Torture Is Who We Are

[n2doc]

by PETER BEINART

Torture, declared President Obama this week, in response to the newly released Senate report on CIA interrogation, is “contrary to who we are.” Maine Senator Angus King added that, “This is not America. This is not who we are.” According to Kentucky Congressman John Yarmuth, “We are better than this.”

No, actually, we’re not. There’s something bizarre about responding to a 600-page document detailing systematic U.S. government torture by declaring that the real America—the one with good values—does not torture. It’s exoneration masquerading as outrage. Imagine someone beating you up and then, when confronted with the evidence, declaring that “I’m not really like that” or “that wasn’t the real me.” Your response is likely to be some variant of: “It sure as hell seemed like you when your fist was slamming into my nose.” A country, like a person, is what it does.

The implication of the statements by Obama, King, and Yarmuth is that there is an essential, virtuous America whose purity the CIA defiled. But that’s silly. Aliens did not invade the United States on 9/11. In times of fear, war, and stress, Americans have always done things like this. In the 19th century, American slavery relied on torture. At the turn of the 20th, when America began assembling its empire overseas, the U.S. army waterboarded Filipinos during the Spanish-American War. As part of the Phoenix Program, an effort to gain intelligence during the Vietnam War, CIA-trained interrogators delivered electric shocks to the genitals of some Vietnamese communists, and raped, starved, and beat others.

America has tortured throughout its history. And every time it has, some Americans have justified the brutality as necessary to protect the country from a savage enemy. Others have called it counterproductive and immoral. At different moments, the balance of power between these two groups shifts. But neither side in these debates speaks for the “real America.” The real America includes them both. Morally, we contain multitudes.

more

http://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2014/12/torture-is-who-we-are-cia-report/383670/

[whatchamacallit]

1. k&r

[CJCRANE]

2. It's amazing just looking at the comments

there and all over the web, how many people refuse to believe the truth or simply ignore it.

It's a testament to the effectiveness of Fox News and RW media that they've managed to train so many people to think entirely on partisan lines and to defend the indefensible when their guys did it.

For instance, RWers are suddenly experts on rectal hydration and how great it is! (Something which most people have never heard of or considered before).

[Kablooie]

5. Truth is not part of the RW mindset. They believe whatever benefits themselves, true or not.

That is the sum total of the world they live in.

And with such a large portion of out population supporting it, torture will now become standard procedure for America when dealing with undesirables.

[CJCRANE]

7. They're spiting themselves, because the truth benefits all of us

(as I'm sure you're aware).

For example, when I set off on a journey I take an accurate map, not a fictional map of how I'd like the world to be.

[Kablooie]

8. But when the expedition leader uses the fictional map everyone has to suffer.

And that's what's happening because the snake oil salesman have convinced a huge portion of the populace that they are correct.

[hifiguy]

6. If there is a great beyond, which I doubt,

Herr Doktor Goebbels is rubbing his hands together in glee observing his prize pupils, Roger Ailes and the Koch Brothers. He would be impossibly proud of them.

[zeemike]

10. And the worst thing we could do is argue whether it worked or not.

and they want to have that argument because it is the justification for the war crimes they did.
If they can convince us it is sometimes necessary to torture "folks" we have lost the argument.

[calimary]

3. 'Fraid so. That's who we are now. Thank you bush/cheney.

Frickin' SICK of having to keep eating your leftovers. I'd say FUCK YOU BOTH IN THE HEART - if you had one.

[blkmusclmachine]

4. Bush/Cheney/Faux Nooz PROMISED 9/11 would "change everything."

[True Blue Door]

9. Values are reflected in what you work toward, not where you are at any given moment.

The US Declaration of Independence asserted the equality of all men while being signed by slave-owners, so what would you have said about that statement of principles at the time? That it was empty rhetoric by horrible hypocrites and would never amount to anything, no doubt. And yet, historically, we keep moving closer and closer toward it.

There's a difference between recognizing the gap between a society's values and its performance, and just sneering at any attempt to aspire beyond flawed present circumstances.

Not one other country took any substantive step to oppose the Bush regime's crimes while they were happening, and quite a few free democracies conspired with them. Know how many French officers and politicians were held accountable for France's crimes in Algeria and then Vietnam? Zero. Britain's crimes in its former colonial possessions? Zero. How many Russians have been tried for the crimes of the Soviet Union? Zero.

The only reason this issue stays alive when every other country on Earth in a similar position just forgets and moves on is because you are wrong - torture is fundamentally un-American, and the knowledge of being associated with it burns us inside. Also unlike other countries, the guilty know their guilt, and "flee when none pursue". You don't burn the evidence if you're secure in never being held accountable.

The CIA knows that if any country would be the first to hold itself accountable like this, it would be ours. So they are very wary of even the slightest indication of currents moving in that direction. No other country's state criminals are that afraid of the wheel of justice rolling around to them. No one on Earth would claim that MI6 is sweating over this like the CIA is.

If any powerful nation would be the first to hold itself accountable for such crimes, it would be this one. The fact that we keep the issue alive proves that we, and everyone else worldwide who does likewise, thinks justice is achievable here. If the crimes had been committed by anyone else alone, not only would justice not be achievable, the crimes would most likely still not be publicly known.

The author of the Atlantic article has a lot to learn about this country, and about the nature of morality.

[whatchamacallit]

11. Another steaming pantload

Someone has a lot to learn...

[True Blue Door]

12. Then make an intelligent counter-argument

or keep your knee-jerk reactions to yourself.

Having an opinion is not the same thing as having a point.

[whatchamacallit]

14. The counter argument was made in the OP

[True Blue Door]

15. My post was a counter-argument to the OP.

[whatchamacallit]

16. Exactly, therefore

the counter argument to your argument is the OP. Lol.

[True Blue Door]

17. That's not logic.

It's not even an interpretive dance routine inspired by logic.

I made points rebutting the OP. To rebut my points requires actually addressing my points. You can't just repeat yourself or the OP that's been critiqued and act like you've done something other than evade my points.

Every response you make that isn't a counter-argument or an explicit concession, is an implicit concession.

[valerief]

13. Yeah, it's like watching a video of a cop choking a guy to death and saying he's

a good cop only doing his job.

[99Forever]

18. A sad sad truth.

We have had our decency and humanity stripped from us and those sworn to represent us, have made it clear they have no intention to do the right thing to get it back.