The Counterrevolution: How Our Government Went to War Against Its Own Citizens

292 Pages·2018·7.57 MB·English

by  Bernard E. Harcourt

Copyright
Copyright © 2018 by Bernard E. Harcourt
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First Edition: February 2018
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Harcourt, Bernard E., 1963- author.
Title: The counterrevolution : how our government went to war against its own
citizens / Bernard E. Harcourt.
Description: New York : Basic Books, [2018] | Includes bibliographical
references and index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2017038849 (print) | LCCN 2017054652 (ebook) | ISBN
9781541697270 (ebook) | ISBN 9781541697287 (hardcover)
Subjects: LCSH: Electronic surveillance—United States. | Counter-insurgency—
United States. | Civil-military relations—United States.
Classification: LCC TK7882.E2 (ebook) | LCC TK7882.E2 .H365 2018 (print) |
DDC 323.44/820973—dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2017038849
ISBNs: 978-1-5416-9728-7 (hardcover), 978-1-5416-9727-0 (ebook)
E3-20180108-JV-NF
CONTENTS
Cover
Title Page
Copyright
Dedication
Epigraph
The Birth of The Counterrevolution
PART I
The Rise of Modern Warfare
1 Counterinsurgency Is Political
2 A Janus-Faced Paradigm
PART II
A Triumph in Foreign Policy
3 Total Information Awareness
4 Indefinite Detention and Drone Killings
5 Winning Hearts and Minds
6 Governing Through Terror
PART III
The Domestication of Counterinsurgency
7 Counterinsurgency Comes Home
8 Surveilling Americans
9 Targeting Americans
10 Distracting Americans
PART IV
From Counterinsurgency to The Counterrevolution
11 The Counterrevolution Is Born
12 A State of Legality
13 A New System
Ockham’s Razor, or, Resisting the Counterrevolution
Acknowledgments
About the Author
Praise for The Counterrevolution
Notes
Index
In memory of Sheldon S. Wolin
“Subjects should be warned not to be subjugated more than is strictly
necessary.”
—William of Ockham, A Short Discourse on Tyrannical Government
(circa 1340)
THE BIRTH OF THE
COUNTERREVOLUTION
O
N DECEMBER 9, 2014, CALIFORNIA SENATOR DIANNE FEINSTEIN made public a
547-page report by the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence documenting
the widespread use of torture by the United States after 9/11. The Senate report
revealed far more intensive applications of torture than had previously been
known. One prisoner was waterboarded “at least 183 times.” At one point,
within less than 24 hours, he was subjected to “more than 65 applications of
water” during 4 waterboarding sessions.1
Another prisoner was subject to torture for almost 20 straight days “on a near
24-hour-per-day basis.” During the period, he was waterboarded 2 to 4 times a
day “with multiple iterations of the watering cycle during each application.”
During one waterboarding session, the prisoner became “completely
unresponsive, with bubbles rising through his open, full mouth,” and “remained
unresponsive until medical intervention, when he regained consciousness and
expelled ‘copious amounts of liquid.’” During the same period, that prisoner was
also subjected “in varying combinations, 24 hours a day” to “walling, attention
grasps, slapping, facial hold, stress positions, cramped confinement, white noise,
and sleep deprivation.” When he was left alone, it was either in a stress position,
on the waterboard, or locked in coffin-size boxes. In fact, during the period, he
“spent a total of 266 hours (11 days, 2 hours) in the large (coffin-size)
confinement box and 29 hours in a small confinement box, which had a width of
21 inches, a depth of 2.5 feet, and a height of 2.5 feet.” His interrogators told
him that “the only way he would leave the facility was in the coffin-shaped
confinement box.”2
In addition to exposing the scope of these known torture techniques, the
Senate report also revealed the previously undisclosed use of mock executions,