American Methods: Torture and the Logic of Domination [Paperback]

Kristian Williams (Author)

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Product Details

Paperback: 240 pages
Publisher: South End Press (May 1 2006)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 0896087530
ISBN-13: 978-0896087538
Product Dimensions: 21.3 x 13.5 x 1.8 cm
Shipping Weight: 318 g
Amazon Bestsellers Rank: #540,238 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Product Description

When the Abu Ghraib prison scandal broke in April 2004, many American commentators expressed shock. But, as The Progressive ’s Anne-Marie Cusac observed, “Abu Ghraib shock[s] us because our soldiers abroad seem to have acted out behaviors that we condone, yet don’t face up to, at home.” On the heels of Our Enemies in Blue , Kristian Williams’ controversial chronicle of policing, the writer/activist gives us American Methods , once again upsetting the notion that the use of “excessive force” by the state is aberrant rather than altogether American.

American Methods reveals torture not as a recent or rogue phenomenon, but a veteran tool of the American state. As Williams suggests, torture is not, as claimed, a means of interrogation used only by others, elsewhere. Instead, it is a tried-and-true weapon of social control and terror, right here in the US.

Unlike other recent books, American Methods locates “war on terror” scandals in the systems of inequities and dominance that nurture them. Williams pays close attention to the distinct character of American torture and its gender and racial contours—particularly its emphasis on sexual violence, emasculation, and spectacle. His discussion ranges over much of the globe and a quarter-century: from US support of torture-regimes in Central America in the 1980s to today’s more favored approach—outsourcing torture to “friendly governments.” Returning to our shores, Williams observes the banality of violence in American prisons, precincts, and society. Ultimately, he offers devastating conclusions about the centrality of rape, racism, and conquest to both the state and our national culture.

Kristian Williams' writings have appeared in CounterPunch , Columbia Journalism Review , and We Are Everywhere: The Irresistible Rise of Global Anti-Capitalism . A member of Rose City Copwatch in Portland, Oregon, Williams also authored Our Enemies in Blue (2004).

About the Author

Kristian Williams's writings have appeared in CounterPunch, Columbia Journalism Review, and We Are Everywhere: The Irresistible Rise of Global Anti-Capitalism. A member of Rose City Copwatch in Portland, Oregon, Williams also authored Our Enemies in Blue (2004).

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Amazon.com: 5.0 out of 5 stars (1 customer review)

8 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Brilliant study of the US state's use of methods of barbarism, Feb 15 2007

By William Podmore - Published on Amazon.com

This review is from: American Methods: Torture and the Logic of Domination (Paperback)

In this important book American journalist Kristian Williams shows how the US state has institutionalised torture. President Bush asserted in February 2002, "None of the provisions of Geneva apply to our conflict with al-Qaeda in Afghanistan or elsewhere throughout the world." As the Schlesinger Report concluded, this Presidential ruling allowed US forces to increase their use of illegal interrogation techniques.

So US police, military and prison guards routinely treat detainees brutally. The repulsive abuses at Abu Ghraib are typical, not aberrant. There have been more than 400 reports of abuse in US detention camps in Afghanistan, Guantanamo and Iraq, and a hundred inquiries have been launched. There were 13 officially acknowledged murders at detention camps between January 2002 and March 2005.

The US state, with Labour's connivance, has consistently used `extraordinary rendition', kidnapping people and then transferring them to other states for torture. For example, the CIA illegally sent suspected al-Qaeda trainer Ibn al-Libi to Cairo for torture, where he apparently confessed that Iraq had trained al-Qaeda members to make bombs. Bush then publicised this confession, as did Colin Powell to the UN, even though the Defense Intelligence Agency had already warned them that the confession was unreliable.

Williams details torture by the US military and the US police, by US allies overseas, and in US prisons, jails and detention facilities in the USA and abroad. The US state uses torture methods like stun guns, stun belts, pepper sprays, restraints, rape and the threat of rape, `supermax facilities' and solitary confinement. The US state promotes torture in its training programmes, for example in the `Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation', formerly called the School of the Americas.

Williams reveals the US state as a machine of coercion, of organised violence - represented by armed bodies of men, the police, armed services, prisons - designed to subjugate the will of others by force. Williams proves that "The product of torture is not truth, but terror. Its strategy is not that of objective investigation, but of political intimidation."

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