapter focuses on the president's use of prerogative powers and the treatment of detainees in the war on terror. President Bush asserted his prerogative power in interpreting and reinterpreting conventions and customary international law obligations, and in interpreting the obligations of government officials to execute faithfully statute law, the Uniform Code of Military Justice, and various directives. It is argued that officials at the highest levels of government made decisions based on the constitutional authority of the president (as administration lawyers defined it) that left open the probability that detainees would be subjected to inhuman treatment and torture as defined by international law. The chapter explores why the issue of the treatment of prisoners has not risen to the level of an Iran-Contra affair and what the reaction tells us about the politics of prerogative power.Less

The Military Look

Abe Kōbō and Richard F. Calichman

in The Frontier Within: Essays by Abe Kōbō

The essay in this chapter explores the relation between military uniforms and fascism by comparing the uniforms of the Nazis with the fatigues-style uniform worn by the U.S. military. The Text begins ... More

The essay in this chapter explores the relation between military uniforms and fascism by comparing the uniforms of the Nazis with the fatigues-style uniform worn by the U.S. military. The Text begins by discussing the inverse proportionality between the evolution of contemporary uniforms and their aesthetic perfection. In particular, it notes how the military, fundamentally the backbone of state power, makes use of the military uniform's aesthetics to make a zealous display of its power. In the case of military uniforms, what is now sought is a truly prosaic style that goes hand in hand with the hypocrisy of the modern state. The text argues that American fatigues are very shrewdly designed in terms of smuggling in the everyday sensibility of Americans under the name of functionalism.Less

The Material Life of the Militiaman

Matthew McCormack

in Embodying the Militia in Georgian England

This chapter employs recent approaches to the history of material culture in order to ask new questions about military ‘experience’. It argues that material culture studies is a potential meeting ... More

This chapter employs recent approaches to the history of material culture in order to ask new questions about military ‘experience’. It argues that material culture studies is a potential meeting place for military and cultural historians, given the former’s preoccupation with practical minutiae and the latter’s recent interest in concrete practices. Military uniforms are usually conceptualized in terms of display, but what material significance did they have for the wearer? And how did subtle distinctions between uniforms convey messages about military rank, social class, and regimental identity? This chapter also thinks about the everyday experience of living in a military camp. The spatial arrangements and routines of these temporary towns are of great interest to the cultural historian. They reveal the authorities’ concern with the health, discipline, and morality of their troops, and the means by which these were optimized through careful management.Less

Scarlet Fever: Female Enthusiasm for Men in Uniform, 1780–1815

Louise Carter

in Britains Soldiers: Rethinking War and Society, 1715-1815

Female enthusiasm for men in red coats was a recurrent topic of interest in late eighteenth-century letters, diaries, newspapers, plays and novels. Propaganda played on it and commentators and ... More

Female enthusiasm for men in red coats was a recurrent topic of interest in late eighteenth-century letters, diaries, newspapers, plays and novels. Propaganda played on it and commentators and satirists often noted it with a mixture of bemusement and envy, characterising it as ‘scarlet fever’. The association of martial service with female admiration offered clear benefits as a recruitment tool for the military, but it also presented significant potential dangers to men and women alike. This chapter explores the allure of men in uniform in this period and considers the potential benefits and risks it posed to men, women and the British state. Rather viewing ‘scarlet fever’ as an ahistorical and ‘natural’ phenomenon, this chapter explores what it reveals about the relationship between war and gender and the position of the military within Georgian society.Less

Military Justice

Charles J. Dunlap

in The Modern American Military

Military justice has never been intended as an exact replica of civilian justice. Historically, the need to maintain discipline under the enormous stress of combat and the high stakes of war impelled ... More

Military justice has never been intended as an exact replica of civilian justice. Historically, the need to maintain discipline under the enormous stress of combat and the high stakes of war impelled all militaries to create a separate and, in many ways, unique justice system. The result is a criminal law process in which military needs sometimes must take precedence over certain rights-centered formalisms of a nation’s civilian justice system. However, beginning with the adoption of the Uniform Code of Military Justice in 1951, the two U.S. systems have become increasingly close, with the importation into the military realm of many of the procedural protections of the civilian system. Military justice retains its distinctive features, including the criminalization of absence, cowardice, and insubordination, as well as other offenses without civilian counterpart but which are indispensable for what the Supreme Court calls the armed forces’ “separate society.” In addition, some procedural differences continue to exist, including command selection of military “juries,” as well as an appellate court system empowered to review de novo factual findings of a court-martial. Recently, the use of military commissions—which are separate from courts-martial—have been revised to address war crimes committed by nonstate actors. Today, issues have arisen about the ability of the military justice system to operate independently and effectively. In part, this is the result of well-intended efforts over several decades to “civilianize” and “judicialize” its processes—modifications that have often proven ill-suited to combat zones. Even more problematic is the tendency of political leaders and interest groups to encroach on the role of commanders in military justice matters, and to inject other political influences that threaten the military justice system’s independence and effectiveness.Less

Getting to the Postwar Planning Table

in The Rape of Mesopotamia: Behind the Looting of the Iraq Museum

This chapter discusses the postwar planning for the 2003 invasion of Iraq. It suggests that neither Tommy Franks of the Central Command nor the U.S. Department of Defense wanted anything to do with ... More

This chapter discusses the postwar planning for the 2003 invasion of Iraq. It suggests that neither Tommy Franks of the Central Command nor the U.S. Department of Defense wanted anything to do with the State Department's postcombat plans called the Future of Iraq Project. The chapter contends that the coordination of planning for the post-combat phase was certainly hobbled by sheer antagonism between the Pentagon, the uniformed military, and the State Department. It argues that direct consultations between American or British government, war planners, and archaeological groups would have prevented the looting of the National Museum and the depredation of Iraq's archaeological sites.Less

In the Minotaur's Labyrinth: Psychological Torture, Public Forgetting, and Contested History

Alfred W. Mccoy

in Speaking about Torture

Despite dozens of official inquiries in the years since the Abu Ghraib photos first exposed abuse in April 2004, the torture scandal has continued to spread like a virus, infecting all who touch it. ... More

Despite dozens of official inquiries in the years since the Abu Ghraib photos first exposed abuse in April 2004, the torture scandal has continued to spread like a virus, infecting all who touch it. Through every sordid incident in this process of impunity--Dick Cheney’s unapologetic claims of torture’s efficacy and President Obama’s halting retreat from promises to end the abuse--Washington is returning step-by-step to a contradictory policy that made torture America’s secret weapon throughout the Cold War. After tracing a short history of psychological torture, of the adoption of torture during the “war on terror,” and of torture advocacy by professors, pundits, and psychologists, the chapter proposes an analysis of impunity that frames recent revelations about the U.S. use of diplomatic pressure to effect impunity on a global scale, as well as the evasion of responsibility for continuing torture operations by outsourcing the work to Iraqi and Afghani authorities.Less

Clothing Bodies

Amy Murrell Taylor

in Embattled Freedom: Journeys through the Civil War's Slave Refugee Camps

This chapter describes the clothing obtained and worn by the men, women, and children newly arrived in the war’s refugee camps. With little clothing accumulated during slavery, and with many stresses ... More

This chapter describes the clothing obtained and worn by the men, women, and children newly arrived in the war’s refugee camps. With little clothing accumulated during slavery, and with many stresses on that clothing during their journeys into the camps, the refugees had significant clothing needs. Men were usually issued military uniforms, either new ones for those who enlisted or used ones for those who worked as army laborers. But women and children had to rely on the clothing relief provided by missionaries and agents of other northern benevolent organizations. The chapter focuses on the issuance of that clothing relief and the ways in which white, northern relief workers tried to make it serve as a vehicle for preparing refugee women for freedom and citizenship. This occurred through the establishment of stores that would encourage good consumerism while limiting women’s choices to clothing that would mark their racial subordination. Black women, however, determined to wrest control of their bodies from white people, resisted many of these efforts and worked to dress themselves according to their own traditions and desires.Less