dagblog - Comments for "I am a Monster"

My opinion on this has

Orlando — Fri, 24 Apr 2009 23:45:37 +0000

My opinion on this has absolutely zero to do with how the republicans act. Screw them. They are, to paraphrase Jane Austen, the silliest party that ever made themselves and their supporters ridiculous.

It's the political capital with so-called mainstream American that I'm worried about. You might think I'm wrong to worry about it or wrong to put it ahead of carrying out justice. I can live with that. It's not a particularly comfortable place for me to be in where I'm in some ways shrugging my shoulders and saying oh well, we hurt some people. Maybe I'm just in a place where I think people always get hurt and the powerful always get away with it. So, I think that we could spend a hell of a lot of time and energy and focus and not get very far down the road to any sort of real justice, all the while continuing to ignore health care, energy, education, and the rest.

Believe me, if you're right, and we can do it all, I will celebrate with you, wearing a t-shirt announcing "I WAS WRONG" in gigantic letters.

Yeah, but we're not Spain.

acanuck — Fri, 24 Apr 2009 21:33:23 +0000

In reply to On the upside, none of these

Yeah, but we're not Spain. None of these people are going to Spain.

A TPM reader echoes my

DF — Fri, 24 Apr 2009 18:55:21 +0000

In reply to I am a Monster

A TPM reader echoes my sentiment. The reality is that, as this reader notes, we can deal with it or not. Both choices have consequences. In my estimation, the "move forward" crowd is not fully recognizing this, but rather seems to see an illusory third option where we don't deal with it and everything somehow works out in the future. History offers me no reason to believe that this makes any sense.

I did see Smith of Fox. I

DF — Fri, 24 Apr 2009 16:27:00 +0000

In reply to DF, I haven't been ignoring

I did see Smith of Fox. I thought, "Wow. Someone on Fox News actually has a conscience. There is a point at which one of these people will actually say, 'Enough.'"

I don't watch any cable news at all these days, aside from clips like this that earn buzz on the net. My last residence had free cable, but I didn't order it when I moved into my new place earlier this year. I don't miss it one bit. Everything is a circus on cable news. I feel infinitely more sane when I am not trying to make sense of the abject horeshit that passes for information and discourse in that realm.

A tangent: CNN's early adoption of Twitter is one of the reasons that I doubt its usefulness. Brevity is the soul of wit, but it's also the soul of the soundbite news presentation that passes as the gold standard these days. What better way to make sure that nothing is ever discussed with any detail, reference or nuance than to keep all thoughts under a 140 character limit? And some people seem to regard this development as liberating! Unbelievable.

Anyhow.

When I brought up the Nuremberg defense earlier, it wasn't because I was eager to start making Nazi analogies. However, it just so happens that the "good faith" defense of interrogators' actions deals directly with the subject of the Nuremberg defense - namely whether or not an individual can be exonerated for potential war crimes on the basis that they were merely complying with orders from a superior. The unpleasant fact that this may well be precisely the legal precedent that we're dealing with should not be dismissed as sensational or needless comparison to Nazis or their acts. To be clear, I was not making comparison of specific acts, but it should give us significant pause that this is the legal territory in which we may find ourselves.

Nuremberg Principle IV:

"The fact that a person acted pursuant to order of his Government or of a superior does not relieve him from responsibility under international law, provided a moral choice was in fact possible to him."

Does this statement not deal directly with the question of interrogators acting in "good faith"? As for the question of moral choice, there's this story about a soldier whose moral conflict over the order to commit these acts lead her to suicide, her last words, left in a notebook, redacted. I imagine that these words probably would have been instructive as to the nature of moral choice.

You say that other concerns are more immediate and important, but I cannot imagine what is more important than our humanity. Nothing less is at stake here. We're dealing with the very question of what is acceptable when it comes to how we treat each other. In this capacity, to note that horrible things happen in the world strikes me as a non sequitur. We cannot stop all horrible acts. We can, however, resist that they be institutionalized. That's what has happened here. There is blood on all of our hands now.

I cannot agree with you at all that the outcome of justice is not possible, nor can I understand how you could believe such a thing. This very notion seems to question the moral character and capabilities of those we've elected to serve exactly this end. Is it faith in them that you lack or faith in the very idea of the execution of law?

I agree that there is political risk here. I think that Obama made a mistake in putting the "good faith" meme out there too quickly. He's on the right track now. Eric Holder's statement yesterday made it clear that he understands the environment he's working in. However, somewhere in your objections I sense a notion that I have long since come to detest: That we cannot proceed here as we should because the Republicans will raise holy hell over the matter.

Well, guess what? They're going to do that regardless. They are perfectly willing to contrive fracas where none exists in every instance where they believe it will serve.

One thing that I think is worth noting on this count: Impeaching George Bush might have avoided some of this. Such an action could have been widely perceived as an indictment and rebuke of his entire administration. However, the Democrats weren't willing to do that, either. Again, the reason was the same: We've got other things to do.

So, who's actually willing to enforce the law in this land? As I asked above: If the parties won't prosecute their own, for political reasons, and they won't prosecute the opposing party, for political reasons, then who watches the watchers? Of course, it's also important to note that the GOP has no problem sending the opposition to the clink (see: Don Siegelman). So, what we end up with is Republican Justice (TM).

How's that been working out?

The trouble here is that the seemingly pragmatic approach only satisfies in the short term. We know what we should do, but it's daunting. So, we kick the can down the road because we've got other things to do. Now we're finding out that the situation is quite possibly worse than we had thought.

This is the time to act like adults and reckon with it. There are long-term consequences if we acquiesce. What happens when the GOP wins the White House back? If we don't clean up the Bush mess, they will simply be able to build on it. What happens the next time there is a terrorist attack and the terrorist rhetoric revolves around the crimes that the U.S. has committed against the world and refuses cop to? There will be no "unipolar moment" for us then. There will be little international sympathy for a nation that publicly sweeps institutional brutality under the rug.

Obama is a very capable person. That's why we supported him. He's got a big team that is working on a variety of fronts. They are perfectly capable of collectively doing more than one thing at a time. In fact, that's the job description. The Republicans will fuss about every last damned thing he says and does for the next four years. That's just par for the course. Let them justify torture. Let them tell the nation why 50 million should remain uninsured. Let them sell the virtues of a free market health insurance industry in this environment. They are, as Obama would say, on the wrong side of history.

If we fear them and their noise machine so much now, at this moment when they have nothing that even resembles political power or popularity, that we can't even find the courage to uphold our most basic values, then when will that ever be possible? What does that say about us?

When weighing all of this, I have to say that I think you are wrong. Justice is not only possible, but necessary. Obama does not need to spearhead this effort, nor should he. He should allow the DOJ to proceed, as is now the case. If Holder finds that it is too sticky a political wicket, he can recuse himself and appoint special counsel. We've been there before.

Let the squawkers squawk. Their sound and fury signifies nothing and won't be remembered. What will be remembered is the moral choice that we make at this moment in time and the message that our choice sends to the future.

On the upside, none of these

Nebton — Fri, 24 Apr 2009 12:41:14 +0000

In reply to One thing I believe Obama

On the upside, none of these people will ever dare to travel abroad, for fear of arrest for war crimes.

Yeah, although I wish you were right, I wouldn't count on that. Didn't one of the crew recently travel to your country? As I recall there was much Sturm und Drang, but nothing came of it. Of course, I could be misremembering. I tried using the Googles to back up my memory and came up empty.

You're not intruding, Larry.

Orlando — Fri, 24 Apr 2009 12:04:45 +0000

In reply to I do not want to

You're not intruding, Larry. Dag is about open and respectful exchange of ideas.

I think triage is an apt description for where my mind is right now. We can't un-torture. And if we use all of our resources trying to fix it, we might not have enough left over to fix the other crises, which could just as easily lead us down the path of destruction--metaphorical or real.

I do not want to

LarryH — Fri, 24 Apr 2009 05:10:47 +0000

In reply to DF, I haven't been ignoring

I do not want to intrude into your exchange here except to encourage Orlando to continue to pursue this line of thinking. So far I have found it to be thoughtful and even intriguing. As I have said elsewhere I am not of the same mind on this but I’m not at all certain that Orlando in wrong either. There are times to be a moral absolutist and times to be utilitarian. In medical technology it is called triage. In a circumstance of overwhelming crisis, it is best to appreciate the limits of available resources and attend those who can likely be saved before treating those whose condition is more dire. It may seem counterintuitive but experience teaches it is the best practice. I find the strongest part of Orlando’s analysis in portraying the economic crisis to be potentially as lethal as the deranged treatment of prisoners. If I grant that ( and I do not reject it ) then the issue is much as Orlando presents it.

Personally I am not interested in “getting my mad on” and am following this discussion solely for its content.

DF, I haven't been ignoring

Orlando — Fri, 24 Apr 2009 03:01:12 +0000

In reply to I am a Monster

DF, I haven't been ignoring you. I've just been thinking and thinking all day about what to say in response. My thoughts are still somewhat jumbled and the more I read or hear about the subject, the worse it gets. I'm absolutely sick about the whole ball of wax.

I'm sick about what we did in the name of protecting American lives. I'm sick about how the Bush administration attempted to justify it. I'm sick about the Obama administration equivocating. I'm sick about the conservatives all over the fucking airwaves trying to make hay out of yet another issue. (It can't be both we don't torture and torture protects us, assholes.)

I'm also sick about the off-with-their-heads crowd and the attempts to silence any sort of deviance from the Bush/Cheney/Rumsfield go to jail forever meme. I'm not including you in this category, by the way. I don't think you ever try to silence debate. In fact, I'm guessing that if you were in a really intense conversation, you'd probably forego food and sleep for weeks just to keep talking.

In any case, those who accuse anyone who isn't in total lock-step with prosecution of being inhuman or Nazi-esque are hardly helping. That sort of behavior contributes to the three-ring circus I was talking about and frankly I think the show's already started. I give it props for being vulgar though. Did you check out Shep Smith on Fox?

I cannot, as you requested, reconcile my desire for investigation with my desire to move on to more immediate and, in my opinion, important concerns. In a perfect world we could accomplish everything. But the world we live in is far from perfect.

I thinkwhat sickens me most is this outcry about how horrible the torture was. Not that it wasn't. I can barely stand to hear or read the specifics. But there are many atrocious things that happen all the time. Things the United States does. Things done that the United States ignores. Things that happen in our own neighborhoods that we'd rather not think about. And I guess that on this particular issue, although I do not fundamentally disagree with any point that you've made, much of the outrage feels partisan to me. Not from you, necessarily. But from those I hear screaming the loudest.

If there is an investigation and if there are prosecutions, I want the outcome to serve justice. You can't convince me, at least as things stand now, that that outcome is in any way possible.

I don't deny that it's a

DF — Fri, 24 Apr 2009 00:54:00 +0000

In reply to One thing I believe Obama

I don't deny that it's a politically sticky scenario. You run the risk of being accused of doing it for political reasons. Of course, neither party really wants to eat their own, so the GOP will never prosecute this stuff. Likewise, the Dems don't want to be called partisan, so they don't want to do it either. When you do the calculus you end up with the unavoidable conclusion that there's no will to enforce the law. If that's true, then what does it matter if these acts are illegal in name? For that matter, does justice have any bearing on the actions of the ruling class?

I guess we can just wait for the next terrorist attack, where the prepetrators can just point to MSM news reports to explain their motivations.

One thing I believe Obama

acanuck — Fri, 24 Apr 2009 00:41:20 +0000

In reply to Something else to consider,

One thing I believe Obama realizes is that if you prosecute Yoo, Bybee and Gonzales, you also need to charge Bush, Cheney, Hayden, Rice, etc. Deserving as they are, that does pose a major political problem. I can't blame him for trying to duck it (I notice today he seems to have ruled out a bipartisan truth-and-reconciliation commission, so I don't know what options remain).

On the upside, none of these people will ever dare to travel abroad, for fear of arrest for war crimes.