Obama shields torturers permanently

[K. A. Pital]

The same was true for most citizens of Germany who went through a much heavier depression, yet no one expects them to be cut any slack for electing Hitler, so I really do not think this excuse holds any water. In a sense, the paralells between this political process and the 1920s/30s are frightening.

A lot of people consider the mind-boggling post-war glee of the victorious imperialist powers in World War I effectively doing a lot to shift German public opinion. Which would mean that there is, in fact, some slack cut due to the depression and humiliating conditions forced on Germany, even if that's not a lot of slack.

[Simon_Jester]

The same was true for most citizens of Germany who went through a much heavier depression, yet no one expects them to be cut any slack for electing Hitler, so I really do not think this excuse holds any water. In a sense, the paralells between this political process and the 1920s/30s are frightening.

A lot of people consider the mind-boggling post-war glee of the victorious imperialist powers in World War I effectively doing a lot to shift German public opinion. Which would mean that there is, in fact, some slack cut due to the depression and humiliating conditions forced on Germany, even if that's not a lot of slack.

Also, this isn't the kind of thing I've been talking about, which is a fairly simple problem of priorities. It comes down to:

What is the most important issue facing the United States today, the one that will have the worst consequences if it is ignored? What is the second most important issue? The third? The fourth? Where is Guantanamo, or punishing the Guantanamo guilty, on this list?

Remember, when compiling your list, to factor in consequences. Something that indirectly kills ten thousand people is more important than something that indirectly kills a hundred people.

[Thanas]

So what values do you place on the constitution and human rights?

[Simon_Jester]

So what values do you place on the constitution and human rights?

As with pretty much every other vaguely defined category, the answer has to be defined in relative terms. What is the scale of the violation, and what is the scale of the other issues at stake?

You wouldn't expect everyone to consider every human rights issue more pressing and more important than every economic issue. Some human rights and constitutional issues are supremely important, others are merely important, others are minor enough not to be important if there are other vital matters at stake.

Should we respond to the human rights record of a nation like China by ostracizing China? Would you think it realistic to expect everyone to do so, and condemn them for not doing it? Does it mean you place zero value on human rights if you don't demand that your government ostracize China? Obviously not.

The US has a constitutional provision establishing the freedom of gun ownership. If I had to worry about a gun law that violates that provision, or about the looming debt crisis in the US, which should I be worrying about first? Suppose I don't worry about the gun law first and the debt crisis second. Does it mean I place zero value on the Constitution of the United States? Obviously not.
____________

In case you didn't catch this from my earlier posts, none of this makes Obama's actions on Guantanamo and the torture of proclaimed terrorists right, or justifiable, or anything less than a major blot on his record.

What this does mean is that there are a lot of politically active Americans who are far more concerned about domestic policy than they are about Guantanamo. They'd be fools not to be, not when the debt crisis threatens to crash our national economy this week.

[Thanas]

In case you did not catch this from my earlier post, the reason I am concerned about this is that there will always be something that impacts more people negatively. If it is not the budget, then it is healthcare, or social security, or the mere fear of a Republican president. Which just means that nothing will ever be done and people will never really worry about it in favor of "can't be bothered, more important things to do".

What happens if this attitude persists, untouched because people are too morally bankrupt to challenge it and then, twenty years down the line, the President designates any domestic political organization, be it liberal or conservative, or any person he just does not plain like a terrorist and orders him assassinated or shipped of to secret torture land? Because that is the eventual consequence if this is not combatted now.

[Simon_Jester]

I know what you mean, and it really does bother me too.

Maybe I'm just getting defensive because I'm suffering from outrage fatigue in my own life. I've had enough troubles lately that it's very difficult for me to seriously consider being politically active, and the experience is affecting how I view other people's political inactivity.

I don't approve, and I know it has the potential for utterly terrible consequences. But at the same time I don't think that there's anything exceptionally bad or stupid or weak about Americans to make it happen. This is what you nearly always get when the government does things which are bad but do not directly impact the bulk of the people, at a time when the people have far more urgent and dangerous things on their mind.

So I start to bristle when things like this become a launch-pad for remarks like:

"By and large, the American public, by condoning this behavior, is now complicit in this unless popular anger forces the administration to desist from this course."
"Frankly isn't this more a testament to how fucked up American politics and culture is, if shit like this is not only allowed to happen but probably considered necessary and proper?"
"And I agree, noone will face punishment, because that would rquire admitting America committed atrocities, and America refuses to believe America is capable of that shit. Freedom and deomcracy, after all."
"The average American Idiot doesn't even know anything is wrong. "

See, I totally agree that the course of action Obama is pursuing here is wrong, and possibly disastrously wrong. But I've seen so many "bad news about American politics" pieces devolve into general condemnation that my residual desire not to hate the country I live in starts to kick in. And that's why I'm bringing up issues like 'outrage fatigue:' because I feel like only one side of a story is being communicated here, the "why the fuck is this still going on, what is wrong with you people?" side.

The other side is the converging effects of too many crises, too many liars and weaklings in the establishment and not enough people who know what they're doing and convey that to the public. The American left is running around headless, the American right has gone off the deep end, and the people in the middle are so tired and beaten down and subjected to so much blaring propaganda that it takes some really impressive political dynamite to get them to move.

[madd0ct0r]

I would note that following the My Lai massacre and the subsequent cover up, only one man (the first case) was convicted.

He served 4 months, before being released by Nixon following a public outcry.

The subsequent trials of other soldiers for the killing or higher-ups for the cover up were either dismissed or acquitted.

approx 500 people were killed in that one incident. Obama's actions are nothing new.

[Illuminatus Primus]

Its a global empire, we're busy making sure that the "rot doesn't spread" - the rot being any opposition to American hegemony. Obama's merely an instrument; any capitalist power of the breadth of interests and economic penetrations as American across the globe would have to resort to systematic terror, subversion, brutalization, and torture to maintain its power. Its what we do and its certainly nothing close to new. Where were the war crime trials for Vietnam? Enormous atrocities, indiscriminate bombings, search-and-destroy, torture, everything we accused the Soviets of in Eastern Europe and later in Afghanistan. What would be surprising would be if any of American brave hero-torturers ever were prosecuted. The only reason you get tried for war crimes or torture is if you're from a power or political faction that utterly loses, and is to be made example of.

Not that it is anything peculiar to the American national character, or some other idiotic fiction, it is natural any power will seek to increase its dominance at others' expense. The only thing that changes is the excuses, Manifest Destiny, defending our honor/trade/security, making the world safe for democracy, fighting Communism, fighting terror, humanitarian intervention, ad nauseum. You have to live under a rock or be educated in an American thought reform camp grade school in order to think that the CIA's Clandestine Services don't exist precisely to violate both national and international law on a daily basis, including crimes against humanity, war crimes, crimes of aggression, and torture. That's exactly what a power keeps a secret service for. Someone has to murder and torture your enemies. America simply avoids doing it within the domestic middle-class white population, and we call this "freedom" at home.

[Thanas]

I know what you mean, and it really does bother me too.

Maybe I'm just getting defensive because I'm suffering from outrage fatigue in my own life. I've had enough troubles lately that it's very difficult for me to seriously consider being politically active, and the experience is affecting how I view other people's political inactivity.

I don't approve, and I know it has the potential for utterly terrible consequences. But at the same time I don't think that there's anything exceptionally bad or stupid or weak about Americans to make it happen. This is what you nearly always get when the government does things which are bad but do not directly impact the bulk of the people, at a time when the people have far more urgent and dangerous things on their mind.

So I start to bristle when things like this become a launch-pad for remarks like:

"By and large, the American public, by condoning this behavior, is now complicit in this unless popular anger forces the administration to desist from this course."
"Frankly isn't this more a testament to how fucked up American politics and culture is, if shit like this is not only allowed to happen but probably considered necessary and proper?"
"And I agree, noone will face punishment, because that would rquire admitting America committed atrocities, and America refuses to believe America is capable of that shit. Freedom and deomcracy, after all."
"The average American Idiot doesn't even know anything is wrong. "

Are any of the statements above factually inaccurate?

The American left is running around headless, the American right has gone off the deep end, and the people in the middle are so tired and beaten down and subjected to so much blaring propaganda that it takes some really impressive political dynamite to get them to move.

I feel like this is the disconnect right here. I would have thought that "our tax dollars are spent to allow us to kill and torture people, even US citizens, without trial" would be about the worst political dynamite there is, directly after "we are being attacked" and "I don't know how to find food/shelter". Yet the vast majority of americans is neither in danger of imminent attack, starvation or living under the bridge. At what point do civil liberties become a factor in the home of the brave and the land of the free?

And if you vote for the politicians who enable this behavior, can you really claim you are not condoning this or that by your vote, you are not responsible for these things? And if you know about these things happening and are not actively protesting against them, donating substantial amounts to activist groups or taking steps to move out of the country at the best of your ability, then how does your conduct not absolve you of responsibility for it as well?


An analogy: if I see a man starving on the street as a result of decisions I made or approved of and voted for and do nothing to help him even though it is in my power, am I not responsible for his suffering?

[Stark]

Are we saying that the American public that elects those responsible is the victim here, because they're so hard done by? Oh noes, watching Fox is so hard I don't care about morality, or right and wrong, because I ran out of time units?

Frankly what Simon is saying just sounds like his OWN crisis of faith. Yes, your country does bad things. Like IP says, this really isn't very surprising or out of the ordinary; the only unusual thing is the inability of people to accept it, and take responsibility for it. Since most people dodge responsibility for shit in their own lives, it's not surprising to see it on a larger scale.

Remember all the hilarious arguments about how Germans in 1941 were all complicit in war crimes because, y'know, they all saw the trains going one way and never coming back? Maybe they were just all too beaten down by blaring propaganda? They were the real victims, after all!

[weemadando]

At what point do civil liberties become a factor in the home of the brave and the land of the free?

When it actually becomes THEIR civil liberties that are being openly fucked.

I remember asking way back when (Feb 2007 it turns out) why there weren't the kind of protest songs about the War on Terror that we can immediately associate with Vietnam. For that, and many other similar questions about the US reaction to these kind of things, it comes down to "The war/abuses/whatever isn't real to them because the Walmart is still open, 2 1/2 Men is still on TV and they don't have to hang black-out curtains or donate their pots and pans to make aircraft."

The whole thing has been almost completely insulated from the public to the point where fucking tax cuts during wartime were seen as a great move. Until someone actually starts using the Patriot Act provisions on say, crazies who bomb abortion clinics, the mainstream in the US ain't going to start giving a shit because it doesn't happen to them/anyone they know.

[Uraniun235]

Those kinds of hardships weren't present for Vietnam either. The big difference is that Vietnam had a draft, and there is no draft today. That said, the protest songs didn't change shit about Vietnam and they wouldn't have changed shit about Iraq/Afghanistan.

[Ziggy Stardust]

And if you know about these things happening and are not actively protesting against them, donating substantial amounts to activist groups or taking steps to move out of the country at the best of your ability, then how does your conduct not absolve you of responsibility for it as well?

So all the people that are not financially capable of changing the system are morally reprehensible?

Look, I agree with your general point, but this country, politically, has no electoral alternative to the Democrats and Republicans. There are no viable third parties. If I had infinite time and money, I would do everything I could to help a third party (a real liberal American party) become viable so that the system could be fixed. But because I can't do that, I am barely able to pay my own rent on my salary, I'm morally responsible? Come off it. Like it or not, the actions you are talking about are luxuries, and not everyone can make those kinds of commitments.

Does the American public need to take a stand? Yes, they do, and there are plenty of people who DO have the time and resources to do something about it who refuse, whether through ignorance, cowardice, or complicity. But don't paint those of use who live in this country and are not capable of doing shit about things we don't like as being responsible. I didn't vote for Obama, there's no way around paying taxes unless I want to be a hobo, and at this point in my life I am living on my means, not above it.

[Thanas]

Look, I agree with your general point, but this country, politically, has no electoral alternative to the Democrats and Republicans. There are no viable third parties. If I had infinite time and money, I would do everything I could to help a third party (a real liberal American party) become viable so that the system could be fixed. But because I can't do that, I am barely able to pay my own rent on my salary, I'm morally responsible? Come off it. Like it or not, the actions you are talking about are luxuries, and not everyone can make those kinds of commitments.

As I said in my post, providing for immediate survival obviously comes first.

However, if you have time and/or money to spare then at least some of that should go towards helping politicians who oppose this. Having time to spare could be as little as taking half an hour to write a letter to your representative to go as far as actively taking part in politics. If you do not vote for politicians who do these kind of things, you are also not culpable IMO.

[Alyrium Denryle]

So what values do you place on the constitution and human rights?

As with pretty much every other vaguely defined category, the answer has to be defined in relative terms. What is the scale of the violation, and what is the scale of the other issues at stake?

You wouldn't expect everyone to consider every human rights issue more pressing and more important than every economic issue. Some human rights and constitutional issues are supremely important, others are merely important, others are minor enough not to be important if there are other vital matters at stake.

Should we respond to the human rights record of a nation like China by ostracizing China? Would you think it realistic to expect everyone to do so, and condemn them for not doing it? Does it mean you place zero value on human rights if you don't demand that your government ostracize China? Obviously not.

The US has a constitutional provision establishing the freedom of gun ownership. If I had to worry about a gun law that violates that provision, or about the looming debt crisis in the US, which should I be worrying about first? Suppose I don't worry about the gun law first and the debt crisis second. Does it mean I place zero value on the Constitution of the United States? Obviously not.

You know me Simon, I am a pretty damn hard core utilitarian most of the time, but there are some things you can never, ever stand for. Deal-breakers that should force any rational moral being to seek succor elsewhere*. Torture is one of those things. Torture is nothing short of an abomination, it is anathema to every positive moral virtue. Truth, Justice, Mercy, Kindness, all of them. It is something our society rightly abandoned as acceptable practice during its long climb out of the fucking dark ages (a very very long climb considering), and it is something that must never be permitted to continue on our watch. Literally nothing else matters in the face of it, and any measure which can be taken to end it, prevent it, or hasten its end must be taken, or you can no longer claim to be a decent human being. As it happens, willingness to torture is also highly correlated with a willingness to do other horrible things, so you dont even have a dichotomous choice.

In the case of China, by shunning it, all you do is isolate it, and it ends up like a MUCH larger nuclear capable north korea...

Keep in mind. This is not an attack on Simon. Simply me using his post as a springboard. I usually dont go deontological, but when I do, a springboard is required.

*Proposed list of Abominations:
Genocide/Ethnic Cleansing/Forced Relocation
Torture
Institutionalized or Officially Sanctioned Rape
Execution and Imprisonment sans Due Process
Child Conscription
Rigged Elections

[Zinegata]

I keep finding it ironic that it's people from former imperialist states who keep whining about the US torture issue the loudest, and are complaining about something that was part-and-parcel of their imperialist policies just over a century before.

I mean really, have any of the former European imperialist states ever given an apology to all of the people they tortured as part of their imperialist policies? Has Belgium said sorry to the Congo yet for hacking the limbs off of people in the name of rubber production?

To somebody who lives in a former colony, it looks more like a bunch of bullies trying to point to each other and say "He's dirtier than I am!"

[Tiriol]

I keep finding it ironic that it's people from former imperialist states who keep whining about the US torture issue the loudest, and are complaining about something that was part-and-parcel of their imperialist policies just over a century before.

I mean really, have any of the former European imperialist states ever given an apology to all of the people they tortured as part of their imperialist policies? Has Belgium said sorry to the Congo yet for hacking the limbs off of people in the name of rubber production?

To somebody who lives in a former colony, it looks more like a bunch of bullies trying to point to each other and say "He's dirtier than I am!"

As someone who comes from a country that has had no chance to realize any imperial ambition in its past I'd say that you are trying to discredit the messenger in order to make the message meaningless. In what way does it matter what Belgium, France, Germany etc. did in their past when dealing with situation in America right now? If we drag up the entire history of mankind there isn't a single nation, a single tribe, a single country in the history who could say anything bad about anyone else. OK, maybe some micronations could fit the bill or some totally imaginary nationalistic vision of a country, but just about nobody else.

[Zinegata]

I'm not trying to discredit the messenger. I'm pointing out that the messenger in most cases are coming off as enormous hypocrites.

Which puts into question the motivation of the said messengers. When France criticizes the US of using torture, while they have yet to reconcile their own terrible actions in places like Algeria (which is still well within living memory), you really have to wonder whether France is sincere about the human rights of a couple hundred Muslims, or if they just want to engage in some anti-American cheap shots?

Nor is it a very convincing argument that the US population must bear the same burden of war guilt as the Germans did for the aftermath of World War 2. We're talking about the torture of a few hundred non-US citizens (mostly Mideast Muslims who the Europeans treat as dirt in the immigration issue) - and the culpability can really be traced down to a few hundred people.

That's completely different from 1/3 of the German population voting for Hitler, standing idly by while millions of their neighbors were sent to the death camps, and millions more of their lads actually went into foreign countries and committed massive war crimes. Heck, part of the reason for the war crimes trials was to absolve the guilt of the millions of "ordinary" soldiers who were "just following orders" and lay it squarely on the feat of the Nazi leadership.

If you're against torture, then don't give me bullshit about how you should do it because it's a principle in the constitution or a basic human right. Or because you want a show trial against American politicians you don't particularly care for.

You should be against torture because it hurts actual, innocent people. You should be against torture because some innocent Afghan kid got caught in the wrong place and the wrong time and died horribly.

But given that the people complaining generally live in countries whose pasts are chock-full of hurting the innocent, and restitution was never made to the said innocents, count me as unconvinced of their sincerity.

[Metahive]

OK, Zinegata, do some math for me. My parents immigrated to Germany from Korea (a nation that got repeatedly assraped by imperialists) in the 1970s. They became German citizens and so am I. How much of German Collective Guilt (TM) have I inherited and how much does that allow me to criticise the US? How much have my German friends and acquaintances, who were born after 1945 inherited? Can you give me the Collective Guilt Atrocity Criticism Hypocrisy Formula that you're applying here because I'm really interested in assessing these values. Of course, you could be just engaging in a rather transparent Tu Quoque/Poisoning the Well instead, but I'm optimistic.

[Hillary]

I'm not trying to discredit the messenger. I'm pointing out that the messenger in most cases are coming off as enormous hypocrites.

Isn't that oxymoronic? It's also rather badly-aimed I feel. The fact that France (to use your example) has behaved dismally does not mean that every Frenchman and woman is tarred with that brush and has no right to comment on the actions of other nations.

I, for example, am highly critical of the US in this matter. However, I am also highly critical of my own government's behaviour in the same area. Yet, by your argument, I'm a hypocrite for the simple fact that I'm a Brit critcising the US.

This is, to be fair, a topic concerning the US's policy - so people are commenting on that. If you set up a topic on the behaviour of other countries towards their former colonies, I'm sure you would see many of the posters you are complaining about being just as strident.

[Bluewolf]

Can we please give up this hilariously stupid idea that because someone is linked to a country that did bad actions in the past, they are linked to said actions and cannot dare decry vile actions of another? Just because I was born in Britain doesn't mean I agreed with or helped with British Imperialism. I can decry Britain's horrible actions and the USA's as well. I am not a hypocrite because as said, I had no influence on said actions and I couldn't have possibly stopped them. The idea that you can't talk unless your country is some sort of saint (which is next to impossible) is hilarious and really should be done away with. It's getting very old.

Going by your France example. A forum user from France could believe that what his nation did was despicable while finding US torture just as bad. Again, the Frenchmen is not magically linked to his governments actions and can decry both. On the topic of sincerity, well most people can only do so much. I suspect many of us would at least try and stop horrendous acts by governments if we could but as said, we only have so much influence (or lack thereof).

[K. A. Pital]

France, Britain, USA, Russia, etc. - almost all old-school imperialist large powers - have been torturing people for a very long time. Sartre was right when he called torture the plague of our age. There is no defense from torture inside cozy walls of European nations either; secret U.S. prisons in Eastern Europe and British RUC torture in Northern Ireland prove that torture is never far away.

[Bluewolf]

Mhm and it's wrong, however I had no part in that and I couldn't have reasonably influenced it. I disagree with it. However this doesn't mean I am magically not allowed to condemn torture in other nations. In some ways you could argue that the US should be working a lot harder to actually avoid it, given it's emphasis on freedom.

[K. A. Pital]

Mhm and it's wrong, however I had no part in that and I couldn't have reasonably influenced it. I disagree with it. However this doesn't mean I am magically not allowed to condemn torture in other nations. In some ways you could argue that the US should be working a lot harder to actually avoid it, given it's emphasis on freedom.

Yeah, if you consistently opposed torture both in the US and abroad, I don't see how opposing torture and being a U.S. citizen constitutes hypocrisy. It is only hypocrisy if you SUPPORT US torture while opposing torture in some other nation. In this case, yeah, you're a hypocrite, but not if you oppose it universally.

[Shroom Man 777]

If it's any consolation, my government routinely tortures people and disappears journalists and student activists and wrongfully imprisons people with suspected ties to the communist movement (or islamic militants). The central government also gives guns and shit to local governors and mayors with their local paramilitaries, who murder everyone from pickpockets and ex-cons to political opponents and more journalists. The current President's mother-side of the family are also rich landowners and when farmers protested and wanted their lands back, government soldiers shot a whole bunch of them to dead, back in the 80s or whenever. Our government has always done this, and will always to do so, and nobody has really said anything about people being too distracted by other depressing conditions to actually do anything against the deplorable conditions here.

Either way, in my opinion, when it comes down to it most people are animals and unless people are getting killed visibly in the streets, or unless conditions get too ridiculously bad, you can maintain a modicum of normalcy while perpetuating abhorrent things behind closed doors indefinitely. Maybe, some day later, people will look back and be shocked and appalled by what has happened, but that's when only it's convenient to do so and even then, most people won't give a wooden nickel about it and just go on with their merry lives while more horrible things are done behind their backs in the present.

I guess it's not as glaring if you live in a country where people piss on the street and the hungry starve in plain sight and if kids lay down on the sidewalks huffing glue and nobody minds