We Have Met the Enemy, and He is US
by KTKAugust 19th, 2008
Andrew Sullivan is making unprecedented amounts of sense lately. I wonder if he’s thinking of coming into the light? Anyway, he’s got an Atlantic.com column today which is not very original in its basic idea, but is a remarkably clear and well-expressed statement of some of the most horrid truths about BushCo. and, sickeningly, John McCain. Good writing.
The torture that was deployed against McCain [in Vietnam] . . . involved sleep deprivation, the withholding of medical treatment, stress positions, long-time standing, and beating. Sound familiar?
According to the Bush administration’s definition of torture, McCain was therefore not tortured.
Cheney denies that McCain was tortured; as does Bush. So do John Yoo and David Addington and George Tenet. . . . McCain talks of the agony of long-time standing. A quarter century later, Don Rumsfeld was putting his signature to memos lengthening the agony of “long-time standing” that victims of Bush’s torture regime would have to endure. These torture techniques are, according to the president of the United States, merely “enhanced interrogation.”
No war crimes were committed against McCain. And the techniques used are, according to the president, tools to extract accurate information. And so the false confessions that McCain was forced to make were, according to the logic of the Bush administration, as accurate as the “intelligence” we have procured from “interrogating” terror suspects. Feel safer? . . .
[T]he government of the United States now practices the very same techniques that the Communist government of North Vietnam once proudly used against American soldiers. When they are used against future John McCains, the victims will know, in a way McCain didn’t, that their own government has no moral standing to complain.
Now the kicker: in the Military Commissions Act, McCain acquiesced to the use of these techniques against terror suspects by the CIA. And so the tortured became the enabler of torture. Someone somewhere cried out in pain for the same reasons McCain once did. And McCain let it continue.
This is the utterly repulsive level at which our current government leaders operate. And this is what even Republicans of “integrity”, as we are always told McCain is, will do, for military expediency or just personal political gain. This is the shame they don’t mind bringing upon their country, the indifference they show at abandoning the legal prohibition on torture that formerly offered at least some deterent protection to our own citizens, the gleeful moral emptiness inside them that fouls their country and everything they touch.
Does McCain even know what he has done? Does he ever make the connection in his mind, as he runs around the country constantly telling his POW stories, to what he himself has authorized to be done to others? Does he still think anyone should care what was done to him, given that - as he tell us - we are not required to care that the same things are done openly, in our name, to others?
If the people who tortued McCain now stood openly in the highest offices of the Vietnamese government, would we be entitled to draw any moral conclusions from that about that government? If the official who authorized torturing McCain now said openly that it was a good thing and he would choose to do it again to others if he felt the need, and that person happened to be a candidate for the top political office in that country, would we feel that those facts in any way impinged upon his fitness for that office, or in any way impugned the political party that put him forward as their leader?
Categories: Culture, General, News & Current Events, Politics, Terrorism, Torture |
/Fred/ As a British homosexual, Andrew Sullivan has no grounds on which to question the morality of others. I don’t talk my political advice from Elton John /Fred/
This is insane, McCain is the biggest republican speaking against the definition of torture our country currently has. He is totally against any form of torture.
McCain is the biggest republican speaking against the definition of torture our country currently has. He is totally against any form of torture.
Not so much:
Senator John McCain, transforming a recent Supreme Court decision into a campaign issue yesterday, blasted the court’s ruling, which established that foreign terrorism suspects held in detention at the US military base at Guantanamo Bay have the constitutional right to challenge their detention in civilian courts.
and . . .
An article by The New York Times’s Mark Mazzetti this morning discloses a letter from the Justice Department to Congress which asserts “that American intelligence operatives attempting to thwart terrorist attacks can legally use interrogation methods that might otherwise be prohibited under international law.” In other words, even after all of the dramatic anti-torture laws and other decrees, the Bush administration insists that American interrogators have the right to use methods that are widely considered violations of the Geneva Conventions if we decide that doing so might help “thwart terrorist attacks.”
There are two reasons, and two reasons only, that the Bush administration is able to claim this power: John McCain and the Military Commissions Act. In September, 2006, McCain made a melodramatic display — with great media fanfare — of insisting that the MCA require compliance with the Geneva Conventions for all detainees. But while the MCA purports to require that, it also vested sole and unchallenged discretion in the President to determine what does and does not constitute a violation of the Conventions. After parading around as the righteous opponent of torture, McCain nonetheless endorsed and voted for the MCA, almost single-handedly ensuring its passage.
and . . .
On October 3, 2005 John McCain introduced the McCain Detainee Amendment. It “prohibits inhumane treatment of prisoners, including prisoners at Guantanamo Bay, by confining military interrogations to the techniques in the U.S. Army Field Manual on Interrogation.” [NB: It's also filled with loopholes, including that the fact that you were told torture was legal can be used as a defense against accusations of committing the crime of torture. Strangely, that doesn't work for any other crime. - KTK]
This is the old John McCain. This was the John McCain that opposes treating prisoners, no matter their “classification,” like something other than human beings. This was John McCain standing by his principles.
On February 13, 2008 John McCain voted “Nay” on the Intelligence Authorization Act for fiscal year 2008. This bill, which passed the Senate 51-45 and was subsequently vetoed, bans the CIA from using waterboarding as an interrogation technique. The CIA would be required to follow the Army Field Manual, which also prohibits “beatings, electric or temperature shocks, forced nudity, mock executions, and the use of dogs.” These abusive techniques are still on global display in the torture photos from Abu Ghraib.
This is his new position on torture. To quote John McCain himself: “We always supported allowing the CIA to use extra measures.”
This is John McCain abandoning his principles he used to hold dear. Perhaps he has forgotten his stay at the Hanoi Hilton.
My position is simple: John McCain is now for the torture of human beings.
My problem is simple: John McCain now has no problem torturing even after enduring five and a half years of it.
My solution is simple: John McCain can’t be the next President of the United States.
Though you may well be right about his being the most outspoken Republican on the issue. That in no way contradicts what I said.
As usual, KTK notices the parts that really matter.
Classic victim logic. Because I’m the victim of torture, I will do anything to prevent other from such a horrible experience, even if such a prevention requires torturing people.
I don’t talk my political advice from Elton John.
Elton’s recent album, “The Captain and the Kid”, is an autobiographical look back at his career with Bernie Taupin. Damn good album, too. There’s one odd thing on it that I can’t stop wondering about, though.
The opening track - “Postcards from Richard Nixon” - tells the story of two musicians from England who arrive in Southern California, are overwhelmed by it as you can only be by Southern California, and start to make their way in the music business. But the chorus insists, apparently sincerely, that they were recruited at that time by Richard Nixon to do PR to help salvage his fading popularity. That just boggles the mind.
Obviously, there’s a point where these stories fade from autobiography into fiction, but I can’t tell where that line is here. If the story is true, however, it would mean that Richard Nixon took political advice from Elton John.
If you’ve seen the picture of Nixon with Elvis in the Oval Office, well, this story is no stranger than that.