started asking myself quite earnest questions when I found out we didn’t have too much of a problem hiring Guatemalan generals to slaughter tens of thousands of innocent people for being the wrong ethnic group and being near ‘rebels’, as long as there was a bit of ‘plausible deniability’ and a nod to Congressional oversight.

Man, who do you think you are? Noam Chomsky? You have to get a Nobel Prize to be allowed to have realizations like that.

Or…. maybe you should GET aprize for having them.

Now all the authorities
They just stand around and boast
How they blackmailed the sergeant-at-arms
Into leaving his post
And picking up Angel who
Just arrived here from the coast
Who looked so fine at first
But left looking just like a ghost.

Bob Dylan, “Just Like Tom Thumb’s Blues”

It’s not very romantic if you can’t even talk about it, is it? That’s the part I don’t get; when did it become OK to just blow off torture, committed in our names? So I suppose to me, the shock I’m feeling now is mostly of the “what the hell happened to us” variety.

JenJen, this was an insightful post. My only small additions are as follows:

1. Even Peggy Noonan doesn’t talk ABOUT torture. She talks AROUND torture, using euphimisms. Orwell used to write extensively on this theme, and the support of the chattering classes for Stalin.

2. A lot of people, such as my younger brother, close their eyes a lot because they don’t want to divide into “Us” and “Them”.

Unfortunately, they are going to find that the choice has been taken out of their hands.

I hope the Gen-X and my own children can change the equation. As a group, the boomers have done an execrable job. I don’t know if too much Doctor Spock made us incurably self-centered, or what.

Yes, Islamic extremists maim and torture people: That’s why they’re the bad guys. Jeebus, this is exactly the shit Cole was talking about. Why is it that the standard winger response to any discussion about Gitmo, Abu Ghraib, torture or whatever is “well, do you have any idea what they’d do to you if they got their hands on you?”

Yes, yes I do. They would probably mess me up pretty bad. And that’s why they’re the bad guys.

For some reason conservatives are convinced that the correct response to the inhumanity of our enemies is to become more like them. Explain how that one works.

On the other hand, no. Please don’t. You’ve said enough already.

Just so we’re all clear, you don’t give rat’s ass who Muslims torture, you only care about Muslims getting tortured. That’s some nice moral relativism there, you fucking piece of shit.

Muslim Firsters get hypersensitive whenever someone points out that they are high on the list of child killers and torturers. But they’re only Israelis/Jews (see your rantings for the Arab position on that).

Put that in your pipe and smoke it you flaming asshole.

My position – and the ONLY morally acceptable one – is that all torture and murder is wrong, no matter who the perpetrator OR victim is. It doesn’t matter if the aggressor is America, Israel OR Saudi Arabia. And it doesn’t matter if the victims are Muslim, Christian OR Jewish. It’s all morally repugnant. That clear enough for you, you fucking piece of shit?

Now go fuck yourself.

Says Mr. Larison who is a proud member of the “League of the South.”
The League of the South has been described by the Southern Poverty Law Center as:
rife with white supremacists and racist ideology.
http://www.splcenter.org/intel…..sp?pid=455
Seems to be the same “moral universe” to me.

Yes and the America First Party advertises at the American Conservative.

I’m another Gen-Xer (possibly—I’m not totally clear on when that starts) who voted for Reagan in my first election, 1984. I stopped considering myself a Republican sometime in the mid-1990’s, Newt Gingrich and then the Clinton impeachment being a little too much for me, but I still never, never would have expected the party to go anywhere near actually arguing about whether the US should torture. I’m just gobsmacked by this.

I mean, I really thought there was no argument about that. It’s not the capacity for it that’s shocking, or that some people like it; it’s that we’re actually debating it as a matter of public policy. It’s like if someone decided to propose, “Well, maybe the United States would be better off if we encouraged more rape and murder.” I just don’t know what you can say to that.

Israel Firsters get hypersensitive whenever someone points out that they are high on the list of child killers and torturers. But they’re only Arabs/Muslims (see Rahm’s father for the Israeli position on that).

Criticize America – absolutely, but never israel , correct?

Good thing Palestinian groups don’t constantly lob rockets at Israeli schools and civilian areas, or blow up suicide bombers in crowded markets, because that could almost be considered terrorism.

Yup, the only acts of terrorism that exist in the world target Muslims. I just hope they don’t start torturing non-Muslims in retaliation, because there is no moral justification for torture.

We find torture proliferating in excessively religious societies, not excessive secular societies, and the more religious, the more often we encounter torture—and for obvious reasons

Please; see Robespierre, Stalinist U.S.S.R., GDR, modern day China, et al. I’m not absolving religio-centric societies of blame but your assertion is ahistorical.

The whole problem with torture is that once you start using it on some select subgroup, it spreads like wildfire and pretty soon the society starts using it on everybody, for every offense. And that’s what’s happening right now in America. Torture was initially confined to only “the worst of the bad guys” in super-secure black ops prisons, but now torture has spread like wildfire and is being used on ordinary citizens in everyday life.

But i hasn’t spread – it remains restricted to one group: Muslims, regardless of race. All of these ’ ordinary citizens’ happen to be Muslims. That’s what I mean by over-determination.

Your conjecture – that soon torture will apply to everyone – remains to be seen. I doubt it will happen since the whole point of maintaining the illusion of goodness is that such practices remain restricted to the one group that the dominant ideology has determined to be incompatible with its values, Muslims in this case.

wilfred claimed

There is a lot of over-determination here. We are targeting a specific group for torture and murder based on their presumed essential ‘differentness’.

No, entirely wrong. The whole problem with torture is that once you start using it on some select subgroup, it spreads like wildfire and pretty soon the society starts using it on everybody, for every offense. And that’s what’s happening right now in America. Torture was initially confined to only “the worst of the bad guys” in super-secure black ops prisons, but now torture has spread like wildfire and is being used on ordinary citizens in everyday life.

How many news stories do you read every week in which cops tase somebody 5 times for some utterly trivial or nonsenical reason? That’s torture. And it’s rapidly getting worse. Police are now pushing hard to get handheld microwave pain rays, and once that happens, you can bet you’ll see torture of ordinary citizens for no reason happening on the street every day of the week.

Yes, it’ll soon be a common sight to walk down the street and see three cops torturing some random guy with a handheld microwave pain ray. They’ll be raying the guy as he crawls and screams like an animal, and if you try to interfere, they’ll ray you too, and you’ll be down on your knees pleading and begging them to stop because your skin will feel like it’s on fire too and you’ve never felt pain like that before in your life.

Police armed with a device that produces limitless unbearable pain—and leaves no marks. Yep, no chance of anything going wrong with that plan, is there?

Make no mistake: this is torture, and it’s coming to your police department soon. Maybe this year, maybe next year. They’re not just torturing muslims, they’re torturing your neighbor. They’re torturing your kid. They’re torturing your wife. Right now, using tasers…soon, the microwave pain ray.

Wake up. America has become Torture Nation. This has nothing to do with “otherness” and everything to do with a simple sadistic desire to see other people writhe in agony on the sidewalk, howling like animals with unbearable pain.

how sick and detestable and rotten to the core the Republican party has become.

I would remind you that extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice!
—Barry Goldwater, 1964

Let me also remind you that moderation in the pursuit of justice is no virtue!
—Barry Goldwater, 1964

Ends justify means. What did folks think that would lead to?

Family values, I guess.

Where?

No one is above the law, presnit or not. And international treaties have the force of law when signed by the US/

But political expediency does not absolve them of their moral and legal complicity in Bush’s actions.

Look, I don’t disagree that dems have some complicity, we just differ on how much.

I’ll settle for tossing 25 to 30 of those Democrats who voted for it on the same bonfire that I would happily toss most of the Republicans onto.

This sounds a little more reasonable for rating culpability. I’ll bring the hot dogs and you bring the marsh mellows.

The new mob has convinced itself that only conservatives are to blame.

Like Quentin at the end of ‘Absalom, Absalom`.

They command no divisions, no law enforcement agencies. Just the power of the purse. I guess they could have shut down the government to make Bush behave.

Article 1, Section 8. Powers of Congress. “To make Rules for the Government….” But by you, we are no more evolved than when Andrew Jackson removed Natives Americans from their land and dared the other branches of government to stop him.

They could have [impeached Bush], and I’m not sure they shouldn’t have. It would not have removed him from office, and there was NO chance of the Senate convicting to do that. They made a calculation that the choice was, winning elections and attaining power to make changes.

We agree on the political expediency that the Democrats relied on. But political expediency does not absolve them of their moral and legal complicity in Bush’s actions.

Funny that, I thought a President breaking international treaties on torture was covered in the Constitution.

Where?

They are firstly elected to represent their states or districts and the peoples therin/ There are different notions on morality in America at given points in time. The point in time for selling the Iraq war, was when people were scared. Not particularly noble. But human/ Bush pushed for war, not dems. And 150 voted against it in both houses, while 100 voted for it.

I’ll settle for tossing 25 to 30 of those Democrats who voted for it on the same bonfire that I would happily toss most of the Republicans onto.

Looks like the Bushies CYA operations have worked on some.

Yes, we agree that you are playing the CYA game very well for those Democratic Party enablers of torture.

hat’s the—I’m perfectly willing to accept responsibility for my own actions. I’m not shouldering this shame.

We have a representative form of government. What responsibility should the citizens have when their elected representatives fail to stop torture?

We now know that some suspects were waterboarded dozens, hundreds of times. It must be cold comfort to them to know that some people were really, really outraged about what happened to them. But not outraged enough to stop it when they first found about it, that they were waiting for someone else to try to convince a nation that had almost become an angry mob that security did not need to be built on fear.

So here we sit. The old mob gave in to fear an authorized torture in order to secure its safety. The new mob has convinced itself that only conservatives are to blame.

Meet the new boss. Same as the old boss.