The courage of Capt. Fishback: honor led a West Pointer to speak out against torture, but most remain silent

National Catholic Reporter, Dec 23, 2005 by Joshua Casteel

Silence. Silence is what you hear when a faithful, patriotic and decorated West Point graduate shows enough integrity to break ranks and tell the truth.

Capt. Ian Fishback is a man who, like me, once fought in Iraq and once swore to live by the U.S. Military Academy honor code: "A cadet will not lie, cheat or steal, or tolerate those who do." But we'll come back to this later.

Since the president's open declaration that fighters in Afghanistan and elsewhere in the war on terrorism do not fall under the traditional parameters of "law of land" warfare, much murmur has filled military hallways and TV talk shows regarding the use and place of torture. Who is an "enemy prisoner of war"? How ought the state apply Geneva Conventions to combatants not associated to a standing national army?

An abstract and mostly theoretical conversation about torture occurs and recurs, but when an officer with 17 months of eyewitness investigation comes forward with a detailing of numerous accounts of torture well beyond the walls of Abu Ghraib, only watchdog agencies and Web logs were the sources of investigation and commentary. But perhaps more shocking than the silence of the national press is the silence of Fishback's fellow West Pointers. Perhaps they simply do not know of the professed Christian's dealings with Sen. John McCain. They don't know how Fishback helped McCain construct the "humane treatment of prisoners" amendment (House Resolution 2863) that another professed Christian at first stated he would veto should it pass the gauntlet of the House of Representatives. The silence is breathtaking. Not a peep from the press. Certainly nothing from public Christian figures who would have to stomach the awful reality of supporting a president so born-again he's about to veto human rights. Nothing from the Long Gray Line, including an officer who was once Fishback's and my commandant of cadets but has since then earned three stars and now sits alongside Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld for Senate appearances.

So, back to the honor code. If Fishback is lying, conjuring up the 17 months he spent investigating policy, Louisville Slugger leg-smashings, and soldiers "blowing off steam" at PUC tents (Prisoners Under Control), as well as the subsequent warnings from superiors to shut up and mind his career, then where are all the West Pointers with enough integrity to blow the whistle on this whistleblower? Why aren't they coming out in droves to turn in this liar, to call his bluff?. Perhaps it is for the same reason Rumsfeld personally vindicates his appearances before the Senate with talk of war fighting "in the spirit of the Geneva Conventions." The same reason the president felt no contradiction threatening his first presidential veto on an amendment capable of demythologizing Rumsfeld's fictitious comments. The same reason eight rogue soldiers from the night shift obtained national scorn and reprobation while their commanding general obtained his fourth star.

In the days and weeks following the Sept. 16 Washington Post publication of Fishback's letter to McCain, which detailed his chain of command's "confusion" over the definition of "humane treatment," McCain went on to construct an amendment to this year's Defense Appropriations Bill, clearly defining and regulating "the humane treatment of prisoners." This amendment has passed the Senate. On Nov. 15, facing overwhelming congressional support for the amendment, Bush withdrew his veto threat, The Associated Press reported.

If it weren't for blogs and watchdog agencies like AndrewSullivan.com and Human Rights Watch, I myself would know nothing of this courageous captain's actions. On the floor of the Senate, McCain read these words from Fishback's letter: "If we abandon our ideals in the face of adversity and aggression, then those ideals were never really in our possession."

This is the sad reality that continued silence on torture can only confirm: That honor codes are merely modes of self-affirmation. That principles can be cast aside as soon as temporal disadvantage says so loudly enough. It confirms that public discourse of professed values does not depend upon a simultaneous conversation of reality--the way the world actually is now. Because reality might unsettle the soft, make us see things we'd wish we had not.

It is easier to isolate narrowly confined incidents and behavior. Scowl and point a finger at eight lower enlisted personnel, but never ask a single question aimed at understanding our own governing dynamics. When all the cameras of the world turned on Abu Ghraib, I interrogated prisoners under the gaze of cameras and visiting dignitaries. We dressed to the nines and followed procedure. But torture had not been eliminated. It had migrated. When visiting interrogators showed up on base, they would say, "Abu Ghraib is soft." Things obviously worked differently "out there." The "humane treatment" of prisoners did not have a uniform definition throughout the theater of baffle.