A prettty depressing op-ed piece by Vladimir Bukovsky, who spent a number of years in Soviet prisons:
One nasty morning Comrade Stalin discovered that his favorite pipe was missing. Naturally, he called in his henchman, Lavrenti Beria, and instructed him to find the pipe. A few hours later, Stalin found it in his desk and called off the search. “But, Comrade Stalin,” stammered Beria, “five suspects have already confessed to stealing it.”
This joke, whispered among those who trusted each other when I was a kid in Moscow in the 1950s, is perhaps the best contribution I can make to the current argument in Washington about legislation banning torture and inhumane treatment of suspected terrorists captured abroad. Now that President Bush has made a public show of endorsing Sen. John McCain’s amendment, it would seem that the debate is ending. But that the debate occurred at all, and that prominent figures are willing to entertain the idea, is perplexing and alarming to me. I have seen what happens to a society that becomes enamored of such methods in its quest for greater security; it takes more than words and political compromise to beat back the impulse.
Steve S
Sigh. Yes, it is depressing. But I agree with him completely.
Paddy O'Shea
The so-called “McCain Compromise” is worth less than its market weight in manure. Bush and the rest of Team Torture will continue to do whatever it is their black hearts desire no matter how many photo-ops and empty gestures are staged for the American public and the Bobblehead Press.
Look at it this way, did Bush really need the Patriot Act to spy on American citizens?
Right.
Neither did Stalin.
Jcricket
Paddy’s exactly right. Rumsfeld’s already on record saying the ban doesn’t apply to the military. Bush and Gonzalez are on record as saying that the President has unlimited authority to declare what is/not lawful (during “wartime”), etc.
I think McCain’s work on the anti-torture front is commendable, and he should call the president’s bluff before backing off. Mealy-mouthed denials “we do not torture” mean nothing.
Ben
I read that op/ed yesterday. It is a stunning piece and says a lot about how unprincipled the shrub and his cronies are.
Meanwhile, the right-wing blogosphere will continue to taunt Andrew Sullivan for bringing the torture to their attention on a daily basis.
Richard Bottoms
Why does Vladimir hate America?
ppGaz
We probably went to war the the basis of the kind of defective intelligence that falls from these practices.
Face it, we elected morons to run the country. These things have consequences.
Richard Bottoms
>Face it, we elected morons to run the country.
We?? I voted for the other guys. Twice.
These fuckups are not my fault, they are the fault of every person who voted for this clown car administration.
Perry Como
What happened to Mr. Bukovsky was not torture. It didn’t cause death or organ failure.
ppGaz
Yes, I used the “Royal We”. It sometimes works when arguing with my wife, so I gave it a shot.
JWeidner
It is unfortunate that this is the end to which we have come. Call it torture, call it CID, call it whatever you want. That our once-great nation is engaged in legalistic wordplay in an effort to prove that we are “right” in employing such tactics only speaks to how far we have already fallen.
Torture in the name of liberty, torture in the name of freedom, torture because the enemy will do worse to our own if they can. Torture because the next captive may have the information that can bring the terrorists to their own end. Torture because it’s not really torture, it’s CID.
In the end, it all signifies one thing. If our nation is allowed to become one where torture, under whatever name the lawyers, spinmeisters, and politicians choose to give it, becomes normal, becomes accepted, we will have begun a slide down a long slope with no end. We will have ceased to be a shining beacon of democracy and will have taken up a place among those nations we have so long worked against. Nations like China, whose jails already could hardly be called a model example, will have all the excuse they need to enforce a policy of torture in the name of state security. Nations like Russia, facing it’s own terrorist threat in the Chechens, will be able to point to us as their example of how to treat suspected terrorists.
Is that really what we want for our country? Is that really the place that we think we deserve? A place at the table with countries like that? When a former Russian prisoner can draw comparisons of technique against the Stalin regime, it is time to question whether we are being led by someone who truly deserves to lead this country.
JWeidner
Guess I should have put at the end that it is “past time” to question whether we are being led by the right people….
Perry Como
These are nothing more than fraternity pranks. I remember in college we used to use “tubes” to ingest “liquids” and sometimes you would “choke”. They were called beer bongs. See, harmless fraternity pranks.
Johnny
Thanx for the link.
Are we allowed to entertain the possibility yet that we are in the grips of a facist/soviet style government yet? Or do I still have to pretend that Bush is a “conservative”?
Call me insane
The way I look at the government anymore is that they are the “legal” mob.
Lines
How come we only talk about the Soviet Gulags? Why don’t we talk about the good that the Soviet’s did, all the schools they built, all the hospitals they helped to erect?
Its just too negative around here, I think we need to focus on the victories we will be achieving in all of Eastern Europe. Just think, it must be easier to stack prisoners in naked piles, since in the sub-zero temperatures they must freeze together a little.
KC
That’s a great piece. Thanks for pointing to it, John.
jcricket
Right, at least Stalin made the trains run on time… Oh wait, no, he put a chicken in every pot? No, wait, that’s not it. (yes, i know you’re being snarky)
GWB’s life is pattern of lowering the bar to the point where virtually anything short of killing himself/his family or nuc-u-lar annhilation is considered a success.
And the apologetics from the wingers (I’m including Reynolds and Powerline in this now) on these issues are astounding. Who is it that constantly harps that it’s the “looney left” lowering the academic bar with multi-cultural education and the like? Now we’re to understand that as long as the intentions were reasonable (within the universe) any behavior is acceptable in the WOT?
Steve S
Will the ranch at Crawford be renamed to the Bush Dacha?
jack
Ooohhh, Johnny McCain the War Hero and former POW is forcing through yet another great piece of legislation(Let’s all give McCain-Feingold a rousing round of applause)
What unforseen, but horrible, consequences will this masterpiece generate?
And Bush caved. How surprising.
Are you all happy? Probably?
Will this stop any torture? No. Well, that’s not true. In many instances people who might’ve been caputured and held as prisoners will now be killed. Hooray!
And our soldiers? They’ll get tortured, just like ol’Johnny was.
You do what you have to do to survive–and make up for anything horrible that might have entailed AFTER you’re assured of survival.
jcricket
So I see that the ends justify the means? Or are you implying that the WOT gives the government unlimited license to pursue anything, so long as they claim it’s justified?
Fuck you. Seriously. Fuck you. Leave this country before you permanently fuck it up. You obviously have no business being an American. Perhaps you would be more comfortable in Burma or Russia or Iran, where the president has absolute power and questioning it will get you disappeared.
Steve S
I’m curious. Is your concern the survival of the United States… or the Republican party? Because from my perspective it isn’t the United States you are at all concerned about.
Shygetz
Jack has the right of it. For the first time in over 200 years, the United States is facing a threat, and we must change our time-tested methods and morals to face this threat.
(Oh, wait, you mean we’ve fought two entire World Wars without officially resorting to torture? And a Civil War? And a Revolution? And various insurgent-style actions around the globe? Hmmm, this might need some editing…)
Jack has the right of it. For the first time in over 200 years, the United States is facing a threat while a moron who hears voices in his head leads our armed forces, and we must change our time-tested methods and morals to face this threat in light of our complete lack of coherent leadership.
Now with this revision, Jack might have a point, but I still think that the solution is worse than the problem. Better Dead than Red wasn’t just for the Russian invasion. I’d rather be dead than live knowing I allowed a homegrown repressive state to come to pass here in America, and that includes torture.
Il Supremo Benito Bush
President Bush is the ultimate authority in all things. It is not our place to question him in any way. He believes in Jesus, and Jesus is God.
Let me ask you a question: Are you Jesus?
No?
Then shut the fuck up. The President has someone much more important to listen to than you.
http://xz49.xs.to/pics/05404/Bushss.jpg
jack
What would you do do survive?
That’s a key point here. Apparently many of you would dig your own graves on the moral high ground.
But that moral high ground was won for you with the blood of your betters. And sometimes your betters had to do horrible things to insure that you’d have a place on which to stand and shower them with your preposterous disdain.
Asses, all of you. Do you not understand that we HAVE official laws that ban torture already? That all these laws you all so favor do is lower the bar on what is considered torture? And worst of all, that all these laws you so favor are nothing but empty words? They will stop no torture whatsoever. If it needs to be done, it will be done. We have used torture in all of our wars. As has everyone else.
And we will rail against it, for it IS a horrible thing to be brought to.
But, out of sight, those who understand that it is easier for a lone man to atone for some horrific actions, than it is for a nation to face extinction, what needs to be done, will be done.
This nation, and all that it stands for MUST survive. I do not care what ‘party’ runs it, only that it run according to the principles laid down in our founding documents–and I don’t believe that either of the major political groupings has wholly abandoned those yet.
Several of you have such odd ideas–chastising Bush, of all people. Are you so thick as to believe that he knows when torture has been undertaken? You ‘great minds’ who see his faith as a detriment–were there never any devout Democrat presidents? Were they to be regarded as ‘hearing voices in their heads’ for that faith?
You are so hung up on Bush. You act as if he is a monarch, a dictator, not a second term president whose sell-by date is fast approaching. He does not have absolute power. He does not oversee each decision made all the way up and down all the various chains of command that lead to the Oval Office.
In fact, the one good thing I can say about the man is that he understands, in his bumbling way, the nature of the threat we face–a threat you ALL seem eager to ignore.
We will do what it takes to survive–all your poitical prattling will have little effect on that–and, once our survival is assured, we will do as we’ve done before. We’ll go in and help our vanquished enemies.
Because our survival, and all that it takes to insure it, demands that the world be left better than we found it.
The Other Steve
Yep, it’s called not being a fucking coward.
jack
We exist in very different worlds.
In yours, it is a moral victory to lay back and be slaughtered. To not consider your loved ones, your fellow citizens, and your nation. It is a moral victory to let all that you are, and all that your descendents could become, be obliterated.
In mine, there are things worth dying for, things worth doing anything necessary to protect.
Because we live in such different places, it is impossible for you to understand. You lack the will to survive. The drive that makes man reach ever higher. But I will try.
Because you mind is so limited, you see only sadism in torture. Only meanness, lowness, depravity. And it IS there. Torture is a vile act. But you are incapable of seeing that the one committing the torture knows this. He knows that what he is doing is an awful, atrocious act–a crime. He knows that whatever information he gets, however many lives he may save, he has not saved his own.
He may be killed. He may go to prison. He may be set free. But the memory of what he has done will be forever burned into his soul.
And there are men and women like him alive in this country right now. People who have lost all that they are so that you and yours might freely spit on their sacrifice. And you know what? Those that I have spoken to would do it again. Despite your prattle.
Remember it is blood that allows you to speak. Your vaunted rights are hard won, from people who would be only too glad to take them away again. People who were willing to do what it takes ensured that those rights not be taken from you. Try, though it be the hardest thing you might do, to remember that.