Ian Fishback

Ian Fishback (January 19, 1979 – November 19, 2021) was a United States Army officer, who became known after he sent a letter to Senator John McCain of Arizona on September 16, 2005, in which Fishback stated his concerns about the continued abuse of prisoners held under the auspices of the Global War on Terror.
After receipt of his letter, McCain, along with Republican Senators John Warner and Lindsey Graham, wrote an amendment to a Senate bill that would make illegal previous Bush administration claims for the use of extreme methods of abuse.
Early life
Fishback was born in Detroit on January 19, 1979. He was a 1997 graduate of Newberry High School in Newberry, Michigan, where he played on a football team.
He was admitted to West Point and earned a bachelor of science degree in middle eastern studies in 2001. In May 2012, Fishback was awarded a master’s degree in philosophy and political science at the University of Michigan, writing his master thesis on just war theory. He received a Ph.D. in philosophy from the University of Michigan in 2021.
Military service
Fishback served in the United States Army and achieved the rank of major in the United States Army Special Forces.
He served four combat tours in the U.S. Army, two with the 82nd Airborne and two with the Fifth Special Forces Group.
Fishback retired from the Army in 2014.
Teaching and research
From 2012 to 2015, Fishback served as an instructor at West Point, where he built good rapport with cadets. He collaborated with Jeff McMahan to create a joint philosophy seminar for West Point cadets and Rutgers philosophy students in 2013.
He became a Ph.D. student in philosophy at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor researching the interplay of morality and law regarding relative proportionality and necessity. In 2021, Fishback submitted his Ph.D. dissertation that was entitled, Method and the Morality of War (adviser Elizabeth S. Anderson).
As an interdisciplinary scholar exploring the moral foundations of obedience to orders and command responsibility in unconventional warfare contexts, he presented and participated in discussion panels on the intersection of national security and human rights, obedience to orders and the structure of the morality, appropriate use of military force, and strategic consequences of torture, among other topics.
In 2020, the Fulbright U.S. Scholar Program awarded Fishback the Fulbright-Lund Distinguished Chair of Public International Law grant to lecture and conduct research in Lund, Sweden at the Raoul Wallenberg Institute of Human Rights and Humanitarian Law in January-October 2021. However, his increasing struggle with mental illness prevented him from continuing on with the course in the spring.
Later life and death
He returned to Newberry from Sweden and according to his family struggled with depression. Records from his multiple stays at various mental health facilities indicate only a vague diagnosis of unspecified psychotic disorder. Acquaintances, friends, and family all describe Fishback as experiencing extreme paranoia, suffering from the delusion that the U.S. government was tracking after him for his whistleblower activities. Fishback was shuffled between several different facilities during the last months of his life as the V.A. lacked facilities in Michigan to properly house and care for him. Veterans' Affairs later decided he did not qualify for services because he was neither suicidal nor a danger to others.
Ian Fishback died at a non-V.A. care facility in Bangor, Michigan, on November 19, 2021, aged 42. Despite being in excellent physical shape prior to admission in the facility, family members report that within two months, Fishback's health declined substantially. Per his medical records, he was kept heavily medicated and received no psychiatric treatment otherwise save for a single assessment before a transfer to an adult foster care facility, Cornerstone, ten days before his death. According to case management records, staff at Cornerstone continued to over-medicate him, to the point where social workers noted that Fishback could not move or reposition himself without help.
Following Fishback's death, Veterans' Affairs conducted an autopsy which stated his death as "sudden cardiac death in schizophrenia" despite the heart showing no visible or genetic abnormalities. The report did raise the possibility that the medications Fishback was being treated with could have caused his death, but nothing was settled. External and internal investigations conducted following the autopsy revealed that the V.A. had attempted to suppress documents showing Fishback's attempts to receive treatment from their facilities and deflect blame onto Fishback himself. They also attempted to shift blame onto the state facilities, though Cornerstone and Pathways both released statements arguing that they were not equipped to deal with a complex case where PTSD and traumatic brain injury related to military service could have been involved in Fishback's rapid mental health decline.
His memorial service with around 100 people in attendance was held at American Legion Post #74 in Newberry, Michigan.
Letter to McCain
While stationed in Iraq, for more than a year Fishback expressed concerns to his immediate chain of command regarding treatment of detainees at Forward Operating Base Mercury in Fallujah District but was ignored.
In 2005 he decided to write a letter to McCain about what he perceived as a military culture that was permissive toward the abuse of prisoners.
The letter resulted in the creation of a anti-torture legislation, the Detainee Treatment Act, "sponsored by Senator McCain and passed by the Senate in an overwhelming show of bipartisan support with a vote of 90-9."
Recognition
During debates over his amendment, Senator McCain said:
On May 8, 2006, Fishback was chosen by Time magazine as one of the 100 most influential people in the world for taking his stand against torture.
Matthew Harwood, an associate editor at Security Management magazine, wrote in Attitudes Aren't Free: Thinking Deeply About Diversity in the US Armed Forces (2012) that Fishback's letter to Senator McCain "is a testament that inside the US military lies redemption".
Andrew Bacevich stated that Major Fishback was a "uniformed whistleblower who took seriously the values of “duty, honor, and country” he had learned at West Point. A classic straight arrow, Ian found intolerable even the slightest deviation from what the soldierly code of conduct required."
Senator Dick Durbin called Ian Fishback a military hero:
See also
Joe Darby
Alberto J. Mora
Philip D. Zelikow
References
External links
Letter to McCain - Washington Post full reprint
1979 births
2021 deaths
Military personnel from Detroit
United States Army officers
United States Military Academy alumni
United States Army personnel of the Iraq War
American whistleblowers
University of Michigan alumni
United States Army personnel of the War in Afghanistan (2001–2021)