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On Torture: Win One for the Gipper!
It would be hard to pick the stupidest meme floating among the Beltway stenographic pool, but it might just be the claim that the demand for accountability for torture comes from figures on the left wing of the Democratic Party. In fact, opposition to torture is hardly a left-right, liberal-conservative, Democrat-Republican sort of issue. But in Beltwelt, the "realities" of partisan politics offer an answer to every question.
Those who have taken the time to learn something about the history of the issue know that in the American setting, opposition to torture and insistence on its prohibition as a tool for warfare come from the Republican Party. The first prohibition issued from Abraham Lincoln (General Orders No. 100 from 1863), and it came from the pen of Francis Lieber, a Columbia law professor and leader of the Union League. The idea was propelled forward by figures like Theodore Roosevelt and Elihu Root, who famously called the push to make this prohibition a part of international law a tribute to Lincoln and one of the principal foreign policy accomplishments of the Republican Party. So if we're putting a label on the opposition to torture, it surely wouldn't be marked "Democrat."
So when did the G.O.P. go off the tracks on torture? It was under George W. Bush. In fact, the last pre-Bush dynasty Republican leader had unmistakable ideas about torture. His name was Ronald Reagan. He championed U.S. ratification of the Convention Against Torture. Here's what Reagan had to say about the Convention back in 1988:
It marks a significant step in the development during this century of international measures against torture and other inhuman treatment or punishment. Ratification of the Convention by the United States will clearly express United States opposition to torture, an abhorrent practice unfortunately still prevalent in the world today. The core provisions of the Convention establish a regime for international cooperation in the criminal prosecution of torturers relying on so-called "universal jurisdiction." Each State Party is required either to prosecute torturers who are found in its territory or to extradite them to other countries for prosecution.
Note that word: required. Not "encouraged." No qualification about doing it when it's politically expedient to do so, as David Broder envisions.
Moreover, Reagan was serious about the prohibition on torture. In 1983, the Reagan Justice Department secured a conviction of a Texas sheriff named James Parker on grounds that he waterboarded a suspect in an effort to get information. Parker got a ten-year sentence for his crime.
So here's another charge for the prosecutors who will shortly undertake an investigation of the Bush era torture program: Go win one for the Gipper!
H/t Glenn Greenwald and Andrew Sullivan.
- Posted in
34 Comments so far
Show AllBut this would mean that Sham Sannity and his best friend, "I'm a mark" Levin, are betraying the pronouncements of their demigod, President "I ran the Contras" Raygun. They say waterboarding isn't torture and no one should be investigated, much less prosecuted, for doing it.
I bet the ex-president will give them hell when they meet there.
ten years for waterboarding ONE guy.
think how many bush and cheney qualify for!
not to worry - rummie's tamiflu windfall will buy the best lawyers available.
people like yoo.
Both presidents Reagan and Bush have said that torturers must always be prosecuted. Why is president Obama changing the standing policy of the federal government on this subject that we are bound by treaty to enforce?
because he promised change.
LOL LOL LOL LOL LOL
PART 2 of 2
-- Set --
8 major points, There's been a shift in rhetoric. … that strong words are often a thought rehearsal, a premonition of possible strong action to come.
abandonment of center stage - opening for demagogues to take over.
When Sean Hannity runs a poll asking whether his viewers prefer a military coup, secession or armed rebellion - and armed rebellion wins - that's evidence of this kind of shift.
What's new in the past 100 days is that we're now seeing stories that are just flat-out fabulation, without even so much as a nod to reality. They're not even bothering to try to attach these claims to any kind of truth. Their fantasies are so much truthier to them.
the right wing's retreat from consensus reality has finally left it living in an Orwellian alternative universe all its own.
They've been humiliated by their election losses. And that's hugely dangerous, because authoritarian leaders react uniquely badly to being humiliated.
Incitement of sense of urgency, Groups heading for violent confrontation are often pushed past the brink by the belief that the apocalypse is unfolding before their very eyes and that they have no choice but to seize the moment and act.
… leaders are invariably amoral, ego-driven, high-social-dominance men who gain power by hijacking their followers' moral systems.
They're putting themselves in direct opposition to state power - and identifying that power as their primary enemy.
They're arming up.
They're flexing their muscles.
-- Go --
Let me start this last piece of the discussion with a warning. This isn't a prediction. It's just a description of how things typically play out when any authoritarian group arrives at the place where the American right now stands.
further separation preparations of themselves … One of the watershed moments in the development of a religious or political radical group is the day they decide to go upcountry, building some sort of secluded retreat or community away from the prying eyes of the authorities.
The isolation also allows high-dominance leaders to concentrate their power over group members without any pesky social or legal recourse to fairness. Suspicion and dependency flourish. People learn that might makes right and come to accept violence as a natural and proper way to deal with conflict
Overt lawlessness
Picking fights with authorities
From here, the most likely case is that the vast majority of the folks now drunk on right-wing hate talk will ultimately sober up just soon enough not to follow the movement's emerging leaders down this road. But, if the 1990s were any guide (and the DHS report seems to think that they are), there will also be a small but significant fraction of hard-core right-wingers who will zoom right through the flashing red lights and ride all the way to the bloody end.
Without the moderating influence of the saner voices among them, they'll quickly turn violent - and we could be in for an interesting few years before it all burns itself out.
And, in the end, it probably will burn itself out. In the 1990s, the violence escalated to the Oklahoma City bombing in 1995 - an event so gruesome and dramatic that it discredited the movement even among its own followers. Tim McVeigh's capture and execution also scared tough-talking movement leaders with the threat of real consequences. And so that round ended.
What we've seen the past 100 days strongly suggests that, to at least some degree, we will be going there again. The right wing long ago accepted a foundational narrative that justifies violence.
Now, the leaders of the movement are inciting their followers to take many (if not most) of the intermediate steps that signal a group actively gearing up for violence. From this point, it's only a short slide to further separation, disengagement, and finally, confrontation.
What we've seen so far has been intense and surprising - but we should also recognize it as the first warning gusts of a rapidly gathering storm."
Namaste
Sioux Rose
Very luminous post! By the way, given that Aries is the sign that's ruled by Mars, and two of the outer planets enter (it) as if directed in unison by the Great Cosmic Choreopgraher (June 2010), what you describe, particularly if you're speaking of breakouts of small rebel group warfare, is far likelier then. Jupiter Aries will act to intensify acts of individualism and when coupled with Uranus, the maverick and planet known for throwing curves into the status quo/ordinary business, there is considerable "juice" oriented towards violence of an unusual sort.
PART 1 of 2
A L L,
There is much purposeful divisiveness in the $ewer Main $tream Media , and the prospect for splitting the country even further is under direct and deceitful PSYOPS action.
This is no accident, foolish denial of reality, nor forgetfulness of Reagan's days, as the article describes :
"the stupidest meme floating among the Beltway stenographic pool, but it might just be the claim that the demand for accountability for torture comes from figures on the left wing of the Democratic Party."
The battle lines are being firmed up by Faux News agitators and demagogues, and this is a crucial step in a progression to likely violent anti-govt reactions from the religiously propelled right wingers, like none ever seen before ( worse than Oklahoma City bombing ). DHS has validated this pernicious threat in a report released 7 April, 2009
The Far Right's First 100 Days: Getting More Extreme by the Day
http://www.sott.net/articles/show/183726-The-Far-Right-s-First-100〓snip〓
Paste below, at the end of truncated URL above:
-Days-Getting-More-Extreme-by-the-Day
From this Signs of the Times, and Alternet article :
"The outrageous screeds and paranoid delusions sounded pretty much as they always had - but there was a new fury behind them, a strident urgency that hadn't been there before, and a very audible shift of the gears in right-wing behavior and rhetoric.
Its numbers are up, it's talk is turning ugly, and it's not unthinkable that we could be in for a wave of domestic terrorism unseen since the mid-1990s.
The DHS report laid out the history and the current drivers in straight factual terms and made some safe predictions about what might make the situation worse. But the report stopped short of taking the next step.
(Interestingly, the nightmare scenario for most right-wing watchers - a white-hot backlash in the wake of another major terrorist attack - appears nowhere in the DHS assessment. Perhaps they didn't want to put ideas into paranoid right-wing heads.)
I want to make it clear: The DHS report emphasizes that there's no specific evidence that any particular group is planning any particular action.
At the same time, what's equally clear from the pattern analysis is that the upshift we heard was the right wing going into overdrive - the speed at which talk about revolution (which has been going on for years, but intensified after 2006) accelerates into concrete preparation for action.
-- Ready --
5 major points, apocalyptic, insisting that the end of the world as we've known it is near.
historic 'us vs them' exaggerations, retreat from consensus reality, Insiders feel like they're a persecuted, prophetic elite who are being opposed by wicked, tyrannical forces.
Left to fester, this paranoia will eventually drive the group to make concrete preparations for self-defense - and perhaps go on the offense against their perceived persecutors.
advocate the elimination of their enemies by any means necessary in order to purify the world for their ideology.
Luminous
Liked your last 2 posts, I would strongly suggest you immigrate to Europe like yesterday, England or Holland would be a good place to go.
The body snatchers are on the loose, all the right wing zealots are armed to the teeth and know how to use what they have. The left wing and progressives like you have your keyboards, no match against a 40 cal glock, if you had a gun you would not know how and be too afraid to use it, most progressives and left wing liberals live in the big cities (gun control laws). The right in the rural areas, close to nature so they can live off the land if necessary. Without a grocery store and a starbucks you would die in a week.
Like you said, "Now, the leaders of the movement are inciting their followers to take many (if not most) of the intermediate steps that signal a group actively gearing up for violence." That violence is aimed directly at you. The vast right wing conspiracy will encircle your cities, stop the trucks bringing food to your supermarkets (you do realize all the truck drivers belong to the far right) no problem there. Soon the store shelves will be empty and you will start to starve. You will go to the city mayors and ask for guns to fight back but he will remind you that last year you forced him to confiscate all guns and dump them in the river where they are now useless junk.
As you starve you will go to the edges of you cities and beg the vast right wing conspiracy for food, they will answer you with 3 words " DIE SUCKER, DIE". In 3 or 4 months it will be all over, you all will be dead. The far right religious zealots will demand the you all get a decent christian burial (to cut down on the spread of disease), and you taking my advice and living in Europe can say, " Damn I'm glad I took the wolfmans advice and wasn't over there."
wolf123 May 7th, 2009 7:56 pm, like many rural right-wingers, you're ignorant of who liberals/progressives are and how they live. (I understand you probably see very few out at the feed store or militia meeting.)
In fact, many liberals such as myself know how to use firearms and aren't afraid to use them in self-defense or to protect the life of another, should the situation arise. Many liberals also served in the military, so they are accustomed to weapons, survival techniques, and battle tactics. Incidentally, you might surprised to know that many prominent liberals served in combat -- George McGovern was a B-24 pilot in WWII; Howard Zinn was a bomber navigator in the same war, while the late Kurt Vonnegut was in the infantry fighting the Nazis. Oliver Stone served two tours in combat in Vietnam, and, of course, although the righties don't want to believe the official Navy records, Lt. John Kerry saved a man's life under fire in Vietnam. Let's compare those records to some prominent conservatives, past and present: John Wayne and Ronald Reagan never left Hollywood during WWII; George W. Bush never went near combat as a member of the Champaign Squadron of the Texas Air National Guard; and Dick Cheney, Karl Rove, Sean Hannity, Bill O'Reilly and Rush Limbaugh never served in the military, even though they thought the Vietnam War was vital to the security interests of the nation. Are these the kind of tough guys you are depending on to 'live off the land' in the wilderness, Rambo? Ha, ha -- they need a maid to get dressed in the morning.
BTW, I know three truckers, one of them long-haul, and none of them are right-wing teabaggers. While they are patriotic Americans, they think the Republican rule of the last 8 years has been an abomination and they are worse off because of it.
The 'far-right religious zealots,' as the Bush disaster proved, are incapable, by dint of incompetence and stupidity, of completing any but the simplest tasks without screwing them up. If you're depending on them to save your rural bacon, you need to move to an urban area where they have psychiatrists because you sorely need one.
R S J,
Thank you for expressing what needed to be said.
Please do recall that native wolves, although no longer a protected species, are quite deeply impacted when 'far-right religious zealots' like Palin take to the air, fur adventure.
Namaste
Luminous May 8th, 2009 10:53 am, I read somewhere the Arctic wolves are getting smarter -- now when they hear the sound of a low-flying chopper or light aircraft approaching, they scatter and hide among the trees. They're more intelligent than the Republicans hunting them -- they haven't learned anything from experience.
RSJ May 8th, 2009 7:20 am
I reread my post 3 times and for the life of me I can not find where I said I was a rural right-winger. I am also NOT ignorant of who liberals/progressives are and how they live. I see them every day, without their starbucks in the morning they are LOST. From what I understand right wing people don't give a damn if Bush never went near combat, Dick Cheney, Karl Rove, Sean Hannity, Bill O'Reilly and Rush Limbaugh never served in the military, apparently you know less about right wingers then you think I know about liberals/progressives. Wopty do, you know 3 truck drivers. Like I'm supposed to be impressed?
"(I understand you probably see very few out at the feed store or militia meeting.)"
I wouldn't advise you to bad mouth people who live in rural America. They are not country bumpkins and hicks like you would like to think.
"In fact, many liberals such as myself know how to use firearms and aren't afraid to use them"
Really? I would be willing to bet a fiver that the closest YOU ever came to a firearm was a picture on a poster that you carried in a protest march demanding the government toss out the 2nd amendment and confiscate all firearms and destroy them.
If you even bothered to read Luminous posts that I replied to and really read my post you would see the sarcasm dripping from it, Oh, that's right in your liberal/progressive circle you never learned what sarcasm is, to bad for you.
Just for the record I lean toward the libertarian ideals, I never voted for bush or the other morons that ran against him and I certainly did not vote for that Chicago lawyer obama or that half wit old man.
Just like all liberal/progressives instead of having a rational intelligent discussion you sink to vilifying me and calling me names without even knowing who I am or what I stand for. There is an acronym for that, it's you SOP, Your Standard Operating Procedure that you always without fail follow.
edpell May 6th, 2009 5:51 pm, I have been following this torture story and I am unaware that Obama has changed the standing policy of the federal government regarding torture as you state. What is your basis for this claim?
His refusal to enforce the law.
You're a little confused, edpell May 6th, 2009 6:25 pm -- the president upholds the law, but the chief officer for enforcing the law is the US Attorney General and his Justice Department. Or do you want Obama to act like King Junior's White House and tell the AG what cases he should investigate and prosecute? Congress also has a role here and I think you're jumping the gun to claim there will be no enforcement of the laws against torture. I realize we live in an era of instant gratification, and everybody wants the Bush Gang in jail yesterday, but assembling the facts, finding witnesses and establishing an air-tight case is not something that's done overnight, nor even in a few weeks. Even the 1945-46 Nuremberg Trials of major war criminals, with an open-and-shut case against the senior Nazis, took nearly a year to conclude, to the dismay of some who simply wanted the Germans executed.
Things are slowly moving, in both Congress and the DOJ, but I doubt you'll see any indictments for torture until next fall at the earliest.
I hope you're right.
So far it looks like 0 is doing the christian thing: "judge not . . ."
and the other: "forgive US our debts."
Nice historical slant by Scott Horton, going back to Lincoln, then citing Ronnie Raygun himself on the evils of torture, "an abhorrent practice still prevalent in the world today [in 1988]."
All Eric Holder has to do is convene a federal grand jury, and let the rule of law run its due course.
Bill from Saginaw
Bill, he has to have a case first. Grand juries may indict ham sandwiches, but Holder has to present ham and bread, meaning witnesses, evidence and exact charges. That takes time to assemble, especially since these latest torture memos were only made public a week ago.
"these latest torture memos were only made public a week ago."
but have been in the public knowledge for years.
vdb May 7th, 2009 2:22 pm, I have to disagree, vdb -- the latest four Bybee-Yoo memos were classified until Obama declassified them. While there were hints in the media of what the memos said, it wasn't confirmed until they were declassified.
RSJ - technically you are correct.
However, bush wasn't running around in 2002 wangling war-crime immunity treaties just in case a few bad apples happened to have had enlisted in his forces.
(and all the dead without officially stamped death certificates for confirmation - they're not really dead?)
Sorry, vdb May 8th, 2009 1:34 am, I didn't get your point here:
"However, bush wasn't running around in 2002 wangling war-crime immunity treaties just in case a few bad apples happened to have had enlisted in his forces."
Bush, or more accurately Cheney and his henchman Addington, knew very well the international community would never sanction 'enhanced interrogation techniques' or give immunity to the US for practicing them on prisoners of war. (They even tried to dodge the POW label by inventing the scaly euphemism 'enemy combatant,' apparently not aware that the Geneva Convention also protects 'detainees' which applies to anyone seized and jailed.) Besides that, in 2002, Bush was lying that we didn't torture, so why would he try to get immunity for something we didn't do in the first place? Just to really take it all into the land of the surreally evil, the White House issued this statement in 2003 with Bush's signature:
THE WHITE HOUSE
Office of the Press Secretary
June 26, 2003
STATEMENT BY THE PRESIDENT
United Nations International Day in Support of Victims of Torture
"Today, on the United Nations International Day in Support of Victims of Torture, the United States declares its strong solidarity with torture victims across the world. Torture anywhere is an affront to human dignity everywhere. We are committed to building a world where human rights are respected and protected by the rule of law.
"Freedom from torture is an inalienable human right. The Convention Against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment, ratified by the United States and more than 130 other countries since 1984, forbids governments from deliberately inflicting severe physical or mental pain or suffering on those within their custody or control. Yet torture continues to be practiced around the world by rogue regimes whose cruel methods match their determination to crush the human spirit. Beating, burning, rape, and electric shock are some of the grisly tools such regimes use to terrorize their own citizens. These despicable crimes cannot be tolerated by a world committed to justice....
"The United States is committed to the world-wide elimination of torture and we are leading this fight by example. I call on all governments to join with the United States and the community of law-abiding nations in prohibiting, investigating, and prosecuting all acts of torture and in undertaking to prevent other cruel and unusual punishment. I call on all nations to speak out against torture in all its forms and to make ending torture an essential part of their diplomacy. I further urge governments to join America and others in supporting torture victims' treatment centers, contributing to the UN Fund for the Victims of Torture, and supporting the efforts of non-governmental organizations to end torture and assist its victims."
-- Michael Crowley, "Flashback," The National Review, April 22, 2009.
http://blogs.tnr.com/tnr/blogs/the_plank/archive/2009/04/22/memories.aspx
I understand that George Orwell's corpse was seen spinning out of the ground in a remote village in China the day after this statement was released.
you write that you missed my point and then:
"Bush, or more accurately Cheney and his henchman Addington, knew very well the international community would never sanction 'enhanced interrogation techniques' or give immunity to the US for practicing them on prisoners of war."
which was my point. these fools were planning no good.
I won't say anything good about Reagan.
how about "he's dead"?
Like Nixon, Raygun had his share of Republican dirt when it came to foreign policy. It's just that it wasn't all that obvious until Papa Bush that foreign policy would dominate the Republican Party.
Reagan's policies in Central America enabled and financed massive right-wing terror, torture, and murder.
Any averring statement RR may have otherwise made about the subject of torture was the result of either his intentional deception, his clinical schizophrenia, or his then-onsetting Alzheimer's.
Good perspective by Horton!
It is not the least bit surprising for this "observer" that so much has been said, back and forth, actually in all directions, about the matter of "torture".
Torture was just one of the violations of International Law-----
kidnapping, illegal transport from one country to another, conspiracy --which always compounds the charges, i.e. , robbery is one crime, and conspiracy to commit robbery is another whether the conspirator actually committed the robbery.
The corrupt culture allowed for so many people to participate, from the "permission givers" (the lawyers) to give to the order givers (the "top dogs"), the "permission" to "give the orders" to the ("bottom dogs") to commit these and most likley many more crimes that have not been revealed------yet.
My wager is that the "Oder givers"----are doing the "Dog" thing this very moment; they are laughing at so many others running in do many different directions, while they "like their rectums" with all of the confidence of any other "dog"...............
This is certainly building the "World's Confidence" in the American system of justice...............if they ever had any at all. The Americans will most likely succeed in ridding the world of any 'confidence' in America doing anything to encourage confidence. They haven't yet.
Good Luck America, you really need it.
The fucking human condition is the permission giver. My religion says everything is a gift. Yes, and some of them are a real bitch.
Buddha says life sucks. Tom Robbins says life is bitter sweet. All I know is that life ain't like anything I ever seen before.
What sucks is having to be around all those people who are mirror images of myself. I hate being reminded.
great point nietzsche.....i empathize w/ your mood, thanks for commiserating...
from...................
The Society of the Spectacle - Guy Debord
http://situationist.cjb.net/
{'Philosophy — the power of separate thought and the thought of separate power — was never by itself able to supersede theology. The spectacle is the material reconstruction of the religious illusion. Spectacular technology has not dispersed the religious mists into which human beings had projected their own alienated powers, it has merely brought those mists down to earth, to the point that even the most mundane aspects of life have become impenetrable and unbreathable.
The illusory paradise that represented a total denial of earthly life is no longer projected into the heavens, it is embedded in earthly life itself. The spectacle is the technological version of the exiling of human powers into a “world beyond”; the culmination of humanity’s internal separation'}
{'the root of the spectacle is that oldest of all social specializations, the specialization of power. The spectacle plays the specialized role of speaking in the name of all the other activities. It is hierarchical society’s ambassador to itself, delivering its official messages at a court where no one else is allowed to speak. The most modern aspect of the spectacle is thus also the most archaic.}
or...
"It is from self-hatred that consciousness emerges. I hate myself: I am absolutely a man" - b.m. cioran
"May some god grant us the power to resign from everything, to betray
everything, the audacity of an unspeakable cowardice." - b.m. cioran
enjoy the full moon this weekend.
...peace...
Unfortunately, Obama doesn't share Reagan's sentiments on the issue, having praised the torturers and murderers as dedicated public servants acting in good faith and promised them that he'd obstruct justice on their behalf, allowing them to continue with their licenses to kill sans accountability, government salaries and retirement pensions.
DrBrian May 7th, 2009 2:50 am, Obama could antagonize the CIA by going after the torturers, but that would be dumb because then he'd be sacrificing any chance that the lower-level people would testify against those who ordered the torture -- Dick Cheney, David Addington, et al. Why should the CIA people testify against Cheney and the others if they're going to jail anyway? And what shape do you think the country will be in should the CIA not share vital intelligence with Obama? For that matter, what do you think will happen in the 2012 elections if Obama has the US intel community working against him? Would you rather live under President Palin's administration?
John Gotti's underboss, Sammy Gravano, was a horrible thug who killed 13 people. Ideally, both he and Gotti should have gone to jail for life. However, in order to make the case against Gotti, the prosecution had to immunize Gravano and promise him witness protection to get his testimony against Gotti. Should they have concentrated on putting Gravano in jail and let the boss go free to continue to order more murders?
I am always amazed at how many Obama critics seem to think the best way to play a game of chess is to announce your next ten moves in advance.