Torture, terror and the neverending war

While the full implications surrounding the “War on Terror” that was initially waged by George W. Bush after Sept. 11, 2001, have been brought to light many times before (here, here and here), Ta-Nehisi Coates with The Atlantic recently asked some hard questions that, because of Bush’s declaration and the United States’ commitment to ending terror, don’t admit to any easy answers.

Credit: Image of a woodcut depicting waterboarding included in J. Damhoudère's Praxis Rerum Criminalium, Antwerp, 1556.

One of the most important and morally gray questions: does torture work, and if so, should we be willing to use it to extract information that is vital to national security.  Coates notes some of the inconsistencies surrounding President Obama’s own policy on fighting terror:

The president is anti-torture — which is to say he thinks the water-boarding of actual confirmed terrorist Khalid Sheikh Mohammed was wrong. He thinks it was wrong, no matter the goal — which is to say the president would not countenance the torture of an actual terrorist to foil a plot against the country he’s sworn to protect. But the president would countenance the collateral killing of innocent men, women and children by drone in pursuit of an actual terrorist. What is the morality that holds the body of a captured enemy inviolable, but not the body of those who happen to be in the way? (Italics mine.)

I don’t have an answer to that last question. Critics of torture never tire of arguing — and as Quentin Tarantino argues in Reservoir Dogs — a person will say anything to make the pain stop. Or, in the infallible logic of Nice Guy Eddie:

If you fucking beat this prick long enough, he’ll tell you he started the goddamn Chicago fire, now that don’t necessarily make it fucking so!

Or, perhaps Mr. White’s rather nuanced view is correct:

Now if it’s a manager, that’s a different story. Managers know better than to fuck around, so if you get one that’s giving you static, he probably thinks he’s a real cowboy, so you gotta break that son of a bitch in two. If you wanna know something and he won’t tell you, cut off one of his fingers. The little one. Then tell him his thumb’s next. After that he’ll tell you if he wears ladies underwear. I’m hungry. Let’s get a taco.

What about the view of Creasy from Man on Fire:

I am going to ask questions. If you don’t answer fully and truthfully, you will suffer much more than you have to. I’m going to cut your fingers off. One by one, if I have to.

Or, how about Jack Bauer:

Jack Bauer: Ibraham Hadad had targeted a bus carrying over forty-five people, ten of which were children. The truth, Senator, is that I stopped that attack from happening.

Sen. Blaine Mayer: By torturing Mr. Hadad!

Jack Bauer: By doing what I deemed necessary to protect innocent lives.

Sen. Blaine Mayer: So basically, what you’re saying, Mr. Bauer, is that the ends justify the means, and that you are above the law.

Jack Bauer: When I am activated, when I am brought into a situation, there is a reason, and that reason is to complete the objectives of my mission at all costs.

Sen. Blaine Mayer: Even if it means breaking the law.

Jack Bauer: For a combat soldier, the difference between success and failure is your ability to adapt to your enemy. The people that I deal with, they don’t care about your rules. All they care about is results. My job is to stop them from accomplishing their objectives. I simply adapted. In answer to your question, am I above the law? No, sir. I am more than willing to be judged by the people you claim to represent. I will let them decide what price I should pay. But please, do not sit there with that smug look on your face and expect me to regret the decisions I have made. Because sir, the truth is … I don’t. (“Day 7: 8:00am-9:00am“)

I realize these are just arguments from the minds of entertainment writers, but the questions and concerns aren’t going away because of the Pandora’s Box that Bush opened when he first uttered the words “War on Terror.” Remember his remarks from 2007:

On every battlefront we’re on the offense, keeping constant pressure. And in this war on terror, we will not rest or retreat or withdraw from the fight until this threat to civilization has been removed.

Admittedly, the extremism would have arisen and grown with or without Bush; the president simply committed the United States and its allies to the impossible task of wiping terrorism in its totality off the map. That was the critical mistake that Bush made. The threat of violence from extremists will never be removed as long as zealots and extremists cultivate the idea that a religion or a powerful leader can rise to such heights that any amount of death and suffering are justified in order to protect them. This is why John Lennon’s song, “Imagine,” was so important, and why we should never forget his lyrics:

Imagine there’s no countries

It isn’t hard to do

Nothing to kill or die for

And no religion too

Imagine all the people living life in peace

As long as zealots have something to kill or die for, they most certainly will because in their deluded and splintered minds, it gives them something, ironically, to live for.

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Romney’s great delusion

I’m with Ta-Nehisi Coates, who wonders how Romney or anyone in his campaign could have possibly been “shellshocked” by the loss on Election Day:

I generally thought that the actual Republican numbers people, and certainly the numbers people in the GOP campaign, were sharper than this. If I were Mitt Romney I would much rather spend the days leading up to the election preparing myself for a punch, then to have myself “sucker-punched” by reality. In other words, it wouldn’t be in my interest to have people around me believe the hype. On the contrary, I’d be really angry if I found out they had. Even buying the argument that the people behind the polling are somehow biased, how do you reconcile that with the fact that polls actually predicted Bush’s win in 2004?

On some level it’s hard to not conclude that the Romney campaign, and Republicans on a whole, were not simply ill-served by their media, and their experts, but they themselves were actually requesting ill service.

This sounds a lot like religion to me. In the absence of any tangible reason to believe in the validity or authenticity of the Bible itself, believers tend to pay attention to arguments that confirm what they want to believe. And so it was with Romney. All the polls and expert opinions to the contrary, Romney and his team still managed to trick themselves into thinking that their version of reality — that every poll in the nation was biased — was the right one and that they actually had a chance. A classic case of delusion.

It must be a wonderful existence spending your entire conscious life in a fantasy world.

Haitians condemned … classy, Robertson

Christians should be embarrassed and ashamed that Pat Robertson is still on the air, and worse, that he’s still a respected (by who at this point, one can only wonder) religious leader. A day after, perhaps, 100,000 people died in a 7.0-level earthquake in Haiti, and ironically with his black, female co-host obligatorally nodding along like a newborn cow, Robertson had this to say about the lost (apparently he meant spiritually lost as well, an unfortunate twofer!):

ROBERTSON: And, you know, Kristi, something happened a long time ago in Haiti, and people might not want to talk about it. They were under the heel of the French. You know, Napoleon III and whatever. And they got together and swore a pact to the devil. They said, “We will serve you if you will get us free from the French.” True story. And so, the devil said, “OK, it’s a deal.” And they kicked the French out. You know, the Haitians revolted and got themselves free. But ever since, they have been cursed by one thing after the other.

Here’s the video … or, whatever:

Needless to say, folks have been outraged by this, not the least of whom was FOX News’ Shepard Smith, who said:

The people of Haiti have been used and abused by their government over the years. They have dealt with unthinkable tragedy over the years, day in and day out. And were in the middle of a crisis that the Western Hemisphere has not seen in my lifetime. And 700 miles east of Miami, hundreds and thousands of desperate human beings need our help, our support, our money and our love. And they don’t need that.

Or, to reference and even more scathing criticism of Robertson (I can’t say it’s not ill-deserved), and here we return to the black co-host:

The next time your (sic) wondering why there are so few black Republicans, consider the fact (that) this unreconstructed Confederate was not long ago one of their greatest crusaders. Consider that he is equating the resistance of slavery, with a rejection of Christ. And there’s an African-American right next to him, nodding in agreement.

Fuck Pat Robertson. Fuck the “Christian” Broadcasting Network. And fuck any black person who’d nod reverently while a white supremacist slanders our founding fathers. She should be ashamed of herself. — Ta-Nehisi Coates, The Atlantic magazine

And he should be too, as I’ve already said. First, let me bring some tedious facts to light, ignoring, for a moment, the ridiculous, anachronistic notion that current Haitians should be punished for the sins of their forefathers. I know “facts” often get in the way of some good-ol’-curses-handed-down-from-God talk, but the actual devil to whom Robertson may have been referring was possibly Jean Jacques Dessalines, who with the help of the British, drove out the French once and for all, ending the reign of slavery that had gripped Haiti.

True, Dessalines was no angel, and clearly was hostile to whites after his people were enslaved for so long. He may have indeed been as racist as anyone else at the time. He killed white folks and ruled as a dictator before he was assassinated. But to suggest, as Robertson has, that “they” made a deal with the “devil” by agreeing to let Dessalines drive out the French in exchange for getting out of French rule and letting him run things is a non sequitur and complete drivel, continuing Robertson’s long run of blaming disasters, natural and manmade, on God’s wrath.

“They,” the Haitians, didn’t have a choice, as Dessalines was a despot, and with him and after him, the troubles in Haiti continued. “They,” in fact, were the oppressed before and after slavery by despot after despot. “They,” more than ever, should be thrown every thread of sympathy we have as humans. “They” have real families, real children and real lives. As I have said again and again, and will continue to say, about the immigration issue and others, these people are fellow, living, breathing human beings with beating hearts. “They” are not an indicted multitude, as religion, and Robertson’s brand in particular, would have us believe. In fact, dare I say it, many Haitians are almost certainly Christians. In Robertson’s world, however, they too are among the condemned.