Yesterday, President Shrub vetoed an intelligence authorization bill because it prevents the CIA from torturing people. The bill would have banned waterboarding, stripping people naked, forcing them to engage in or simulate sexual acts, subjecting them to extreme temperatures, and making them stand up until they fall down. It would still be okay to hurt interrogate them in lots of other ways.
I’m not a Christian, and I have a hard time turning the other cheek — and I still know that torture is wrong. GWB, on the other hand, does profess to be Christian, and I have to wonder why he thinks that waterboarding is what Jesus would do. And even if he thinks it’s morally okay, I can’t believe he’s stupid enough to think it really makes enough of a difference to the overall goal of national security to justify the damage it does to us as a people. Torture does not consistently produce reliable information and it does not build the long-term goodwill of the world community towards America. All it reliably does is reduce human beings to bags of suffering, or the monsters that cause it.
I am ashamed of the president of my country, and all the politicians who have participated in and supported the misery he has inflicted on people here and abroad.
I do not often engage in political discussion, even with members of my own family, because usually people just stake out positions and pound on each other. Everyone wants to be “right.” Everyone wants to win. Kind of like elections. Kind of like war. People want to win, hey, I get it. But we don’t have the right to win at any cost. We don’t. We have, or used to have, the right to speak freely, to move freely, to be in general treated equally under the law, to dissent without fear. We’ve given up a lot of that to our leaders’ need to win.
And for what? Does this feel like winning to you?
Edited to add: At the risk of seeming to diminish my own outrage, here’s a funny take on the absolute seriousness of where we are right now.
President Shrub. That’s good. The guy is so unbelievable, one has to laugh. I’m with you and the terrorists on this one. And although, I also believe that the Repubs and Dems are not all that much different when it comes to overall effectiveness, I do have to hope that the Dems will turn this around when that idiot gets out of office. Maybe we’ll really get a woman for pres with an african american male for vp. That would be amazing; surely some good will come of it.
Shrub is doubtless a fan of “24.”
Let’s see, what are our choices? (a) beating the crap out of someone in many creative ways on the off-chance that we might learn something useful, or (b) trying to understand someone who doesn’t think like we do with the possibility of making things better?
Hmm. I don’t know. Maybe we ought to conduct a survey.
All kidding aside, I suspect the underlying psychology behind torture has nothing to do with gathering intelligence (a laughable conceit in this instance) and more to do with our beloved notions of deterrence. “If you don’t be good, we’ll catch you and do this to you!”
After all, gotta be tough.