Iqbal and Me.
I’ve been mulling the story of Muhammad Saad Iqbal since I read this article in the New York Times. Iqbal spent six years incarcerated in Guantánamo Bay and now suffers from a number of physical and mental health issues, the end result of the torture he claims American and Egyptian interrogators inflicted on him. He was never charged with a crime.
The CIA denies the allegations of torture, or more accurately, the deny that what they do is torture:
C.I.A. spokesman, Paul Gimigliano, said, “The agency’s terrorist detention program has used lawful means of interrogation, reviewed and approved by the Department of Justice and briefed to the Congress.“This individual, from what I have heard of his account, appears to be describing something utterly different,” Mr. Gimigliano added. “I have no idea what he’s talking about. The United States does not conduct or condone torture.
The CIA can make these denials with a straight face because they believe that what happens in Egypt stays in Egypt, but the facts of our use of extraordinary rendition and torture in interrogations are clear enough to me.
None of this should be news to anyone that’s been paying even modest attention to world events in the last few years, and the arguments over whether or not such torture is justified, or even useful, have become familiar to the point of cliche, but the story stuck with me for the last few days in a way that many of these stories haven’t.
I think it has to do with Iqbal’s age. He’s a year younger than me, and seven years ago he was twenty-four years old. That’s when Indonesian authorities first detained him for bragging to his friends that he knew how to make a bomb. By their own account, the local American operatives regarded him as “a braggart” and “a wannabe”, but decided to interrogate him further, which led to his eventual imprisonment as an enemy combatant.
He lost seven years of his life because he boasted that he could do something. He didn’t make a threat or name a potential target, just a dumb attempt to impress some new friends.
I remember myself at twenty-four. Everything I did was driven by simultaneous arrogance and insecurity, a desperate need to be treated as a man, and an almost pathological anger at any slight, real or imagined. I’ve said a thousand dumbass things in coffee shops and internet forums. Why didn’t they cost me the last seven years of my life?
Of course, I know the answer is that I’m privileged. I’m an American citizen, a member of the middle-class, I have rights and people lined up behind me to protect them.
So why does this story bother me so much? Some of it’s guilt, I think. Even if I’m opposed to the evils of torture and extraordinary rendition, carry my ACLU card, and write letters to elected officials, I think I still share some of the blame for the things my country did to this man.
But I don’t think it’s guilt that keeps bringing me back to this story. I think it’s fear. I’m afraid of how tenuous the things that separate me from Muhammad Saad Iqbal really are. Our rights may endowed upon us by our Creator, but the rule of law is what guarantees them, and the rule of law has taken a beating in the last few years. Sometimes it seems like we’re only one natural disaster or terrorist attack or financial collapse away from full-blown martial law
I shouldn’t worry so much, I guess. I’m older now, and I’ve learned to keep my mouth shut.
