If a prison official sees a prisoner hanging himself as a political protest, should he prevent it? Yes.
If a prison official sees a prisoner banging his head into a wall as a political protest, should he restrain him? Yes.
Is either action violating autonomy or free speech? No. Prisoners don’t have the same level of autonomy as those at liberty. Moreover, prison officials have a duty to prevent those under their charge from self-harm.
So why don’t the same rules apply to force feeding a prisoner when they reach the point in a hunger strike that they are at risk of serious harm or death?
The medical community and liberal commentariat want Guantanamo prisoners allowed to starve themselves to death as a means of getting the public to support closing Gitmo. That’s politics, not ethics.
To get from here to there, they claim that preventing self-starvation is “torture.” From Joe Nocera’s column, “The Guantanamo Tapes:”
“A five-man riot squad in complete armor pins the guy to the floor, shackles him, and carries him out,” [lawyer for the terrorist, Jon] Eisenberg says. Then the detainee is strapped into a restraint chair — which the prisoners have dubbed the “torture chair.” One soldier holds the detainee’s head, while another feeds a tube into his nose and down to his stomach. It is very painful to endure.
Who’s fault is it?
And here’s a interesting irony: Lawyer Eisenberg filed an amicus brief on behalf of starving and dehydrating Terri Schiavo to death.
Back to the issue at hand: Courts have ruled previously regarding normal domestic prisoners, that force-feeding prisoners is acceptable, If it’s okay here, why not Gitmo?
Yet some doctors and bioethicists even want to aid terrorists in hunger strikes by being allowed to palliate the symptoms of starvation.
The allegation has been made that the procedures used to force feed Guantanamo violate usual medical protocols:
There are strict medical protocols for force-feeding hospital patients or prisoners. If the military violated those protocols — especially if detainees were force-fed in an abusive, punitive manner — then she could order them to stop…
One of those who testified on Diyab’s behalf, Steven Miles, a professor of medicine at the University of Minnesota, said it’s not even a close call. He was first horrified to discover that the government had been lubricating the tube with olive oil instead of a water-soluble lubricant. “When you pass the tube, some of the lubricant can drop into the lungs,” he said. Olive oil in the lungs can cause an inflammatory reaction called lipoid pneumonia. (The government says it stopped using olive oil as a lubricant over the summer.)
That’s a different and legitimate issue. No question, proper protocols should be used. (Note, there isn’t an allegation that any prisoner actually contracted pneumonia.)
But also note: Bioethicist Miles apparently thinks that any force-feeding of Gitmo prisoners is “torture,”
Nocera wants the tapes of the force feeding released–which have nothing to do with whether the right lubricant was used:
It turns out that the government has videotapes of Diyab enduring the forced cell extraction and the force-feeding. With some prodding from Kessler, the government was forced to allow the defense to see the videotapes. On Oct. 8, the last day of the hearing, in a closed courtroom, both Diyab’s lawyers and the government’s lawyers played portions of the tapes, putting them into evidence. When I asked the lawyers what they saw, they told me they were not allowed to say — because the tapes are still classified.
But 16 news media outlets, including The New York Times, have petitioned the court and asked Kessler to allow the public to see the videos. In a ruling she handed down in early October, she agreed that they should be made public. But she then stayed her ruling to give the government time to decide whether to appeal it.
There’s no question that the images, if they are made public, will be shocking to many. The prisoner will kick and scream and be held down. Force will be applied. They–the terrorists–will be made to look like victims, which is the point of the whole propagandistic exercise.
Lost in the emotionalism and uproar, will be the fact that the only reason the prisoner is strong-armed is to prevent him from dying or suffering serious health harm from malnutrition.
Moreover, something can be done too forcefully or inappropriately, and not be torture.
But calling it that word will hand another propaganda victory to the real torturers, as the very meaning of the T-word becomes dumbed-down.
This is torture: Crucifying people.
This is torture: Cutting off the heads of prisoners with a knife on video.
This is torture: Forcing girls into sex slavery or “marriage.”
Force-feeding is an unpleasant duty required of prison authorities to prevent self-harm. Proper procedures should be followed. If being done inappropriately, that should be corrected.
But it isn’t torture–at least if that word is to retain its vibrancy.