By Dr. Kathie Malley-Morrison 

You can do something to stop torture

June is Torture Awareness Month.

It is a good month to put yourself in the shoes of another, particularly someone who is being tortured. Right now, as you read, in all likelihood someone is being tortured at the behest of the U.S. government.

Have you ever struggled to catch your breath, choked on food or drink "going down the wrong way," panicked, feared you would die?

My unit returned from Iraq to Camp LeJeune, North Carolina, in January of 2005. When we arrived on base we were met by crowds of cheering friends and family members.

In the weeks and months that followed, newspapers published articles praising us. Authors interviewed us and wrote books about what we had done in Fallujah. A filmmaker began making a documentary about us. People thanked us for our service, parties and parades were thrown in our honor, and everyone was calling us heroes.

In her remarkable study of our westward expansion, The legacy of conquest: The unbroken past of the American west, Patricia Nelson Limerick argues that the values the pioneer Americans attached to westward expansion persist even today, in cheerful defiance of any contrary evidence.