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Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsThe U.S. Will Torture Again—and We’re All to Blame
Have we learned from our great moral failure? Dont bet on it.
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If there is another terrorist attack on the U.S. mainland, the odds are strong that we will reenact this grim tragedy from start to finish, if a neoconservative regime happens to be ensconced in the White House.
As for the political class, I doubt I need to give you a very hard sell on its failure. It was thoroughgoing and bipartisan. The timorous Democrats, with a few noble exceptions like Robert Byrd, largely bought into the global war on terror. The Republicans, well, you know about them. The foreign-policy establishment of Washington and to some extent New York lined up behind the administration on nearly every important question. The urge among this class is always to swim with the tide: In 2003, when the Council on Foreign Relations was casting about for a new leader, it settled on Richard Haass, who had been in Bushs State Department. He has said since that he was 60-40 against the war, but one would have been hard pressed to know that then, back when his boss, Colin Powell, was warning us about those weapons of mass destruction that didnt exist. On the torture question, this class was outraged when it was easy to be outraged, like when the Abu Ghraib story broke, but the outrage was never sustained.
Among the media, there were to be sure many brave journalistsJane Mayer, Robin Wright, many otherswho broke story after story about torture. Were in their debt. But their great work was more than balanced out by the equivocation caucuswell, we cant really be sure its torture. And then there was the segment of the media that actively cheered it all on. More broadly, the media as a whole were afraid to break ranks. I have had a number of conversations with prominent media peoplein TV and radio, names youd knowwho, by way of trying to defend their lack of zeal and confrontation in those post-9/11 days, tried to explain how many furious emails they got when a report diverged modestly from the accepted line.
And the legal system? Again, there were some courageous judges who tried. A Virginia federal judge named Gerald Bruce Lee ruled in 2009 that four Abu Ghraib detainees could sue CACI, the private military contractor in Iraq. But overall the legal system has done little to say this was against the law. Much of the fault for that, of course, lies with Barack Obama, who chose early on not to seek prosecutions of Bush administration officials. And even now, in the wake of this report, what is your level of confidence that anyone will be prosecuted as a result of the release of this report? I thought so.
Failures top to bottom. Now, one would like to say that we as a society have learned the lessons of these failures and would not permit this to happen again. Dont count on it. If there is another terrorist attack on the U.S. mainland, the odds are strong that we will reenact this grim tragedy from start to finish, if a neoconservative regime happens to be ensconced in the White House. The people would respond with the same fear, which would give license to the same behavior, and the political class and the media and the courts would probably go along.
So yes, its a moral horror that Cheney says hed do it all again. But its also all too likely that a future Cheney could do it all again. Thats the far greater moral horror, and the one we dont want to face, because it implicates us.
MORE:
http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2014/12/12/the-u-s-will-torture-again-and-we-re-all-to-blame.html
arely staircase
(12,482 posts)there is very little will to punish the torturers among the political class or the public.
Doctor_J
(36,392 posts)I'll accept none of the blame for this. Well I did vote for the Enabler In Chief twice, but there wasn't actually a choice.
Duer 157099
(17,742 posts)"... if a neoconservative regime happens to be ensconced in the White House."
No need to hedge.
seveneyes
(4,631 posts)Certainly no more than the followers of any religion that says it is just fine to kill infidels and subjugate women.