Daylight Timeby Susie Day |
Dear Alfreda
Frances
Bikowsky, So many
people want to be
famous. Not you. You were content to let Jessica Chastain portray a
more
competent version of your waterboarding and bin Laden-stalking self in
the
film Zero Dark Thirty.
You never asked for credit. But now,
thanks to
the Senate Select Intelligence Committee's Report on CIA
Torture, we know
you've made more history than the average, anonymous schlub. Jane
Mayer of The New Yorker calls you "The Unidentified
Queen of
Torture." She says you: "dropped the
ball when
the C.I.A. was given information that might very well have prevented
the 9/11
attacks; . . . gleefully participated in torture sessions afterward; .
. . And
then . . . falsely told congressional overseers that the torture
worked." Of course,
Jane Mayer
doesn't
name you. Neither does Matthew Cole in his NBC News
report, which was
the basis for Mayer's article. You are the "Unidentified Queen"
because the CIA told the media not to reveal you. According to
Mayer, you were the reason the Senate Intelligence
Committee was not
even allowed to use pseudonyms to identify you or any of the major
players in
its torture report, making it "almost impossible to . . . hold anyone
in
the American government accountable." We only know
you are Alfreda
Bikowsky because of journalist Glenn Greenwald, who has
problems with
authority. Glenn defied the CIA to identify you in an article
for The
Intercept, an investigative news website that purposely operates
outside the
parameters of mainstream media. Thanks a lot, Glenn Greenwald. I said that
sarcastically,
Ms. Bikowsky. Or, if I may: I said that sarcastically, Your
Majesty. Glenn
should not have "outed" you. After all, Glenn's gay; he should know
better. Being a queer
of the more
sensitive variety myself, I feel that people should not be forced out
of the
closet before they're ready. There can be hard feelings. Like, I can
only guess
how you feel now. But if it's even a little like being shackled
and hung
from the ceiling in freezing rooms, or forcibly hydrated and fed
rectally, or
stripped naked and deprived of sleep for a week, or put in stress
positions for
hours, you have my deep sympathy. It's not easy
to be exposed
as a war criminal. Now that you're out, though, you may take a page or
two from
the Gay Rights movement. Here are some hard-won pointers to help you
face an
ignorant and uncomprehending world. Say It Loud: War Criminal
and
Proud. According to
NBC News, your
name was redacted at least three dozen times from the declassified
Senate
Committee's report on torture. This self-redacting tendency indicates
that you
are an extremely modest person, Your Majesty. Yet, like so many women,
you may
be sacrificing your self-esteem just to avoid "making a scene." Coming out
allows you to
proclaim your worth to society. Did you stop to think that maybe
God made you this way? Much like God gave gay men,
brain-wise, a
small hypothalamus gland, He may have given you an abnormally
tiny
empathy-inducing anterior insular cortex. But whether your condition is
biological or chosen, it's time to step up and say, "Yes, Back to the
woman thing.
Very
few satanic creatures of note are women. Are you going to let Henry
Kissinger
and Beelzebub take all the credit? Isn't it
time Dick Cheney made coffee for YOU, for a
change? Out of the Black Sites and
Into the Street Contrary to
myth, war
criminals make good citizens. Like gay people, they boost property
values and
contribute to art and high culture. In fact, thanks to It's often
hard for
prejudiced "normal" people to accept that war criminals are human. Part
of being human is, of course, making mistakes. So stand up for
your war
criminal humanity, Your Majesty, by proudly defending your royal
fuckups. Anybody in
your CIA position could have goofed in snatching Khalid
el-Masri, an
innocent German citizen, off the street and torturing him for months in
And be PROUD
you testified
to
Congress that waterboarding Khalid Sheikh Mohammed (about 183 times,
but who's
counting?) led to the apprehension of a particular
terrorist—despite the
fact that this suspect was already in CIA custody. You will encounter
prejudice. Some people will assume you "got that way" by being
waterboarded as a child or exposed to a war criminal teacher at an
early age. Although
this may well be true, it's none of their business. When confronted
with such
war-criminal-o-phobe behavior, it is best to respond thusly: "I
appreciate
your concern, but I feel comfortable with who I am." Then arrest this
person and have them slammed repeatedly against a wall. Accept Your Greatness Bottom line,
O Queen? If we
anonymous schlubs can't hold you accountable for anything you've done,
the least
you can do is become a celebrity. See, you know
all about us—our metadata is vacuumed up every second by your
friends in
the NSA—but we know nothing about you. Do you own
a PC or a Mac? What's
your most embarrassing moment? Favorite brand of toothpaste? Please tell
us, Your
Majesty:
Who ARE you? If we knew that, we might know something more about who we
are. --------------------------------------------------------------------- This essay
originally
appeared at http://mrzine.monthlyreview.org/2015/day060115.html.
We reprint it
here by permission from the author. |
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