Question: What would the torture debate have looked like if Bush had been a Dem?
(One can say that there would have been no torture under a Democrat under any circumstance, but since we know that interrogations in Vietnam got pretty darned "enhanced" under both Democratic and Republican presidents it isn't a very sound sort of assumption.)
I am always shocked (but not surprised) to see Republican torture rhetoric circa 2002-2004 taken up by Democrats in other contexts.
I do not recall any Republican in Congress or the White House arguing for the torture of nice people who had done nothing wrong.
Torture was always for "extraordinary circumstances."
As one anti-torture analyst said back at the time... "Of course the subjects are extraordinary... We don't need the Constitution to tell us not to torture Doris Day. That's the point. The issue is always going to be about extraordinary circumstances."
"I trust the President to do the right thing" and "we are only talking about bad people," and, "So you would just let all terrorists go?" are familiar arguments to all of us.
They are not, however, familiar arguments FROM all of us.
I do not think that Obama is up to anything particularly nefarious or wicked. I certainly have no fear of Obama blowing me up.
I also do not think that policy or law or values or much of anything is sensibly argued on such a basis.
Just as we don't need laws to tell us not to torture Doris Day, we also do not need laws to protect us from Barack Obama.
So what?
Yes, some of the alt-media crap is hyperbolic crap. It always is. It always will be.
But it surely is never something to be countered with RW modes of anti-thought.
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