So upcoming Attorney General Eric Holder becomes the first “official” (i.e., law-relevant) voice to admit that water-boarding is torture. A nice breath of fresh air, one would think. As the Times reporter puts it, “In the view of many historians and legal authorities, Mr. Holder was merely admitting the obvious.”
Right. Making people undergo atrocious physical and psychological suffering is torture. What do you know. After 8 years of reality-denial and the weird kind of reality-derangement of the ruling party in the U.S., finally, it would appear, we have people who tilt ever so slightly more towards respect for the empirical.
Ah, but let us remember, Times reporter Scott Shane writes, all the problems such an admission of reality entails…Ah yes, the stickiness…the problems. As in, employees of the United States government, with orders directly from the White House, committed empirically verifiable war crimes. War crimes – according to the treaties and laws to which the U.S is itself a signatory.
All this, of course, making people squirm…one could feel the reporter squirming for them…
Now, in any decent world, criminal investigations would immediately be initiated, very possibly involving most of the highest members of the Bush administration, and very possibly resulting in war crime prosecution, and prison for these people.
The establishment squirms…
Why do they squirm, one might wonder? Apart from the practical political inconveniences of seeing establishment figures treated as war criminals, I think the squirming results from a certain ambiguity about the acceptability of torture itself. In general, many if not most people believe that torture is an acceptable tool for getting information. Apart from the fact that most professional interrogators deny this, I think that most laymen intuitively believe that anything is justifiable if it may possibly uncover information leading to the avoidance of other violent acts against innocents. Ah, yes, when directly questioned, most will not admit this…especially anyone in positions of legal responsibility… Thus the absurd rhetorical twists and turns by officials when testifying about water boarding…thus the many statements by Bush and others in his administration that “we do not torture”. Of course they were fucking torturing!...as Cheney, to his minimal credit, now openly admits.
Frankly, I think that many in the power structure in Washington either openly or secretly believe in the acceptability, indeed necessity, of torture. And thus, the squirming…even on the part of the “liberal” NY Times…
This rather barbaric stance spurts out openly when the perpetrators of war crimes are not Americans – witness the almost universal Congressional support for Israel’s latest clampdown in Gaza – a sentiment that runs against the almost universal condemnation Israel is receiving around the world. Unqualified support for absolute barbarism is easy when others are engaged in it…no realty-rearrangement or violence against logic/semantics necessary. This is what the pride- and religion-drunk idiots of Hamas don’t seem to get. Neither the rulers in Israel, nor their North American patrons, could give a flying fuck about war atrocities if they can in any way be justified by “protecting the country from enemies”. And those idiotic missiles Hamas seems intent on shooting at Israelis are just the ticket.
One wonders why the world bothers with such concepts as “international law”, “human rights”, etc. Obviously, when push comes to shove, or when it is in the interest of some powerful elite, rights and law are quickly forgotten.
Oh that the new political power structure in Washington were able to investigate, prosecute and punish those who spent the better part of 8 years defecating on US and international law, on the US Constitution…the same power structure that gave carte blanche to those whose fevered greed and cynicism led to such wreckage in the US and world economy…ah, sweet dreams…
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