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Title: Torture Chic: Sign of Decadence
Source:
Antiwar.com
URL Source: http://antiwar.com/bock/
Published: Sep 24, 2006
Author: Alan Bock
Post Date: 2006-09-24 12:44:42 by Burkeman1
Keywords: None
Views: 128
Comments: 8
The great American essayist Albert J. Nock once devoted a long piece to the question of how one knows whether or not one is living in a Dark Age. From inside such an era, of course, the question is not so simple. Historians and propagandists name ages years or even centuries after the fact, but for most of those living at the time it probably didn’t seem like the Middle Ages or the Renaissance or the Reformation, if only because it took a while for the characteristics that would later be seen as defining a given period to become firmly established. However, I believe it is fairly easy to determine that however fully dark the age, we are living in a period of imperial decadence and decline for the United States. One clue is the prospect of Bush-Clinton-Clinton-Bush-Bush-Clinton presidencies, along with the inability or unwillingness of most of those considered intellectual "elites" to understand and express in words and insightful articles the utter mediocrity of these political parasites. Another is the ability of certain people and institutions in the United States – think Fox News and much of the so-called religious right – to indulge in hero-worship of such a clearly inferior person, in terms of seasoning, character, curiosity and ability to see the world realistically rather than through the eyes of sheer fantasy, as our current president. Perhaps the clearest indication of sheer decadence, however, is the emergence of what can only be called "torture chic" in certain sectors of our ruling classes. That it is not universally considered bizarre and outlandish that a president and most of his henchmen would spend so much of their political capital on publicly gaining the "legitimized" authority to torture people, and that they would be able to carry along most of the major ruling political party and (apparently) the vast majority of the most self-conscious and eager-to-be-acknowledged "religious" or nominally Christian people in the country along with them in this clearly barbaric quest cannot be anything but a sign of decadence. Fooling Themselves Of course many of those who are advocating making torture something close to the official policy of the United States deny, as does the president, that what they are advocating is torture. The president claims disingenuously that his calls for these "enhanced interrogation techniques" or "aggressive interrogation tactics" are not a license to torture, simply a plea for "clarification" so those in the field can have a bright line so they know what is authorized and what isn’t. But consider what they are talking about. As New York Times columnist Paul Krugman (with whom I disagree about many issues but not this one) wrote recently: "According to an ABC News report from last fall, procedures used by C.I.A. interrogators have included forcing prisoners to ‘stand, handcuffed and with their feet shackled to an eye bolt in the floor for more than 40 hours;’ the ‘cold cell,’ in which prisoners are forced ‘to stand naked in a cell kept near 50 degrees,’ while being doused with cold water; and, of course, water boarding, in which ‘the prisoner is bound to an inclined board, feet raised and head slightly below the feet,’ and then ‘cellophane is wrapped over the prisoner’s face and water is poured over him,’ inducing ‘a terrifying fear of drowning. "And bear in mind that the ‘few bad apples’ excuse doesn’t apply; these were officially approved tactics – and Mr. Bush wants at least some of these tactics to remain in use." As numerous authorities and all of the professional interrogators I’ve talked to in the last few years claim, the use of such tactics – call them torture or not – does not (except in a few rare cases) elicit accurate information. Instead, the prisoner/detainee is more likely finally to tell the interrogators what he thinks they want to hear rather than the truth. Phony Justifications So the notion that there are instances, possibly numerous instances, when there is a need for key information right now because there is a bomb ticking somewhere near or an attack that is scheduled to take place within hours or minutes and torture is the only reliable way to get the information and save hundreds or thousands of lives is the stuff of fiction rather than reality. In the real world such worst-case scenarios are rare or non-existent, and torture is not only an unreliable way to get the information but is more likely a way to get false trails in multitudes. It can even lead to outcomes that in any relatively sane world would be profoundly embarrassing to the authorities so enamored of the purported need to torture. For example, Ibn al-Shaykh al-Libi was subjected both to the cold cell and waterboarding. Eventually he told interrogators that Saddam Hussein’s regime had trained al-Qaida members to use biochemical weapons. This "confession" became a key part of the administration's case for invading Iraq. But it was pure invention. And relying on it led to a huge disconnect between justification and the realities that emerged after the invasion of Iraq that would have been hugely embarrassing to the administration, if this administration were in fact capable of embarrassment. Not that the president or anybody in the administration has even acknowledged, let alone apologized for, the mistakes and lies that led many Americans to support the invasion initially. It is even more curious that in an administration in love with war that has declared so many times its admiration for the military and its desire to give the military anything it wants to succeed – except for sufficient vehicle and body armor, not to mention numbers of troops, in Iraq – is dead-set on getting torture (or close-to-torture if you insist) tactics authorized when almost all of the relevant military officials have not only said they don’t want the authority to use extreme interrogation tactics, but have come out explicitly against authorizing them. Against Military Opposition Colin Powell, not only former secretary of state but former chairman of the joint chiefs of staff, has not only opposed the administration’s approach to interrogation and detainee policies, he has worried about the U.S. losing its moral standing in the process. The three Republican senators with the most military experience – Virginia’s John Warner, a World War II vet, longtime chairman of the Armed Services Committee and in constant touch with top military officials, Arizona’s John McCain, a Vietnam vet who suffered torture himself as a POW, and South Carolina’s Lindsey Graham, a former military lawyer – led the resistance – for a while, at least, until they folded like a cheap suit – to the administration approach. The U.S. Army has recently revised its field manual on interrogation techniques and clearly declared that the practices described above and several others are off-limits for Army interrogators. That’s as close as we’re likely to get to an official military denunciation of the administration’s eagerness to see the use of torture officially approved. So it isn’t that the civilians in the administration are trying to give the military and the CIA essential tools they think they need to save American lives. They are trying to foist on them tools that the military rather officially and explicitly, and many in the CIA, though perhaps less officially, specifically do not want to have, in large part because they understand they are barbaric and that their use undermines what they see as the legitimate use of force that is their bailiwick in a modern nation-state. This fascination with torture is not just barbaric, it is downright sick. Why should people who consider themselves defenders of civilization be so eager to see them used? Paul Krugman suggests that in the case of the administration it is simply "To show that it can. The central drive of the Bush administration – more fundamental than any particular policy – has been the effort to eliminate all limits on the president’s power. Torture, I believe, appeals to the president and the vice president precisely because it’s a violation of both law and tradition. "By making an illegal and immoral practice a key element of U.S. policy, they’re asserting their right to do whatever they claim is necessary. And many of our politicians are willing to go along." Vicarious Toughness That’s surely part of it. Although I’m leery of psychobiography, which used to be faddish in modern culture, and urge readers to take what follows with a grain or thousand of salt, I have another possible theory. When I was in high school I was considered one of the "brains" or "nerds." I didn’t get into fights. In fact, I remember a particularly humiliating experience in my freshman year when a couple of bullies caught me in an isolated place on the street and made me bow and grovel before them. They didn’t actually hurt me, but they knew I was afraid they would, so they had control over me. I hated that experience and the memories of it that occasionally surfaced. Although in my head I knew that fighting was not the measure of a real man, it made me at least subconsciously harbor doubts about my manhood. Why hadn’t I stood up to these punks? What I did about it was to go out for football. I wasn’t very good at it. I was small but I made up for it by being slow, so I ended up being an undersized lineman who didn’t get into games very often, especially if the games were close. But in practices and in the few games in which I played for significant periods of time, I proved to myself at least that I could hang in there with the biggest and toughest guys in our school and other schools. I got knocked around more than I knocked other people around, but I lost my fear of being knocked around and came back for more. Since then nobody – literally – has tried to bully me physically, even though I am hardly an imposing physical specimen. There’s something about having physical self-confidence that deters bullies, even bullies who could probably mop up the floor with you if it came to a fight. I suspect that many of our leaders never had the experience of proving to themselves that they were physically capable in that sort of way, and thus harbor doubts about their manhood. George W. didn’t play sports as his father – an All-American baseball player at Yale – did, but was instead a cheerleader. I’ve seen no record – maybe I’ve missed it – of Dick Cheney doing anything particularly physical that didn’t involve having a gun in his hands with the target a defenseless animal. Both passed up the opportunity to prove themselves in combat in the military. I suspect that neither Dubya nor Cheney would personally torture people, although it’s possible if they were in a situation with others in which there was absolutely no chance of them actually getting hurt. But if they harbor, after all these years, a desire to prove they are tough that they never had a chance to validate personally and physically, I can imagine them – and plenty of other people in the political class – wanting to do so vicariously by authorizing – indeed, ordering – others to do it for them. This may be incorrect, of course. I’m open to theories from others, perhaps eager to hear them. Because in the absence of some such explanation, the eagerness of the top two guys in the administration, plenty of others in the political classes and all too many who consider themselves thinkers or intellectuals to see torture become quasi-official policy of the United States, which used to have a reputation as the freest land on earth, verges on the sadistic and pornographic. And it’s a clear sign of decadence.
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#1. To: All (#0)
The sad reality of a revolving door presidency traded back and forth among powerful Houses of the Beltway whose sons and heads are nothing but spoiled rich kids or career apparatchiks and parasites with no accomplishments to speak of and less character has to be compensated for with huge lying propaganda campaigns that make these people into Godlike figures for their respective herds of duped followers. Its the equivelent of carving marble stone statues of muscled armored emperors who in reality were mentally deficient deviant hunchbacked weaklings. Decandence? That and decay.
A thing of beauty, this piece. This is what everyone is missing about this crap. We lost a few thousand people when a few fanatics got lucky (aided by our refusal to spend a dime on airport security, when even extremely poor countries protected their airports very, very well) and it's being used as an excuse for the dictatortot and his handlers to do whatever the hell they feel like doing. The analysis of Bush and Cheney is spot-on. They're both wimps who want more than anything to be tough guys. Bush giggling and smirking while drooling over the execution of Karla Faye Tucker ("what's she going to say to me, "PWEEEZ DON'T KIW ME? GIGGLE) says all you need to know about the punk. Cheney's just as bad. A fat, soft kid, not particularly smart, not particularly well-off, and a five-time draft dodger is suddenly transformed into SuperDick, scourge of the big bad terrorists. They're punks with an army of PR specialists. And they've got nearly half the country totally fooled.
Sick bump to a great article.
Oh- you mean the failure to catch those box cutters? Nah- sorry- 19 guys - 4 of whom with a few hours of fly time in Cessna's in which they did BADLY- did not "Get lucky". I have looked at 9/11- have seen the unanswered questions- and I don't buy the official story and can only conclude that government collusion in the events of that day occurred. I am not a missionary however. I am not going to try and persuade you one way or the other. It is a position I arrived at painfully- and only on my own. You will have to do your own digging and only those who are inclined to know the truth will take the time to look into it. I am telling you this because the events of 9/11 and what one believe happened that day- or suspect that day- is a clear dividing point. The official story - with all its fraud "issues" like who could have nabbed OBL and who knew what when and who "dropped the ball" on AQ- are of no interest to me. I don't care as I don't buy the premise of the government All of DC is a corrupt cesspool of evil parasites who use the mechanism of the two fraud parties and their Kabuki theater pretend partisan battles of ceremonial token issues as control mechanisms to mask their Oligarchic rule. I am not intereseted in discussing phoney potemkin issues. I take the position that 9/11 was an inside job. Exactly who carried out this attack in our government and Beltway elite and for what reasons are up for speculation and what I want to know and disucss with others. I don't pretend to know exactly how it was pulled off- nor do I support any one particular theory- I just know what the gubmint and our MSM media say happened that day is not the truth. I operate from that assumption. So when people assume the government line on 9/11- even when they are "antiwar" or "AntiBush" I find the rest of what they have to say of limited interest and value.
I've heard all the LIHOP and MIHOP arguments. While LIHOP is possible, my belief after looking at the facts I could find is that these are lazy, incompetent thugs who, in Cheney's words, are just looking for the spoils of victory. Fascism just seems to be a byproduct of their natural proclivities and the shock of finding out that they can't do whatever the hell they want to do. I see this as a class war, started by the extremely wealthy, aimed at perpetuating some sort of serf system. These are people who would have no qualms about child labor or debtor's prisons or workhouses. It goes way beyond corruption to an actual war. They're using Iraq and anything else they can to take our attention away from their destruction of the constitution and its protections.
Add Thomas Sowell to the list of torture proponents (Suicidal Hand-Wringing, 9/19/06) : "Our only hope is to get advance information from those we capture as to where other terrorists are and how they operate. "Squeamishness about how this is done is not a sign of higher morality but of irresponsibility in the face of mortal dangers."
Yes, our "only hope" (I guess Sowell is one of those who thinks the terrorists have the power to "kill us all dead" or make us "pray to Mecca") is to torture people. I THOUGHT this guy's writings and thinking were once pretty solid. But to advance this sort of nihilism and evilness makes me think he more than likely fudged his research in the past and is just a contemptible ideologue and a liar like the rest of the Neowhore warmed over communists.
Yep, when they come out for torture, no more benefit of the doubt.
However, I believe it is fairly easy to determine that however fully dark the age, we are living in a period of imperial decadence and decline for the United States. One clue is the prospect of Bush-Clinton-Clinton-Bush-Bush-Clinton presidencies, along with the inability or unwillingness of most of those considered intellectual "elites" to understand and express in words and insightful articles the utter mediocrity of these political parasites. Another is the ability of certain people and institutions in the United States – think Fox News and much of the so-called religious right – to indulge in hero-worship of such a clearly inferior person, in terms of seasoning, character, curiosity and ability to see the world realistically rather than through the eyes of sheer fantasy, as our current president.
#2. To: Burkeman1 (#0)
#3. To: Burkeman1. everyone (#1)
This fascination with torture is not just barbaric, it is downright sick.
#4. To: Mekons4 (#2)
We lost a few thousand people when a few fanatics got lucky (aided by our refusal to spend a dime on airport security, when even extremely poor countries protected their airports very, very well)
#5. To: Burkeman1 (#4)
#6. To: Burkeman1 (#0)
I've already said too much.
#7. To: MUDDOG (#6)
#8. To: Burkeman1 (#7)
I've already said too much.
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