Torture

[hsifeng]

I ran into this article courtesy of Ta-Nehisi Coates' blog over at the Atlantic.

Some things are just true. These are some of them.

"In an America in which the former president can boast on television that he approved the water-boarding of U.S. prisoners, it can hardly be a shock that following a lengthy investigation, no criminal charges will be filed against those who destroyed the evidence of CIA abuse of prisoners Abu Zubaydah and Abd a-Rahim al-Nashiri. We keep waiting breathlessly for someone, somewhere, to have a day of reckoning over the prisoners we tortured in the wake of 9/11, without recognizing that there is no bag man to be found and that therefore we are all the bag man.

"President Barack Obama decided long ago that he would "turn the page" on prisoner abuse and other illegality connected to the Bush administration's war on terror. What he didn't seem to understand, what he still seems not to appreciate, is that what was on that page would bleed through onto the next page and the page after that. There's no getting past torture. There is only getting comfortable with it. The U.S. flirtation with torture is not locked in the past or in the black sites or prisons at which it occurred. Now more than ever, it's feted on network television and held in reserve for the next president who persuades himself that it's not illegal after all....

"Eric Holder and Barack Obama have taken pains to tell the American people that water-boarding is illegal torture. So what? That's just their opinion. President Bush disagrees. The persistent failure to hold anyone accountable at any level for years of state-sanctioned abuse speaks louder than their words. It has taken this issue from a legal question to a matter of personal taste. What we choose to define as torture is now just another policy disagreement, like extending the Bush tax cuts or picking a caterer."

(emphasis mine)

Is there really a question if torture is wrong? While many may justify, condone or even support leaders who ‘make the hard choice’ and set aside their morality for the illusion of greater security – does anyone really think that torture is acceptable?

Or do they simply choose to ignore these acts and their consequences, hoping that history will somehow accept the argument that the ends were justified in a country founded on the concept of individual freedom and rights?

Who are these people?

They are you and me.  

Comments

[sstormwatch.livejournal.com]

America has become comfortably numb to the whole idea of torture, as witnessed on various tv shows where upright law abiding cops will torture their enemies in order to gain that vital clue to save someone else, and their team mates never stop them.

[hsifeng.livejournal.com]

Ahhh..."24"...

Jack Bower, you suck.

[sstormwatch.livejournal.com]

It's gone beyond 24 now, Hawaii-5-0 has done so in a recent episode, along with another show I saw recently, tho I don't recall which one as it wasn't a show I normally watch.

[hsifeng.livejournal.com]

Yes, it has become pretty commonplace. While most of the shows still have the 'main characters' flinching at torture, many of them still let the issue pass over when conducted by non-central figures so long as it "gets them the infomration they want".

Don't you love it when it's a COP show. Like that is somehow supposed to make it OK? Because it's the law?

*head desk*