Wednesday, April 22, 2009

Diagnosis

Listen. As a nation, we arrogate to ourselves the right to send flying robots over any country in the world and murder people, to topple governments, to impose economic blockades on entire nations of millions of people, and the great moral flap is slapping around some prisoners? Now I am not saying that torture is anything but abhorrent, wholly morally repulsive, but fuck you, America. The so-called debate over torture has preempted the already under-argued, under-reported actuality: that as we bicker about "enhanced interrogation techniques" and whether or not Barack Obama is a good guy for releasing them or a bad guy for not sending a bunch of spook hacks to jail, we are all over the world, killing the fuck out of people and blowing that shit up. The idea that our interrogations are a unique moral stain is cracked and insane. Waterboarding is not the disease, merely one observable symptom of a deeper and more pernicious pathology.

55 comments:

Anonymous said...

I think I need a cup of tea.

ohsopolite said...

Why is this point (and, for that matter, the points made in pretty much all of your non-culinary posts) so blindingly obvious to you, me, and, I suspect, most of your readers, yet so apparently opaque to the teeming masses? Not to be an elitist or an effete snob or something, but damn! Of course, a good part of the answer is in the subject of the previous post--"educational" institutions whose function is to indoctrinate, not educate. Critical thinking is a luxury we just can't afford...

Montag said...

look, we are faced with overpopulation, resource scarcity and mitigating the damage we have ourselves inflicted on our ecosystem's ability to sustain us, and the great moral flap is finding a bipartisan way to kill the fuck out of people without looking like we are killing the fuck out of people? enough is enough. the time for half measures is over. fuck torture. kill everybody.

bill said...

Herr Montag's kinda harsh suggestion sort of illustrates why all the dumb fucks out there can't seem to catch on to how truly fucked up we (Americans, whites, men, folks in general) is: looking deeply enough into the abyss can sour the taste of your cornflakes

AlanSmithee said...

Hey, if we can run our schools like Gaza checkpoints, we can do anything. USA! USA!

Cüneyt said...

IOZ, the progressive position in the 1960s was no firehoses and attack dogs on black people, but keep melting Vietnamese children and burning villages to the ground.

The progressive position in the late British Empire was no Amritsar, but continue to dominate hundreds of millions of people all the same.

Torture's a point around which people can gather. Eliminate it, and keep up the injustice. Injustice, not atrocity. Easy to get. And if you want more, you're asking too much. Incremental change, incremental change! Man is not to be a flood, but a glacier.

Mr.Fundamental said...

do something. rahrah. sissboombah. *twirls pointer finger in the air*

thepudgiereport said...

Smell. I came for the obvious, and stayed for the sensory directives.

Christopher M. said...

Incremental change, incremental change! Man is not to be a flood, but a glacier.By the time we're through with all this incremental change, we'll be right out of fucking glaciers.

hulq said...

well, who else are we gonna arrogate those rights to?

knamsayn?

hv said...

yes, but to be fair to American liberals and Donkey partisans such as Digby, etc, who seem *shocked*, shocked I tell you, that the American state would actually torture brown people, there just haven't been the memos to illuminate the murderous and violent activities that the American imperial state, with full BIPARTISAN implicit or explicit approval, regularly engages in such as the whole-scale death and destruction and humanitarian disaster America caused in Somalia, to pick just one very recent example in a long, violent, and bloody bipartisan track-record of American sponsored mass-murder, terror, torture and military aggression.

So to summarize:

memos == shock and moral outrage by American liberals, and long, earnest blog posts about how the issue of torture is so inexcusable and serious that it goes beyond political expediency, and that political leaders, i.e., Republicans, must be charged for crimes.

no memos == not a peep for years from American liberals about Israel's slow and deliberate policy of colonizing Palestinian land and the brutal occupation of the West Bank and Gaza and Israel's increasingly savagery such as the recent massacre of Palestinian civilians in Gaza, and not a peep on any liberal blogs about the recent American covert actions in Somalia, but instead lots of rationalizations about how voting for the Democratic party, despite its track-record and well-established agenda to simply continue the violent and murderous goals and activities of the American imperial state only in a more smarter and efficient manner, is the politically expedient thing to do and the only "serious" choice.


Behold the power of the All-mighty Memo.

ChrisWWW said...

Like I said on my blog, "sometimes you have to put Al Capone in jail for tax fraud."

Think about it :-)

Mr.Fundamental said...

oh shit we got a live one.

ChrisWWW, did you get here from googling "young girls vaginas"?

ChrisWWW said...

hv,
You're full of crap.

Now if you want to go ahead and say Congressional Democrats and Obama don't give a damn about Gaza or Somalia, that's probably true. But you cast your net too wide.

Mr.Fundamental said...

oh snap.

bring it!

IOZ said...

hv sez the Donk did it too, which is true. Chris hauls out some articles showing that Djeedub didn't put the kibosh on it and maybe made it a wittle bit worse.

This is not going to be pretty.

Mr.Fundamental said...

ChrisWWW is likely arranging his bona fides an whatnot, checking his commas and dottin his eyez, and gonna come back with a big long comment ftw, wherein, as he types out loud now in front of the mirror, he fantasizes us all submitting to his rationale and reasonableness and sense of rightness and fairness, agreeing all around on all accounts at what a great guy he is, and how could we not agree with him? what with every word he types, to me at least, seemingly a firm hand holding our betters feet to the fire of the truth, the truth that is so liberating and uplifting. the truth that only the innernet can so rightly and justly set free.

Brian said...

Mr.Fundamental, you win with the post at 7:17.

ChrisWWW said...

Mr.Fundamental has it right. Even the typing in front of a mirror part.

Anonymous said...

the 'we've tortured for years/ever' argument, while true, is also irrelevant. charles martel of the krauts, wsj op-ed page, g. will & co, various political figures, etc., etc. have always been arm-chair torquemadas, but they haven't always publicly argued in the MSM that the US should torture and all gawd-fearin' nation-lovin' murkins should get on board w/the waterboard.

TGGP said...

Whatever you think of the war, I hope you support our brave flying robots. The detonation of their missiles will not have been in vain. The innocent-wedding partiers themselves would insist we continue the good fight, only they can't because they've been blown up so we well-wishers must do so on their behalf.

IOZ said...

Win

SteveB said...

Yes, if you're going to criticize one aspect of the American Empire, it is necessary to simultaneously criticize all aspects of the Empire.

I say "simultaneously", because Digby, for example, has probably had a word or two to say against the invasion of Iraq, but at this very moment she is only speaking about the torture, and therefore must believe that torture is the only thing wrong with this country.

It's a wonder that anyone bothers to criticize America at all, when you consider how difficult it is to do it properly.

IOZ said...

Il revient, le p'tit.

ChrisWWW said...

SteveO,
To his credit, IOZ inoculates himself against those types of charges by hating everyone and everything all the time.

Brian said...

You miss the point, Steve. The faux outrage about the torture memos etc. covers up and enables the flying death robots and the expansion of more and more wars.

As for Ioz' "hate"...there is no hate like that of a SBR* lover scorned. The mere whiff of a lack of "faith" in The Master leads to visits from the true believers, all wielding the weapons of poorly-thought-out scorn

_______________________________
*Superjesus Black Reagan

ChrisWWW said...

Brian,
Who is the one belching "poorly-thought-out scorn"?

Aside from my complaints about Obama's handling of the torture issue, I've also complained about his plans to continue and escalate the war in Afghanistan, his giveaways to gigantic banks, his dismissal of the stupidity of the war on Marijuana, and his betrayal of civil libratarians.

Anonymous said...

To his credit, IOZ inoculates himself against those types of charges by hating everyone and everything all the time.Wrong. IOZ obviously hates everyone except George Washington.

Steve, on the other hand, missed the whole fucking point of the post, as usual, by not making it to the final sentence before rushing to the comment section. It's not that criticism of any aspect of the American empire is unwelcome unless it simultaneously addresses all aspects of the empire, it's that the very existence of the empire itself remains unquestioned. This is a continuing problem, as you know, because 'murdering and/or torturing the shit out of people, toppling governments, imposing economic blockades, and generally fucking the shit out of other peoples' societies' are all inherent activities of any empire, or quest for empire, in order to maintain or expand its influence and continued existence as such.

The reason you disagree with IOZ so often is because you're essentially working for a more morally responsible, less oppressive American empire, while IOZ sees that as a contradiction of terms. Or, maybe it's just because you're a fucktard.

Freiheit said...

IOZ obviously hates everyone except George Washington. That's because Washington fucked the shit out of bears, and we all know how much IOZ dislikes bears.

The Promiscuous Reader said...

Save the civil libratarians! Is that a free-thinking librarian who doesn't have a pottymouth? What about the uncivil libratarians, can we betray them?

SteveB said...

It's not that criticism of any aspect of the American empire is unwelcome unless it simultaneously addresses all aspects of the empire, it's that the very existence of the empire itself remains unquestioned.I think you meant to say that the very existence of the empire remains questioned. That is, the people you scorn are questioning whether we are an empire. Myself, I have no idea who these people might be. Could someone provide a link? Just one? A libblogger writing, "Gee, I don't know whether the US is really an empire." I've never run across that sentence in my travels across the web, but I don't get around much, and am willing to be enlightened.

hv said...

ChrisWWW,

yes, those measly two articles really are a heavy blow and dispute my essential point about the selective outrage by American liberals over torture versus their rationalizations for supporting the Donkey party despite its long track-record and indisputable agenda of sustaining the American imperial state and of continuing the American bipartisan goal of using military force to dominate the Middle-East and the world for American and Israeli interests, regardless of how many brown people are slaughtered, terrorized, and murdered in the process.

Why is torture a greater crime than the kind of death and destruction and humanitarian disaster the American state caused in Somalia? Why so much outrage over one, and almost zero mention of the other by American liberals? All this moral outrage and long, earnest blog posts by liberal Democrat partisans like Digby, et. al., about how torture is so outrageous and how the Republican political officials must be charged for war crimes even while they continue to rationalize their slavish devotion to their Donkey party and continue to casually sweep aside out of political expediency the bipartisan consensus and goals, machinery of empire and system of imperialism of the West and in particular, the US, that lies underneath this Kabuki theatre of a "democratic" political system, that has rolled over thousands and thousands, if not millions, of dead brown people, and promises more of the same regardless of the color of the skin of the current imperial manager, is not only sheer hypocrisy, it is also completely refusing to recognize and address the root of the problem and the fundamental reason why the torture program was created to begin with. As Anonymous at 11:22 AM says, torture is simply a predictable response by an aggressive imperial state to the resistance by other nations, people and races against mass-murder, domination and control. Torture is simply a symptom of the fundamental BIPARTISAN "pathology", to quote IOZ, that hypocritical American liberals are willing to rationalize away out of political expediency.

But thanks for the links to the articles. The article by Matthew Yglesias was new to me, so thanks for that. For a Donkey partisan site like American Prospect, it was a surprisingly fair and balanced criticism of American actions in Somalia. But let's get serious here: that's one measly article, and at that, quite late in the stage in December 2008. American operations started in Somali in 2006, and Chris Floyd was the only person to pick up on it in 2006 and continue to hammer away at the issue to be met with only deafening silence in the American liberal blogosphere. I think Glenn Greenwald might have linked to Chris Floyd's article on Somalia early on, but nothing after that. When you consider the enormity of the crime, and the extent of the death and destruction of the humanitarian disaster America caused in Somalia, this issue has been almost invisible and has been mostly ignored by most American "progressives" and liberals. I'll bet most of your fellow wonderful American "liberals", "progressives" and Donkey partisans had no clue whatsoever about what was going in Somalia, or of America's involvement in that war, or that it was American's 3rd front in the Terror War.

What does that say about the kind of murderous, sociopathic political "democratic" system you have - which American liberals continue to legitimize with their "lesser of two evils" Kabuki theatre - where you can condemn an entire country and hundreds of thousands to one of the world's worst humanitarian catastrophe just because you fucking can, and yet most people be completely oblivious to it? As if whatever narrow concerns America might have had over a handful of possible extremists in Somalia justifies topplilng an Islamic government that had finally provided some stability in a long time and wrecking havock on the entire country, and causing a humantarian disaster. Meanwhile, hypocritical smug, white American liberals blather on about Darfur, and establishment liberals like Jon Stewart revel in the killing of Somali teen pirates by American NAVY SEALS without the slightest bit of shame or irony. When you take into account the context of American actions and America's role in destabilizing Somalia and unleashing death, destruction and chaos there, the Somali piracy issue is suddenly not a black-and-white issue, is it?

And I knew I should have mentioned Glenn Greenwald as one of the few exceptions to my general point. And if you have any intellectual honesty, I'm sure you will agree that Greenwald is indeed an exception. I am already well aware that Glenn Greenwald was one of the few if not the only "progressive" American blogger to be strongly critical of Israel's recent Gaza offensive, and to be critical of Israel in general, unlike the long and well-established cowardly, deeply biased and bordering on racist, politically expedient track record of American liberals, especially smug, white liberals and Donkey partisans on this subject. But I don't put Greenwald into the same camp as Digby, Firedoglake, etc. and especially Donkey partisan sites like American Prospect. I've been reading Greenwald even before he moved to that liberal democratic rag, Salon.com, and he has never been a Democrat, or even a liberal. He is a civil libertarian first and foremost, and his only reason for supporting the Democrats as much as he does these days is because of the unprecedented extremism, constitutional breaches, and blatant disregard for the rule of law by the Republicans and the American right.

It is precisely because Greenwald is not a Donkey partisan or a liberal that he remains one of the few prominent American "progressive" bloggers to be intellectually honest and be critical of the Democratic party and of Obama, and one of the few to take on "taboo" subjects such as American imperialism and military aggression, and the American political class' and American establishment's almost unanimous, heavily biased, one-sided views about the Israeli/Palestinian issue that cowardly and hypocritical American liberals and Donkey partisans have not only always shied away from but have also viciously derided the American left, e.g., Chomsky, etc, and others who have had the moral courage, intellectual honesty, and foresight to speak out about from the beginning when it was far less "acceptable" to do so. So no, it's not just Congressional Democrats and Obama. American liberals have zero credibility on these issues.

Montag said...

@SteveB: "I think you meant to say that the very existence of the empire remains questioned."

i suspect Anon meant something more like 'the idea that we should even remain an empire remains unquestioned.'

do you always have to be so obtuse?

ChrisWWW said...

hv,
I understand your point. It's one that folks like Chris Floyd and Ralph Nader try to hammer home to us every chance they get. Most Democrats and Republicans are evil or the same, stop supporting the system, and so on.

For some reason that logic hasn't convinced Greenwald or Chomsky, who both believe that picking the average Democrat over the average Republican will do a great deal of good despite their flaws. It's not as if we wouldn't vote for a viable, anti-imperial third-party candidate if they came along out of some sort of duty to the Democratic party.

In the last election, should I have not helped Obama defeat McCain because the Democrats don't give a damn about Somalia? Take the issue of torture. I doubt McCain would have ended the practice after having drafted legislation protecting it, but Obama ended it during his first week in office.

Also, I have to take issue with the idea that systematic torture is a natural result of our international ambitions. Somehow we managed to avoid institutionalizing it for 50 years.

The fact that liberals don't know about Somalia makes what's happening there the fault of liberals. Hrmm. It seems that liberals got pretty upset about Iraq and even now a good number are upset about Afghanistan. Maybe if our media bothered reporting on it at all the liberal outrage would grow.

****
Here is some more from Yglesias today:
Meanwhile in the present day you get this pervasive sense that we’re embarked upon our imperial project for the sake of everyone else. So instead of responding rationally to the fact that other people don’t like it and it’s costing us a ton in blood and treasure, we get bitter and defensive about the fact that other people don’t like it. But there’s no reason we should expect them to like it, or that we should refuse to see the world for what it is and think seriously about whether or not this extremely forward-leaning posture is really helping us or anyone else.http://yglesias.thinkprogress.org/archives/2009/04/the-myth-of-american-selflessness.php

IOZ said...

Oh yeah, think of the children.

ChrisWWW said...

IOZ,
You mean, like this?

Anonymous said...

hv,

If you took out all the name calling and nonsense words like "unprecedented", your post would be almost readable. I mean really, you could take each one of the paragraphs and make it a sentence. I can't believe you spent the time to write all that out. Here's a tip: say "Donkey" a few more times, its almost making a point. Or was that supposed to be funny?

Maybe your sense of humor IS the problem. Jon Stewart's "reveling" in the killing of the pirates was satirical. The whole point of the segment was to mock the cable news media for THEIR reveling in it. That was the whole reason for acting out of the SEAL mission in the bathtub, because it was to be seen in contrast with the computer graphics the cable news media used.

SteveB said...

i suspect Anon meant something more like 'the idea that we should even remain an empire remains unquestioned.'Your suspicion is as good as mine, pal.

But sure, there are people who refuse to question the idea that we must remain an empire. Boy, do I hate those people. I just don't think that "outraged at torture" is a reliable indicator of who they are. After all, the only example we've been given, in post and thread, is Glenn Greenwald, and he's a counterexample.

C'mon, people. Can't we come up with even one example of a liblogger saying, "Damn, I sure hate torture, but drone attacks give me a hard on." Even one? Pleeeeze?

A. Pwog said...

Oh thank goodness God-Emperor Obama ended torture as we know it! Thank goodness he's brought us back to the good old days of extraordinary rendition so other countries will do the torturing for us and we good liberals don't have to worry our empty little heads about it anymore!

hv said...

Jon Stewart's "reveling" in the killing of the pirates was satirical.Says who? You? Why do you think your interpretation is more valid than mine? Can you really say with full certainty that Stewart's visibly patriotic and bloodthirsty glee over the killing of those darkie Somali pirates by the Navy SEALS was simply satirical? At best, I think you could argue Stewart's behavior is open to either interpretation: yours or mine. Taking into account Stewart's track record and behavior with various guests from the military and the man-crush he had for the longest time over John McCain, it was quite clear to me that Stewart was revelling in the killing of those pirates with typical liberal "patriotism". Liberals are nationalists and statists to their very core, and Stewart has always been eager in the past to prove his wonderful "superior patriotism" and to show that even though was against the Iraq war, he really really loves the military and "supports the troops".

hv said...

Also, I have to take issue with the idea that systematic torture is a natural result of our international ambitions. Somehow we managed to avoid institutionalizing it for 50 years.It wasn't a unipolar world for 50 years. The US had a formidible ideological and military rival in the USSR until quite recently. I'm sure you can understand that institutionalizing torture at the very same time the US was supposedly engaged in a gloriously apocalyptic battle between "good" and "evil" against those evil commies would have been really, really bad PR. After all, torture was only something those evil Nazis and evil commies engaged in, and America was fighting the evil commies because America cared about freedom and human rights and all that wonderful stuff, not because the USSR was a military and ideological rival as more cynical people on the left might have suggested. With the demise of the USSR, the US had no particular need to restrain its power and imperial ambitions or to maintain the facade of a human- rights-defending Shining-City-on-the-Hill ideological alternative.

Anonymous said...

Yeah let's just go with your interpretation. Just forget about the fact that the primary purpose of The Daily Show has always been to mock the media and be satirical. Its easier to be a reactionary jackass.

Anonymous said...

I think you meant to say that the very existence of the empire remains questioned. That is, the people you scorn are questioning whether we are an empire.No, homey, no. See, we're past that phase. Acceptance? Already there. He's talking about something else entirely, and you ain't grasping it.

hv said...

Yeah let's just go with your interpretation. Just forget about the fact that the primary purpose of The Daily Show has always been to mock the media and be satirical. Its easier to be a reactionary jackass.I'll ignore your petty insult as it won't get me anywhere to simply trade insults.

I will say this though: watch the segment again. Certainly the bathtub segment was silly and was perhaps a satire of the media's behavior, but pay attention to Stewart's behavior and reactions before that bathtub segment. I think if you watch Stewart's behavior carefully, my interpretation is correct.

Also, while the primary purpose of the Daily Show has been comedy or satire, Stewart has repeatedly injected his political beliefs and ideological leanings into the show. You can see it with his utter distaste of Hugo Chavez, for example. Don't tell me that doesn't reflect his own personal opinion.

Anonymous said...

I don't really care about what you think of Jon Stewart. I'm not here to debate about him or defend him. I'm just saying, you didn't get the joke and you use your misinterpretation as some point in your dumb generalizing argument about "donkey liberals".

More than anything I'm just having fun trolling the troll ;)

hv said...

I'm just saying, you didn't get the joke and you use your misinterpretation as some point in your dumb generalizing argument about "donkey liberals".And again, I'm saying who the fuck are you to claim with such authority that I'm the one who misinterpreted Stewart and didn't get the alleged joke? There may have been some joke or satire about the media there, but Stewart was also clearly reveling over the killing of those Somali pirates. Maybe you were simply too oblivious to pick up on what I picked up about Stewart's behavior. And as I already said above, Stewart has a track-record based on past behavior with his various guests, especially those from the military, that are part of the same pattern of behavior.

Liberal nationalism and lining up with militarism and empire by Donkey liberals is actually quite common and fairly predictable, and is exactly why liberal Democrats have zero credibility and can't be trusted. They seem to suddenly embrace everything they supposedly stood against for when it was the other team, i.e., the Republicans, in charge. It's not "dumb generalization". It's a long track record and pattern of behavior by liberal Democrats.

And I'm not a troll. I'm trying to make a point here. If you don't agree, that's fine. We have nothing else to discuss then. I'm done with you.

I wouldn't mind though hearing how other people here interpreted Stewart's behavior and if they picked up on the same thing I did, or if they interpreted it as just one big fucking joke the way you did.

SteveB says:

C'mon, people. Can't we come up with even one example of a liblogger saying, "Damn, I sure hate torture, but drone attacks give me a hard on." Even one? Pleeeeze?
you might want to check out that linked article above for an example of a Donkey liberal, i.e., Joan Walsh, and her gleeful and tearful support for militarism and American imperialism, even as she expresses her faux-outrage over torture.

Anonymous said...

Well if you aren't a troll, what are you? You are throwing so many random accusations that are completely off topic just hoping someone will challenge your awesome authority. How did this turn into something about Jon Stewart? What did he ever do to you anyways?

It is dumb generalization. I trust you can handle looking up the definition of generalization. Its dumb because it lacks any nuance or critical thought. Its as stupid as partisan politicians sitting around saying the other side is the enemy. You act just like what you proclaim to hate.

And what is your point exactly? You don't like liberals? Gee, how insightful.

ChrisWWW said...

Yes... somehow we've discovered that the average American Democrat is responsible for a conflict in Somalia that hardly anyone outside the AlterNet/Common Dreams crowd was even aware of. That and Jon Stewart's apparent glee at the death of hostage taking pirates means that all liberal democrats are insufferable hypocrites when it comes to condemning torture.

Not that HV likes torture mind you, it's just that he can't stand that anyone else agrees. It was like when his favorite local band made it to the big time, and he was forced to abandon them rather than be accused of liking popular music.

TGGP said...

I don't think the U.S is an empire. It's a hegemon. Empire implies more responsibility.

Anonymous said...

Because, of course, politics is only shitty little high-school games writ large - and that's why Chris is a really-realistic pwogwessive Obamabot. Look out! Don't get him mad! He'll write a stern letter to La Nan!

ChrisWWW said...

"We believe in nothing, Lebowski. Nothing. And tomorrow we come back and we cut off your johnson."

Anonymous said...

"He'll write a stern letter to La Nan!"

Its funny when someone wooshes themselves. You sure put him in his place!

Anonymous said...

How did this turn into something about Jon Stewart?
Because you insisted on arguing that he didn't really mean what he said?

You're right, HV, it was obviously in earnest. I guess the need to believe in a clear-cut case of good guys righteously taking out the bad guys was impossible to resist for him. And yes, I've long been sick of his "even-handed" attacks on people like Chavez and his oft-noted cozy friendships with some of the most vapid (Brian Williams) and repugnant (McCain, Kristol) people around.

Makko said...

The idea that our interrogations are a unique moral stain is cracked and insane.But it is unique. Unlike the run-of-the-mill, all-over, fuck-out-of killing (alas), torture is against the law.

So, sorry. But I'd like to see some of these sadistic bastards hurt.

Mr.Fundamental said...

54 comments?

meh.