David Bromwich| The Torture Compromise of 2007

[Demeter]

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/david-bromwich/the-torture-compromise-of_b_74650.html



A friend at a dinner party on the East coast found herself in an argument in which she was the only person opposed to torture. The other invitees, all graduates of favored preparatory schools and Ivy League colleges, worked in the law, investment banking, urban planning and the arts. They agreed that President Bush was incompetent and untrustworthy; but his fundamental mistake about torture had been to go after the law. Torture, they said, cannot be a policy, and a law that permits torture cannot be on the books. What is wanted is a leader who will break the law selectively, in a way we can trust. Torture should be allowable, but only by the right people and for the right reason. To a man and woman, the guests who held this view were supporters of Hillary Clinton.

Go back a year. A scholar-adviser of Democratic candidates was addressing a group of journalists shortly before the 2006 election. Confident of a victory, he rattled off the legislative successes that would come soon after the Democratic majority was in place. Prescription drugs, minimum wage. As the discussion wound down, a deferential question came from a liberal editor at the back of the room. "Can we expect the Democrats to repeal the suspension of habeas corpus and the Military Commissions Act?" The answer was (slowly), No. "Of course, we're all against those things, but they can't be a primary concern to a new majority. The laws should be changed. And things will get better; but I wouldn't expect this to be at the top of the Democratic agenda."

Sherrod Brown confirmed the accuracy of that prediction was he was asked, a few days after the election, whether he would work to repeal the Military Commissions Act, and he replied that he could vote to repeal it but would not sponsor a bill to that effect, because he had other priorities. Hillary Clinton, in turn, vouched for the understanding claimed by her supporters when she gave her reasoning against the confirmation of Michael Mukasey: "In the event we were ever confronted with having to interrogate a detainee with knowledge of an imminent threat to millions of Americans, then the decision to depart from standard international practice must be made by the president, and the president must be held accountable." Careful words. Leave aside the pandering to "the ticking-bomb scenario" by which the doctrine of torture has been sugar-coated to drug the popular mind these past several years. If interrogation is done against the law, and if the interrogation is ordered and superintended by the president alone, what can it mean to hold the president "accountable"?


We Americans are watching a process which, if allowed to continue to its logical end, will change what it means to be an American. It will change us morally, politically, and socially... In August of this year, a Miami jury convicted of terrorism-conspiracy charges an American citizen, José Padilla, who had been tortured in prison, against whom the evidence was of exactly the character that would have convicted a Miami black man of rape in the year 1927. These things are happening. And yet, in the middle of the longest presidential campaign in our history, the only candidates to speak against the degradation that is now in progress are Dennis Kucinich and Ron Paul--both of them ignored or, as often, ridiculed by the mainstream media. Their speech, and the silence or reticence or politic circumlocution of others, is the largest symptom of the silent crisis at home. How can we place ourselves again in the track of constitutional liberty unless we reject all of the persons and all of the means by which it has been betrayed?

[Briar]

1. Sadly, tolerance of torture is very wide spread

I have seen all too many tv shows and films where the "hero" is allowed to torture and kill, with the tacit approval of writers and presumably audience. 24 is the obvious example. Whether the corruption started with an audience too morally degraded to care or whether they were corrupted by the propaganda of the government and mass media, I really can't say. That such views are widespread is all too obvious, however. Why else would Clinton espouse them - her focus groups and polls are telling her she must if she wants to win the candidature.

[Demeter]

2. Look At Lord of the Flies: Look at Marathon Man

Look at the Spanish Inquisition! (Nobody expects the Spanish Inquisition!)

It's either cultural or genetic--the cruelty gene.