Subscribe to Common Dreams News Updates
Most Popular This Week
Popular content
Today's Top News
Bush's Pentagon Papers: The Urge to Confess
They can't help themselves. They want to confess.
How else to explain the torture memorandums that continue to flow out of the inner sancta of this administration, the most recent of which were evidently leaked to the New York Times. Those two, from the Alberto Gonzales Justice Department, were written in 2005 and recommitted the administration to the torture techniques it had been pushing for years. As the Times noted, the first of those memorandums, from February of that year, was "an expansive endorsement of the harshest interrogation techniques ever used by the Central Intelligence Agency." The second "secret opinion" was issued as Congress moved to outlaw "cruel, inhuman, and degrading" treatment (not that such acts weren't already against U.S. and international law). It brazenly "declared that none of the C.I.A. interrogation methods violated that standard"; and, the Times assured us, "the 2005 Justice Department opinions remain in effect, and their legal conclusions have been confirmed by several more recent memorandums."
All of these memorandums, in turn, were written years after John Yoo's infamous "torture memo" of August 2002 and a host of other grim documents on detention, torture, and interrogation had already been leaked to the public, along with graphic FBI emailed observations of torture and abuse at Guantanamo, those "screen savers" from Abu Ghraib, and so much other incriminating evidence. In other words, in early 2005 when that endorsement of "the harshest interrogation techniques" was being written, its authors could hardly have avoided knowing that it, too, would someday become part of the public record.
But, it seems, they couldn't help themselves. Torture, along with repetitious, pretzled "legal" justifications for doing so, were bones that administration officials -- from the President, Vice President, and Secretary of Defense on down -- just couldn't resist gnawing on again and again. So, what we're dealing with is an obsession, a fantasy of empowerment, utterly irrational in its intensity, that's gripped this administration. None of the predictable we're shocked! we're shocked! editorial responses to the Times latest revelations begin to account for this.
Torture as the Royal Road to Commander-in-Chief Power
So let's back up a moment and consider the nature of the torture controversy in these last years. In a sense, the Bush administration has confronted a strange policy conundrum. Its compulsive urge to possess the power to detain without oversight and to wield torture as a tool of interrogation has led it, however unexpectedly, into what can only be called a confessional stance. The result has been what it feared most: the creation of an exhausting, if not exhaustive, public record of the criminal inner thinking of the most secretive administration in our history.
Let's recall that, in the wake of the attacks of September 11, 2001, the administration's top officials had an overpowering urge to "take the gloves off" (instructions sent from Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld's office directly to the Afghan battlefield), to "unshackle" the CIA. They were in a rush to release a commander-in-chief "unitary executive," untrammeled by the restrictions they associated with the fall of President Richard Nixon and with the Watergate era. They wanted to abrogate the Geneva Conventions (parts of which Alberto Gonzales, then White House Council and companion-in-arms to the President, declared "quaint" and "obsolete" in 2002). They were eager to develop their own categories of imprisonment that freed them from all legal constraints, as well as their own secret, offshore prison system in which their power would be total. All of this went to the heart of their sense of entitlement, their belief that such powers were their political birthright. The last thing they wanted to do was have this all happen in secret and with full deniability. Thus, Guantanamo.
That prison complex was to be the public face of their right to do anything. Perched on an American base in Cuba just beyond the reach of The Law -- American-leased but not court-overseen soil -- the new prison was to be the proud symbol of their expansive power. It was also to be the public face of a new, secret regime of punishment that would quickly spread around the world -- into the torture chambers of despotic regimes in places like Egypt and Syria, onto American bases like the island fastness of Diego Garcia in the Indian Ocean, onto U.S. Navy and other ships floating in who knew which waters, into the former prisons of the old Soviet Empire, and into a growing network of American detention centers in Afghanistan and Iraq.
So, when those first shots of prisoners, in orange jumpsuits, manacled and blindfolded, entering Guantanamo were released, no one officially howled (though the grim, leaked shots of those prisoners being transported to Guantanamo were another matter). After all, they wanted the world to know just how powerful this administration was -- powerful enough to redefine the terms of detention, imprisonment, and interrogation to the point of committing acts that traditionally were abhorred and ruled illegal by humanity and by U.S. law (even if sometimes committed anyway).
Though certain administration officials undoubtedly believed that "harsh interrogation techniques" would produce reliable information, this can't account for the absolute fascination with torture that gripped them, as well as assorted pundits and talking heads (and then, through "24" and other TV shows and movies, Americans in general). In search of a world where they could do anything, they reached instinctively for torture as a symbol. After all, was there any more striking way to remove those "gloves" or "unshackle" a presidency? If you could stake a claim the right to torture, then you could stake a claim to do just about anything.
Think of it this way: If Freud believed that dreams were the royal road to the individual unconscious, then the top officials of the Bush administration believed torture to be the royal road to their ultimate dream of unconstrained power, what John Yoo in his "torture memo" referred to as "the Commander-in-Chief Power."
It was via Guantanamo that they meant to announce the arrival of this power on planet Earth. They were proud of it. And that prison complex was to function as their bragging rights. Their message was clear enough: In this world of ours, democracy would indeed run rampant and a vote of one would, in every case, be considered a majority.
The Crimes Are in the Definitions
This, then, was one form of confession -- a much desired one. George W. Bush, Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, and their subordinates (with few exceptions) wished to affirm their position as directors of the planet's "sole superpower," intent as they were on creating a Pentagon-led Pax Americana abroad and a Rovian Pax Republicana at home. But there was another, seldom noted form of confession at work.
As if to fit their expansive sense of their own potential powers, it seems that these officials, and the corps of lawyers that accompanied them, had expansive, gnawing fears. Given this cast of characters, you can't talk about a collective "guilty conscience," but there was certainly an ongoing awareness that what they were doing contravened normal American and global standards of legality; that their acts, when it came to detention and torture, might be judged illegal; and that those who committed -- or ordered -- such acts might someday, somehow, actually be brought before a court of law to account for them. These fears, by the way, were usually pinned on low-level operatives and interrogators, who were indeed fearful of the obvious: that they had no legal leg to stand on when it came to kidnapping terror suspects, disappearing them, and subjecting them to a remarkably wide range of acts of torture and abuse, often in deadly combination over long periods of time.
Perhaps Bush's men (and women) feared that even a triumphantly successful commander-in-chief presidency might -- àla the Pinochet regime in Chile -- have its limits in time. Perhaps they simply sensed an essential contradiction that lay at the very heart of their position: The urge to take pride in their "accomplishments," to assert their powers, and to claim bragging rights for redefining what was legal could also be seen as the urge to confess (if matters took a wrong turn as, in the case of the Bush administration, they always have). And so, along with the pride, along with the kidnappings, the new-style imprisonment, the acts of torture (and, in some cases, murder), the pretzled documents began to pour out of the administration -- each a tortured extremity of bizarre legalisms (as with Yoo's August 2002 document, which essentially managed to reposition torture as something that existed mainly in the mind of, and could only be defined by, the torturer himself); each was but another example of legalisms following upon and directed by desire. (Yoo himself was reportedly known by Attorney General John Ashcroft as Dr. Yes, "for his seeming eagerness to give the White House whatever legal justifications it desired.") Each, in the end, might also be read as a confession of wrongdoing.
What made all this so strange was not just the "tortured" nature of the "torture memo" (just rejected by the new attorney general nominee as "worse than a sin, it was a mistake"), but the repetitious nature of these dismantling documents which, with the help of an army of leakers inside the government, have been making their way into public view for years. Or how about the strange situation of an American president, who has, in so many backhanded ways, admitted to being deeply involved in the issues of detainment and torture -- as, for instance, in a February 7, 2002 memorandum to his top officials in which he signed off on his power to "suspend [the] Geneva [Conventions] as between the United States and Afghanistan" (which he then declined to do "at this time") and his right to wipe out the Convention on the Treatment of Prisoners of War when it came to al-Qaeda and the Taliban. That document began with the following: "Our recent extensive discussions regarding the status of al Qaeda and Taliban detainees confirm..."
"Our recent extensive discussions..." You won't find that often in previous presidential documents about the abrogation of international and domestic law. It wasn't, of course, that the U.S. had never imprisoned anyone abroad and certainly not that the U.S. had never used torture abroad. Water-boarding, for instance, was first employed by U.S. soldiers in the Philippine Insurrection at the dawn of the previous century; torture was widely used and taught by CIA and other American operatives in Vietnam in the 1960s and 1970s, as well as in Latin America in the 1970s and 1980s, and elsewhere. But American presidents didn't then see the bragging rights in such acts, any more than a previous American president would have sent his vice president to Capitol Hill to lobby openly for torture (however labeled). Past presidents held on to the considerable benefits of deniability (and perhaps the psychological benefits of not knowing too much themselves). They didn't regularly and repeatedly commit to paper their "extensive discussions" on distasteful and illegal subjects.
Nor did they get up in public, against all news, all reason (but based on the fantastic redefinitions of torture created to fulfill a presidential desire to use "harsh interrogation techniques") to deny repeatedly that their administrations ever tortured. Here is an exchange on the subject from Bush's most recent press conference:
"Q What's your definition of the word 'torture'?
"THE PRESIDENT: Of what?
"Q The word 'torture.' What's your definition?
"THE PRESIDENT: That's defined in U.S. law, and we don't torture.
"Q Can you give me your version of it, sir?
"THE PRESIDENT: Whatever the law says."
After a while, this, too, becomes a form of confession -- that, among other things, the President has never rejected John Yoo's definition of torture in that 2002 memorandum. Combine that with the admission of "extensive discussions" on detention matters and, minimally, you have a President, who has proven himself deeply engaged in such subjects. A President who makes such no-torture claims repeatedly cannot also claim to be in the dark on the subject. In other words, you're already moving from the Clintonesque parsing of definitions ("It depends on what the meaning of the word 'is'") into unfathomable realms of presidential definitional darkness.
On the Record
Of course, plumbing the psychology of a single individual while in office -- of a President or a Vice President -- is a nearly impossible task. Plumbing the psychology of an administration? Who can do it? And yet, sometimes officials may essentially do it for you. They may leave bureaucratic clues everywhere and then, as if seized by an impulsion, return again and again to what can only be termed the scene of the crime. Documents they just couldn't not write. Acts they just couldn't not take. Think of these as the Freudian slips of officials under pressure. Think of them as small, repeated confessions granted under the interrogation of reality and history, under the fearful pressure of the future, and granted in the best way possible: willingly, without opposition, and not under torture.
Sometimes, it's just a matter of refocusing to see the documents, the statements, the acts for what they are. Such is the case with the torture memos that continue to emerge. Never has an administration -- and hardly has a torturing regime anywhere -- had so many of its secret documents aired while it was still in the act. Seldom has a ruling group made such an open case for its own crimes.
We're talking, of course, about the most secretive administration in American history -- so secretive, in fact, that Congressional representatives considering classified portions of an intelligence bill, have to go to "a secret, secure room in the Capitol, turn in their Blackberrys and cellphones, and read the document without help from any staff members." Such briefings are given to Congressional representatives, but under ground rules in which "participants are prohibited from future discussions of the information -- even if it is subsequently revealed in the media..." So representatives who are briefed are also effectively prohibited from discussing what they have learned in Congress.
And yet, none of this mattered when it came to the administration establishing its own record of illegality -- and exhibiting its own outsized fears of future prosecution. Let's just take one labor intensive -- and exceedingly strange, if now largely forgotten -- example of these fears in action. In 2002, a new tribunal, the International Criminal Court (ICC), was established in the Hague to prosecute individuals for genocide, crimes against humanity, and war crimes. "[T]hen-Undersecretary of State John R. Bolton nullified the U.S. signature on the International Criminal Court treaty one month into President Bush's first term" and Congress subsequently passed the American Servicemembers' Protection Act which prohibited "certain types of military aid to countries that have signed on to the International Criminal Court but have not signed a separate accord with the United States, called an Article 98 agreement." The Bush administration, opposed to international "fora" of all sorts, then proceeded to go individually, repeatedly, and over years, to more than 100 countries, demanding that the representatives of each sign such an agreement "not to surrender American citizens to the international court without the consent of officials in Washington."
In other words, they put the sort of effort that might normally have gone into establishing an international agreement into threatening weak countries with the loss of U.S. aid in order to give themselves -- and of course those lower-level soldiers and operatives on whom so much is blamed -- a free pass for crimes yet to be committed (but which they obviously felt they would commit). We're talking here about small, impoverished lands like Cambodia, still attempting to bring its own war criminals of the Pol Pot era to justice.
In the process of twisting arms, the administration suspended over $47 million in military aid "to 35 countries that ha[d] not signed deals to grant American soldiers immunity from prosecution for war crimes." In this attempt to get every country on the planet aboard the American no-war-crimes-prosecution train before it left the station, you can sense once again the administration's obsessional intensity on this subject (especially since experts agreed that the realistic possibility of the ICC bringing Americans up on war crimes was essentially nil).
The Bush administration regularly reached for its dictionaries to redefine reality, even before it reached for its guns. It not only wrote its own rules and its own "law," but when problems nonetheless emerged from its secret world of detention and pain and wouldn't go away -- at Abu Ghraib, Guantanamo, and elsewhere -- it proceeded to investigate itself with the expectable results. For Bush's officials, this should have seemed like a perfect way to maintain a no-fault system that would never reach up any chain of command. Indeed, as Mark Danner has commented, such practices plunged us into an age of "frozen scandals" in which, as with the latest torture memos, the shocked-shocked effect repeats itself but nothing follows. As he has written: "One of the most painful principles of our age is that scandals are doomed to be revealed -- and to remain stinking there before us, unexcised, unpunished, unfinished."
How true. And yet, looked at another way, the administration -- with outsized help from outraged government officials who knew crimes when they saw them and were willing to take chances to reveal them -- has already created a remarkable record of its own criminal activity, which can now be purchased in any bookstore in the land.
Back in the early fall of 2004, when the first collection of such documents arrived in the bookstores, Mark Danner's Torture and Truth, America, Abu Ghraib, and the War on Terror, it was already more than 600 pages long. In early 2005, when Karen J. Greenberg, executive director of the Center on Law and Security at the NYU School of Law, and Josh Dratel, the civilian defense attorney for Guantanamo detainee David Hicks, released their monumental The Torture Papers, The Road to Abu Ghraib, another collection of secret memoranda, official investigations of Abu Ghraib, and the like, it was already an oversized book of more than 1,200 pages -- a doorstopper large enough to keep a massive prison gate open. And, of course, even it couldn't hold all the documents. A later Greenberg book, The Torture Debate in America, for instance, has military documents not included in the first volume.
Then, there were the two-years worth of FBI memos and emails about Guantanamo that the ACLU pried loose from the government and released on line, also in 2005. This material was damning indeed, including direct reports from FBI agents witnessing -- and protesting as well as pointing fingers at -- military interrogators at the prison, as in an August 2, 2004 report that said: "On a couple of occasions, I entered interview rooms to find a detainee chained hand and foot in a fetal position to the floor, with no chair, food or water...Most times they had urinated or defecated on themselves, and had been left there for 18, 24 hours or more." Or a Jan. 21, 2004 email in which an FBI agent complained that the technique of a military interrogator impersonating an FBI agent "and all of those used in these scenarios, was approved by the DepSecDef," a reference to Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul D. Wolfowitz.
Other paperback volumes have also been published that include selections from these and other documents like Crimes of War: Iraq by Richard Falk, Irene Gendzier, and Robert Jay Lifton and In the Name of Democracy: American War Crimes in Iraq and Beyond by Jeremy Brecher, Jill Cutler, and Brendan Smith. If all of these documents, including the latest ones evidently in the hands of the New York Times, were collected, you would have a little library of volumes -- all functionally confessional -- for a future prosecutor. (And there are undoubtedly scads more documents where these came from, including perhaps a John Yoo "torture memo," rumored to exist, that preceded the August 2002 one.)
What an archive, then, is already available in our world. It's as if, to offer a Vietnam comparison, the contents of The Pentagon Papers had simply slipped out into the light of day, one by one, without a Daniel Ellsberg in sight, without anyone quite realizing it had happened.
The urge of any criminal regime -- to ditch, burn, or destroy incriminating documents, or erase emails -- has, in a sense, already been obviated. So much of the Bush/Cheney "record" is on the record. As Karen J. Greenberg wrote, back in December 2006, "What more could a prosecutor want than a trail of implicit confessions, consistent with one another, increasingly brazen over time, and leading right into the Oval Office?"
Looking back on these last years, it turns out that the President, Vice President, their aides, and the other top officials of this administration were always in the confessional booth. There's no exit now.
57 Comments so far
Show Allso why haven't these people been impeached?
i, as a citizen, am still unaware of the reason(s)
At this point I thoroughly blame the Democrats in Washington for going along with all this. Bush's torture apparatus ought to be #1 in a bill of impeachment. Can't convict without Republican votes? That's OK. Get everyone's testimony on the record anyway, force officials to perjure themselves or take the Fifth. Lay the groundwork for future criminal prosecutions and civil actions. But the Democrats won't do any of this because they're more loyal to the Beltway establishment and the American empire than to the Constitution.
Now, the big question is "Will the Bush administration be prosecuted in the US or elsewhere for its criminal actions?" With the Supreme Court protective of Bush's unitary executive expansion of powers and their blatant disregard for the Bill of Rights, we probably can't rely on the US prosecuting these criminals. But other countries CAN if the US is unwilling or unable to prosecute its war criminals.
As I said in another thread, my money's on Iraq to prosecute the Bush administration at the Hague for torture, probably murder, and an illegal invasion, or Iran if the Bush administration illegally attacks that country as promised, with or without the cooperation of the next US administration. Blackwater is at grave risk, too.
The primary violation of international law is a war of aggression -- this foremost, and from that, all the other human rights crimes listed in the Geneva Conventions and other international and US laws spring.
Only a grossly-arrogant administration would be so sure of its righteousness by putting everything illegal in writing for the world to see.
Thank God they did.
GWB & Co are operating on grandpa Prescott's buddy Adolph's plan for Germany, they kept good records then as well.
[quote]But other countries CAN if the US is unwilling or unable to prosecute its war criminals.[/quote]
If? IF?!! The conditional clause seems somewhat redundant under the Janus-like political system that the US modestly refers to as "the greatest democracy on earth."
As for the primary proposition, how can anyone anywhere arrest and prosecute members of a mafia that is armed with nuclear weapons and that makes no secret of its willingness -- indeed its declared policy -- for first use even against non-nuclear states?
Having quite obviously lost all traces of the revolutionary spirit that opposed prveious tyrannies and gave birth to your country, you USans appear to be clutching at every faint hope you can glimpse however remote it may be -- from salvation by your own military leadership to some foreign seekers of wellbeing for the US populace.
Sad news, folks. Most of the rest of the world is perfectly content to let you reap what you've sown and enjoy the just rewards of that bitter harvest. Do you blame us?
I can recall that the very first of our troops returning from GITMO bragged to the local newspaper of 'Torture' lite. Torture lite? Is that like being only a 'little bit' pregnant? Torture obviously came in with the Bush Crime Family.
Gee, Arvy,
Kick us while we're down, why don't you? Our court system and legislature have been taken over by Bush and Cheney's evil forces, and there are no longer any protections or stopping it. America has suffered a coup d'etat.
Americans will certainly suffer, the innocent more severely than the guilty, but those countries that GW Bush has illegally invaded and subjected to torture deserve some justice, even if Americans have to live with the consequences for generations. I've no doubt we will.
Seems abundantly clear that Congress has no capacity to or intention of prosecuting this administration for its crimes. Why not, with all the abundant evidence available ... is that the essential question we're to ask? The answer to that one is too simple. Complicity. So, the real question is what are the American people prepared to do about it? And if they're unprepared to act, what is the rest of the world prepared to do about it?
dolkar says...
"So, the real question is what are the American people prepared to do about it?"
How about sending money to Cindy Sheehan's campaign. And for those in her district, how about voting for her so you can boot Nancy Pelosi's pampered, botoxed ass out the door!
[quote]Gee, Arvy, Kick us while we're down, why don't you?[/quote]
You're not down yet. But (and this is the real point) most of you sure as hell act as if you're down and out and helpless looking for some knight on a white charger to come to your rescue.
I'm afraid that I have little sympathy for (and little faith in) people who look to others for salvation while doing little to help themselves. Most of you even seem strongly disinclined to recognise the true systemic nature of the underlying problem. A large number cling desparately to the fictions about the fundamental goodness of "The American Way" needing only to get rid of those "few rotten apples" who have lately misled an unwilling nation into the paths of wrongdoing. And, in truth, even now, the vast majority are far less upset about the wrongdoing, per se, than about its lack of success.
My gawd, people!!! How can you be willing to send your sons to die for the supposed benefit of foreigners (most of whom would gladly forego any such 'benefits' of your brand of 'freedom and democracy') while yet you show no similar willingness to challenge your tyranny at home? What, if anything, are you prepared to sacrifice in the latter 'noble cause' and, if nothing, you deserve to be kicked very hard indeed. Sorry.
The writer elucidates well the fact that Bush is insane. And the next time you watch one of his press conferences, study his manner of speaking and his physical motions. You are looking at a madman who is going into the final stages of his disease.
The US has been torturing "foreigners" since 1946 at the latest. It has tortured prisoners in occupied Germany, in Vietnam, in Laos, in El Salvador, elsewhere in Central and South America. It now tortures prisoners in Iraq, in Guantanamo, and at black sites. In the 1950s and 1960s the US spent more than a billion dollars investigating torture techniques. It set up a "School of the Americas" where such methods were taught. In Vietnam, US CIA and military personnel operated 40 interrogation centers that killed more than 20,000 suspects and tortured thousands more. See Alfred McCoy's "A Question of Torture" for some documentation.
Could we please drop the naïve pretext that torture began with Bush and his cronies?
Arvy,
Well, it's pretty obvious you aren't sorry, but that's okay. You seem to be one of those people unable to recognize who you're talking to, willing to criticize those in a situation where you aren't but offer no solution. So criticize away all you like. That's your right. If you really want those to whom you're speaking to hear you, you should present your criticisms to Fox News. Here's where you can do that:
foxnewsonline@foxnews.com
That's where you'll find the people you're speaking to. May I suggest that you get in touch with Rush Limbaugh, too. I doubt if 1% of the people here belong to your one-size-fits-all Americans. But about 100% of the people at Fox News and The Rush Limbaugh show do. THEY're the 30% of Americans who buy the Bush-agenda lock, stock and barrel.
Have fun!
kloro
I really do think Bush is a dry drunk, probably with brain damage. His stumbling ineptitude while trying to speak, or transfer what's in his brain to his mouth, is what make me think so. He speaks okay about things he's really interested in, but probably understands very little of what's actually going on. After all, Cheney spoon feeds him everything.
The piece that really got me is that being as the government has gotten away with torture, everything else a dictatorship would desire is now on the table. Torture is mainly to terrize the population. Uh, that would be us.
pzbrawl
You're quite correct. This is not the first time Americans have tortured people. If there's war, there's torture, but it's been a war crime since the 40s under international law. Even though it perhaps understandably happens under terrible stress and duress, civilized people are always horrified by it and want it to stop.
What's different now is this is the first time an American president has openly authorized torture and has tried to write an avoidance of prosecution for it into law. This administration isn't t horrified by it at all, and doesn't intend to stop it.
[quote]You seem to be one of those people unable to recognize who you're talking to, willing to criticize those in a situation where you aren't but offer no solution.[/quote]
Of course I do not and cannot 'recognize' you or others here as individuals. I, like most of the rest of the world, can only see what the self-proclaimed "greatest democracy on earth" actually does and gauge its constituent support accordingly. I certainly perceive no mass revolt amongst that contituency at present -- nor even anything like the unrest of the 'dirty thirties' for that matter, let alone a second American Revolution.
As for my offering solutions, my original comment was in response to a suggestion that the answer might lie in foreign arrests and prosecutions of your war criminals. I consider that highly unlikely under the circumstances.
Would the same U.S. populace that is so quiescent in the face of its own internal tyranny be prepared to rise up in support of foreign intervention of any kind whatever? Or even a foreign suggestion? Somehow, I doubt it. To the contrary, insofar as a U.S. venue for offering any such suggestion is concerned, I see little distinction between many so-called 'liberals' and their 'neo-con' counterparts when it comes to having all the self-righteous answers, not only for themselves, but for the rest of the world as well.
PZ BRAWL: The point the article made was NOT that torture has not been ongoing, it's that now it's out of the closet, it's being done brazenly in the light of day as if to promote an adminstration that is so drunk on its own power, it makes this dark boast to the world.
ANNEY: Once again, I thank you. Your answers mirror EXACTLY the points I would have made, had you not so eloquently stated them prior.
TOM ENGELHARDT: I just wish to thank you for bringing research and an incisive intellect to bear on (exposing) the central issues of our times. I have learned a great deal from your journalistic integrity and the careful manner in which you assemble the facts to make your various cases.
Hat's off to Nick Turse whose "Legion of the Fallen" chronicled the many whose careers suffered as they made courageous attempts to block this administration from amassing the sort of absolute power that has so ostensily corrupted them absolutely. Which came first, their own interior corruption or how it grew like a cancer once this particular body of damaged souls confiscated so much power while those in positions to potentially stop them, stood back and did nothing.
ARVY: If you've really paid attention you might have noticed our elections have become corrupted, that our so-called opposed political parties have morphed into one that answers to its money-donors; that our media is a sham of bought-out corporate-paid sychophants who report propaganda and keep the public largely in the dark, that our protests have altered the M.O of this corrupt administration not one iota.
As for who pays... good jobs are being sent overseas, healthcare protects fewer and fewer, laws fought for to protect consumers from those industrial agents who wished to meddle with their foods are now relaxed to protect offenders over public welfare. The list goes on and on. There has been a COUP in this nation, and for the first time in its history, the 3 branches of government brilliantly designed to check-balance one another to insure against power aggregating in one (i.e. unitary executive) have been subsumed.
The outcome is not only dangerous for American citizens who have essentially lost any meaningful measure of representative democracy, but it's equally dangerous to nations that may become targets of corporate envy, their assets necessary to the predators.
Please do not blame citizens in the CD forum who share our understanding and seek common solutions to the nightmare that our nation's leadership has managed to create.
[quote]ARVY: If you've really paid attention ...[/quote]
Believe me, I've paid very close attention and I'm well aware that what you say about your political system, your establishment media, etc. are true. Despite the recent extreme blatancy, however, it's not a really a new development. There was plenty of warning, including the very clear MIC warning (originally MICC warning) of one of your outgoing (Republican) presidents.
As for assignments of blame, while there's certainly plenty to go around, I'm not actually making any such assignments, at least not insofar as those developmemts themselves are concerned. I'm just saying that you can expect neither intervention nor absolution from foreign sources, especially in the absence of any apparent internal revolt now that the outcomes (at least some of the more horrendous ones) are abundantly clear.
I'm not without some sympathy. But keep in mind, if you will, that those on the receiving end of U.S 'beneficence' (in the form of 'depleted' uranium, napalm, cluster bombs, white phosporous, etc.) have seldom if ever enjoyed the kind of distinctions for the 'blameless' that you seem to expect in the other direction.
Arvy,
"I certainly perceive no mass revolt amongst that contituency at present — nor even anything like the unrest of the 'dirty thirties' for that matter, let alone a second American Revolution."
In the 1930s, America had a large industrial base connected to a concentrated urban population, and an extensive rural population, a significant portion of which was displaced. Suburbs did not exist; what Pete Seeger called "Little boxes made of ticky-tacky" and Jon Mellencamp called "Little pink houses" were only the prelude to the identical, Borg-like housing developments with their adjuacent corporate shops & offices.
When many complain that we aren't out "in the streets", they have in mind the traditional picture of revolt where the people can in fact go and shut down a parliamentary building, a post office, a rail station. Apart from airports, no such chokepoints exist in the US. 'Going into the streets' would, for the vast majority, mean going to a die-in at a Starbucks or a Wal-Mart -- in fact what happens in one suburb scarcely affects another. To be effective in New York or DC would require an immense surrounding population in support & able to supply logistical assistance.
The Russian peasants had the saying "If the Tsar only knew" -- and for suburbanized Americans (and even most of the cities have been suburbanized now) that has been the feeling up until the concession of Kerry to a clearly stolen election & the outrageous collaboration of the Pelosicrats.
Thom Hartmann and others are still contending that the structure can somehow be used if there are enough people working to take the Democratic Party back from the ground up, the way the far right took over the Republican Party. As they say "A bit more patience & a lot more lubricant & an elephant can screw an ant in the arse."
Screw'em Tom. After the break-up of the Former United States of America, the Last Aryan Empire, if they remain in this country, the States where they land will sell them to the ICC for crude and food. Hunger will focus attention like you would not believe. Especially with the most heavily armed civilian population on the planet. And no, we didn't forget the bullets. We're a pretty rum bunch of coconuts. Munch Munch. And no, we ain't walking away from this one. We're one nuke away from total implosion. This should prove the death of the Nation/State system, globally. Thanks George. Couldn't have done it without you.
Peace.
Thanks, Arvy. CD people seem to have a wider perspective on their place in the world, BUT our perspective is skewed by the lens we view it through.
CD'ers have the problem among friends who know everything, and tell each other with all good intentions. Then a sympathetic stranger comes along, with a different paradigm and (thankfully in your case) a "scolding" (yours is gentle "get off your arse and do something, no one is going to help you"). It throws us all off. This CD club is now in a defensive postion and retreat to their comfort zone, united as a Kurt Vonnegut Grand Faloon.
A Grand Faloon is defined as the concept that people with absolutely no prior knowledge of each other can form instantanious friendships for the most bizarre and superficial reasons. For example, you're in a bar in Seattle and find that the person next to you knew someone who went to the same college you did. Boom, just like that, you're having a drink together like you've known each other for years. That's a Grand Faloon.
In this case, our little CD social club is a safe little Grand Faloon, into which you have entered, like a breath of fresh air.
The problem is that our CD America Social Club needs more people like you, who see the US as a whole, and not as we see it, as parts that are wrong. To improve the US standing in the world community, more of out leaders need to look at the US from the outside and knowing that non-USer's don't care why it is happening, but how can it be allowed to happen. And then how can we let it happen.
IT seems that in our US Grand Faloon we have forgotten that.
Siouxrose
==The outcome is not only dangerous for American citizens who have essentially lost any meaningful measure of representative democracy, but it's equally dangerous to nations that may become targets of corporate envy, their assets necessary to the predators.==
Good point. Bush's unilateral attacks on other countries because he wants their natural resources is a ghastly precedent for any country to set. Hitler did the same thing as he ate up Europe and headed for the USSR. He got his comeuppance through defeat, though he was too wimpy to face the music. I think Bush will get his comeuppance, too, though I don't know how.
I'd be interested to learn, if anybody knows, what dictators at any time in history have been brought down by their citizens without military help from some source or other.
The fact that the U.S. uses Guantanamo as their torture base is a brazen crime in itself over and above the actual torturing because, contrary to assertion and belief, the U.S. does not lease Guantanamo Bay. The Cuban government has requested repeatedly that the U.S. get their armed forces out of their country and they do not cash the four thousand dollar checks that the U.S. pretends to pay each year for an entire year's rent. An equivalent to that illegal occupation of a foreign nation's soil would be if China came over here and built a huge naval base in New York and each year gave the U.S. the price that would hardly pay for a small apartment for one month. Of course, I don't mean to malign China by this example but merely make reference to China as being a powerful state.
The U.S. backed mass murderer Batista was defeated and kicked out of Cuba by a homegrown revolution led by Fidel Castro. And now Cuba is free and has the most honorable society on this small planet. They started out with 80 revolutionaries armed with rifles and, using guerrilla tactics, defeated the modern army supplied, trained and maintained by the U.S.
If you want to learn about a people who have been successful at revolution and maintained their honor you can check out Cuba's extensive presence on the web. Besides spanish, their sites are usually available in several languages, including english. A few choice sites:
http://www.ain.cu/
http://www.granma.cubaweb.cu/
http://www.prensalatina.com.mx/
I agree with much of what anney says, both here and on other threads, but there is way too much irony in hoping that Iraq will take our rulers to the ICC. First of all, we've destabilized their country and enabled a mighty civil war. Their first order of business is to save themselves. Aye, and I guess ours too.
And Arvy, I agree with all you say...we should help ourselves. But our great Nation is at an all time low point. Our wise founders hoped that the three branches of government would save us. That the fourth estate would save us. That a loyalty to country and constitution (over party and greed) would save us. Right now, ALL of those mechanisms are at a standstill. The congress is mute and following, putting party and money over country. The press is silent and complicit, bought out by corporate interests. The people of this great nation are hypnotized and sedated by TV, trivia, all out wars against gay marriage while our democracy is being eroded like a sand castle at turn of the tide.
Coming here gives me strength because I see like minded people, I connect dots by the insights of others and I think I am ready to mobilize. I think many of us are. But we ask, Behind Who?
Who and what will galvanize us?
My personal thoughts are that if some THING doesn't happen to bring all of us together in action (the whole is greater than the sum of our parts) then I would guess that some of us will be re-locating. It's been on my mind for a while.
At the center of it, the corporate media, so mollified by profits, can create (in my home town paper's case) an image of a happy country, undisturbed by the loss of freedoms. In my mid size community the local peace group gets the barest of coverage from the local paper. The tone is always condescending and patronizing. Our radio outlets have no connection at all to the community SAVE for reporting the local sports (more soporific) in between Limbaugh and his ilk.
Still, the revolution started through the efforts of pamphleteers and this is even better than a pamphleteer's efforts. But until, in our communities, we know each other and can plan, the impetus for movement is uncoordinated.
Our political parties are farces, two monochromatic variations of each other.
It is frightening how dis-empowered we are.
I do not think change will come from within the system. The system is complicit, corrupt and self-supporting. It will take change from without.
anney, my money is that AFTER this presidency is over we will learn that he was on both pills and booze for at least the last two years.
Drunks who have not learned better coping mechanisms have one "unfailing" coping mechanism. I am sure that there is a medical enabler and he is probably on some fine, a**-kickin' drugs but I bet none of that keeps him out of the hooch, at least periodically.
At TomDispatch says, we could use some Pentagon Papers--both those that are right in front of us AND someone who realizes that our country is way too fragile at this moment to be run by a drunk puppeted by a malevolent power hungry partner.
MollyJ
I read somewhere that this disaster, unlike our belief that we are an integral part of America's direction, is a game that is closed to us. We simply aren't allowed on the team. That seems to be a good analogy to me.
You're right about one thing: Iraq won't take the Bush administration to the ICC now because of the chaos, but they certainly might AFTER US forces leave. The illegal occupation nightmare won't be over for them until then anyway. Maliki may be holding on by a thread, but lately he's showing some backbone about US plans to stay in Iraq forever -- he says NO WAY to those permanent US bases. He's also pushing the administration about getting Blackwater out, charging them with murder. Even if he doesn't last, I imagine that the next Iraqi government, no matter what faction it represents, will want its pound of US flesh. What better way to get it than prosecuting the whole administration at the Hague?
I'm speculating, of course, but the truth is that none of us knows what's around the corner.
[quote]It is frightening how dis-empowered we are.[/quote]
I understand how anyone might feel that way in the current circumstances. And therein I can find some measure of sympathy for the predicament and plight of ordinary USans.
Nevertheless, I cannot prevent myself from wondering, albeit in the broadest non-discriminatory terms, about their apparently resigned posture. It seems to contrast starkly with the courage of a lone Chinese citizen defying his country's overwhelming armoured attack in Tiennemen Square, or, for that matter, a lone Russian delivering a defiant speech atop his country's armoured vehicles. Even the supposedly "cowardly" French have been known to take to the streets in protest from time to time.
Such defiance may not always work, but the symbolism sure beats defeatism. And it sure as hell sends a more positive message to the rest of the world. Who knows, it might even encourage us foreigners to try to help if and when we can. How helpless do you think we feel about being caught up in the imperium without even the false promise of a meaningless vote?
Arvy - I appreciate your input. I forces me to think about what actions by the American people would make a dent in the armour of this government and get it to turn around.
The thing that strikes me is that many have already given their lives. It just wasn't televised. Think about Pat Tillman. Bullets to the head at close range. Think about the procurement officer in Bagdad who also got a bullet to the head. Think about the 6 deaths of airman who were involved in the nuclear bombs being loaded on a planes wings. Think about all the generals that have given up their careers by defying this administration. Think about all the disappeared that we don't even know about. Think about all the beatings and arrests of demonstrators.
The revolution won't be televised. So no one will know who our heros are or what they did. No one will know who our leader, like a Chavez, a King, or a Castro, is. If we're lucky, we'll know that they are dead, but we will never know how or why.
Lucky Lefty is right. Until the food and crude runs out, the people of America will never unite, take risk, and rise up together. And that day is coming. It won't be a tea party in a harbor, or a bunch of pamphlets. But there will be a trigger. We'll know it when that trigger is pulled. And the revolution will be fought at the community level, not in DC. It will be a gorrila war. Hopefully the police in our communities will join their neighbors. Hopefully our military will mutiny, and at the very least, stand back and not participate in any way.
Freedom is havin' nothin' left to lose.
Peace
There is the velvet revolution as well. But I'm guessing it'll more likely be an implosion. Bush, the neocons and their enablers clearly -- beyond and shred of doubt -- are on an unsustainable course. They'll self-destruct. Let's just hope they don't take the whole country with them.
But I predict great economic turmoil. The new go-to people won't be the withering fatcats in D.C. -- rather they'll be your neighbors, community leaders, etc.
Paul: All true. But, sorry to say, they ARE going to take the whole country with them.
Forgive me the Jesus quote on this Saturday night, after such a truthful, ugly and thought-provoking article: "Seek ye the truth, and the truth shall set ye free."
All we need (and that is, I'd say about 80% of the majority of all humanity on Earth) is for the truth to be told. The truth about all the rotten genocides, the truth about 9/11, the truth about the corporate attempted coup of the early 1900's (Google General Smedley Butler)..., all of it.
If we could only give all the assholes some "truth serum" and maybe give them all amnesty (arrrhhhhgggg!!!!)l, perhaps we could start over and make the world, well, not RIGHT.... but possibly better. Amnesty. The One Time Deal to Save the World for the Rest of Humanity for All Time. No Biggie.
Comments???
I'm just some schmuckette on the East Coast with "Pretty Woman" playing in the background. There must be some big shot professors and/or other intellectuals in the world reading this who have some feelings/comments/thoughts about giving these criminals amnesty so we can have a "cosmic do-over". Help!!!!!
We have had exposures and presidential power scandals that make Nixon's pale in comparison. Nixon went down. Here, nothing. This president and no future president will ever go down for the right reasons ever again.
Oh, to be sure, the next democratic president will be impeached for petty oval office kissing below the belt, or girdle, but not because he/she is violating the constitution.
Hey Anney, MollyJ, and others who post here,
I know that Bush signed a decree claiming that anyone who speaks out against the occupation could be jailed. What if we supported the Maliki government by sending them numerous letters indicating our support to kick everyone out of Iraq (except for the Iraqis, of course)? What if we supported the Iraqi people in expelling these groups? I know this seems virtually impossible, but could it get the momentum going against Big Business, the Bush Admin., and the military -industrial-media-complex in terms of the slow erosion of corporate and military profiteering?
Since the edit does not seem to be working, I will finish my last statement. Could the momentum begin the slow erosion of corporate and military profiteering by expelling everyone and not allowing Big Oil among other corporations to get their oily, dirty fingers on the country's oil?
Was it Patrick Henry that said "Give me liberty or give me death"? I believe most of us could come to that place if there was no hope left and we could see our country on the verge of destruction. However, as long as there still seems to be some hope of salvaging the nation we had just a few short years ago, there are not many prepared to give their lives. Our military are forced to risk death or face the consequences, but the rest of us would need a great feeling such as the above quote to take up weapons and prepare to die. There are certain groups of people who are heavily armed and might move sooner. It is a travesty that we actually let murderous maniacs take over our great nation and bring us to disaster.
"Take care when you fight a monster, less you become one."
abbybwood,
The quote you're thinking of is St. John 8:32, which is often quoted out of context, and which gives the impression that Jesus is talking about truth in general, when in fact he's conditioning discovering truth on being his follower. The full saying (Douay-Rheims version) is "If you continue in my word, you shall be my disciples indeed, and you shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free."
You've spliced it with another saying, St. Matthew 6:33 "Seek ye therefore first the kingdom of GOd, and his justice, and all these [material] things will be added unto you."
It was ironic for me to come across your slight misquote on a night after I had a vivid reminder during my workday of how little the faithful, of any religion, care for truth if it doesn't come with the approval of the divinity or one of 'his' prophets . . .
Perhaps the internet that been such a great equalizer for truth, as keep us from where the real change can take place. "In the streets!"
I read not to long ago, that, that is the plan. To isolate the left to the internet.
Let them vent all they want there, and they will be content to rave away without taking any real action.
One of big differences from the 60's compared to the present, is the internet.
Maybe in some ways, it as frozen us into a sort of virtual protest, an outcry for justice,in cyberspace, without any real action taking place in large numbers,where can have a real affect.
Ireneus says, "Oh, to be sure, the next democratic president will be impeached for petty oval office kissing below the belt, or girdle, but not because he/she is violating the constitution."
I think even those days are past, Irene. I think the Dems who probably have some kind of a chance at the White House are simply cut of the same cloth. They are not protesting the abuse of power structure (the unitary executive, habeus corpus suspension, spying--in any effective way) because they cannot WAIT to get their hands on that power structure.
Rick says, "One of big differences from the 60's compared to the present, is the internet.
Maybe in some ways, it as frozen us into a sort of virtual protest, an outcry for justice,in cyberspace, without any real action taking place in large numbers,where can have a real affect."
But Rick, I think that at least some folks here are active in communities and in local peace groups. I DO KNOW that the stages in community change START WITH consciousness raising, which is what we do here. Then they continue with (traditionally) registering people to vote; getting people to be active (talk to their legislators, run for office, protest in the streets--I favor peaceful). I tend to agree with those that write that when we had a draft, every strata of society was impacted and that mobilized a protest of the majority. I think in our communities through letters to the editor, we have to make this issue much more real to the every day man. I confess that I do not feel at all represented by my congressional delegation. So I think that leaves us with the grass roots.
So for those of us who have sufficiently had our consciousnesses raised and are ready to act, next steps include:
1) Letters to the Editor--especially when groups run LTE campaigns they can cause editorial staffs to see that not all people regard our situation as benign.
2) Active in local government. City government entities that have recommended impeachment to their congressional delegations are examples. These people are hoping for change from within the system. I do not think we should give up on that idea.
3) Active participation in your local peace group.
What else????
[quote]Was it Patrick Henry that said "Give me liberty or give me death"? I believe most of us could come to that place if [...etc...] It is a travesty that we actually let murderous maniacs take over our great nation and bring us to disaster.[/quote]
Quod erat demonstratum. What more is there to say.
So the country that so much talks about "the rule of law", that is the US in case you've forgotten, is afraid of the International Criminal Court. Well,well, just who do you think is afraid of the police, the judges and the courts? None other than the worst criminals. You go figure.
The only way we can redeem ourselves in the eyes of the world is to put all those criminals on trial and punish them for their dastardly acts.
jmacneil
Thanks for the information about Cuba. If the US were the size and population of Cuba, we might be able to do it, too! But there's no center of the US that people can get to with reasonable cost and reasonable time spent in travel to even demonstrate, much less anything else. Our geographic size defeats much of what we could do as a group. So it seems we're left with spontaneous actions on a local scale, and as long as that's the case, Washington can ignore them as inconsequential.
the fact that these guys were not stopped years ago for their crimes, leaves only one conclusion. they will all walk. there will be no accountability, and the american justice system will remain the joke that it is. two tiered. those that have, and those that don't. what a farse. sick.
Anney said:
"I'd be interested to learn, if anybody knows, what dictators at any time in history have been brought down by their citizens without military help from some source or other."
I'm not familiar with the history of the French Revolution, but in modern times, the Iranian people's revolution that brought down the Shah of Iran, an American installed dictator, is a good example.
They started the revolution with cassette tapes, as there was no Internet at the time for contact. They not only kicked out the Shah and his so-called one thousand strong families, but also all the big brass in his military. Quite a few necks came in contact with the noose too. People had no outside help; some military brass were shot while at work or at home, and some would have bought a mouse hole for a million dollar to hide in. At the beginning Shah's army shot some people, and declared martial law and curfew. Instead of being afraid, everybody went out into the streets. And thus, the curfew was neutralized. Some brave people.
Saila
Some brave people indeed.
You know, I don't think there's going to be much political resistance of much note in the US until everyone knows if the Democrats have bought the Bush agenda lock-stock-barrel. That knowledge won't come until after the elections.
If we see a Democratic administration attack Iran or refuse to withdraw from Iraq, refuse to dismantle all the torture programs, restore habeas corpus, repeal all legislation that protects lawbreakers, and generally continue on Bush's unconstitutional path, that's when all of America will wake up to what's happening. Right now the only people who "see" are those who are vitally interested in politics, and that isn't a lot of people. Those concerned are usually among voters, though it doesn't include all voters.
Anyway, if most people believe that the Democrats will change everything, there's no reason to rebel now. Change means hope. It makes more sense to "vote the bastards out" and rely on a new president and a new crop in Congress to set things right than "cause a ruckus" right now. (Here I'm trying to think like a sort of uninvolved-in-national-politics American.)
I, personally, don't think things will change after the next election though. I think the Republican-Bush coup d'etat has already happened. And I've been wondering what a revolution in the US would look like if it comes to that.
I really can't imagine anything in history that might parallel such an event in the US, though lots of novels have been written about such possibilities. They're always grim, violent, and full of roaming militias of all political persuasions, from skinheads to rednecks to crazy ex-military forces, emphasizing the worst and maybe the best that we could be.
Anyway, such is my wondering thinking in these dark days.
Leaked the same week Jack Goldsmith testified and released his book.