Letters to the Editor
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@elephantman
You wrote: “By the way, John Yoo never recommended nor would have tolerated any torture of any soldiers from any nation.”
But the key point for me is that this was recommended against human beings (whether or not they are soldiers seem irrelevant to me). Over at the blog Humanity Against Crimes,
Ondolette wrote:
“Much of the material coming out now centers around 2002: In January, opinions were solicited from the OLC about whether or not the Geneva Conventions and the U.N. Convention Against Torture and Cruel, Inhuman and Degrading Treatment (CATCIDT) applied first to al Qaeda, and then to the Taliban. These opinions were available to President Bush in January, as the government sought to figure out what to do about prisoners captured in Afghanistan, and President Bush issued a pair of memos denying first al Qaeda, then the Taliban, both the protection of prisoners of war, and the protections of common Article 3.”
The key phrase to me is : “whether or not the Geneva Conventions and the U.N. Convention Against Torture and Cruel, Inhuman and Degrading Treatment (CATCIDT) applied first to al Qaeda, and then to the Taliban”
How disgusting that it would be even asked: the conventions should apply to anyone who is a human being, that should be the default position.
You call the actions in wwII that would have mimicked what nazis did “regrettable”. If we did indeed do things that mimicked them, they were not regrettable, they were horrors. The fire-bombing of Dresden comes to my mind immediately as a horror against humanity that should be spoken against.
It is because we are fighting, as you put it, “groups who maintain the explicit goal of the extermination of Jews and who utilize the most massive means of terrorism known in our age” that we should be even more careful to “find such fault with the governmnent of the United States as it fights those terrorists.” We must not let them make us become like them. That would be a true defeat. I would rather die than be like them. The worst thing of all would be to lose my humanity, to lose my soul.
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Excuse me, I stand by what I said...
Professor Yoo's DoJ memoranda that has all of your knickers in a bunch was addressed to "Military Interrogations of Ulawful Alien Combatants Held Outside of the United States."
Professor Yoo acknowledges, has always acknwoledged, the applicability of the Geneva Conventions to other kinds of captives.
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John Yoo, choir boy
(By the way, John Yoo never recommended nor would have tolerated any torture of any soldiers from any nation.)
@elephantman
nor has Rumsfeld, Cheney, Feith and al. They would NOT touch a fly.
These people are all GOOD americans we are very proud of. Role models.
Elephantman just does NOT get it. And all his confreres either. We can torture the rest of the world but they have no right to do it to us. We are angels and they are beasts. We have Truth on our side. Exceptionalism.
And Karen Hughes is still trying to explain to all the Arabs that America is a country of laws not of torturers. How is she doing in her difficult task?
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But elephantman,
your point about "Military Interrogations of Ulawful Alien Combatants Held Outside of the United States" doesn't address the point: why should we treat any human beings differently? Even if they are unlawful alien combatants held outside the US, they are still human beings. What I at least am protesting is the treating of any human being in those ways. It is wrong.
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Balance at NPR
When John Yoo is fired from Berkeley, NPR should hire him to balance Evil Bill Moyers.
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@C.O. JONES
The link you provided is the scariest Yooism I have heard so far.
John Yoo publicly argued there is no law that could prevent the President from ordering the torture of a child of a suspect in custody – including by crushing that child’s testicles.
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We can't handle the truth!
Ward Churchill is no John Yoo. Damn right.
Yeah, Ward Churchill never had a serious job, either. Never had any responsibility for national security. Never had to formulate a serious legal argument on any subject. --ElephantmanWe wanted Yoo on that wall. We needed Yoo on that wall.
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But Seriously, Folks...
For me, a compelling aspect of reading Glenn's work is that it helps me to keep my head down just a little bit, which relaxes the lockjaw of my cynicism just enough to allow me to take in some nutrients. (Then it tightens up again.)
I have a tendency to disengage from the present while scowling at the black horizon of the future. So it's helpful to be reminded or persuaded that Resistance Is Not Futile, although it requires noses to the grindstones.
I can watch workaholics work all day!
This rambling preface is to explain that although I'm trying not to dwell on it, I very much fear and expect that regardless of who becomes president, that the heinous criminal Unitardiviks will escape serious legal repercussions.
It may be a given that the already-demented Maverick of the Living Dead would pardon the War Criminal-in-Chief and his henchpersons. But it's pretty close to a given that neither Obama nor Clinton will bring the hammer down on these vile malefactors, and will merely turn away from the blood and ruin at the Oval Office doorstep wrought by the maladministration's multifarious wrongdoings, and crying to heaven for redress.
I've elaborated elsewhere, but I find it all too likely that Clinton will justify a de facto amnesty on the brittle technocratic grounds of facilitating a "healing" and "restorative" bipartisan process to optimize the flow of the very remedial legislation that We the People mandated!
Obama, I expect, would pitch it in Lincolnesque terms: best to let bygones be bygones, rise above being mired in the degrading and tumultuous conflicts of the past, and seek healing and reconciliation in accordance with the better angels of our nature.
There is a plethora of important legal and procedural rollbacks and reforms necessary to reverse the staggering depredations of the present regime-- and this argument is trumps when arguing for a general truce and amnesty. The new president will claim to be carrying out his or her "mandate", and decline to bring anything messy or counterproductive to the nice, clean table.
And if the flip side of this ticket to healing our torn and tired nation (or at least putting it into remission) is an Out of Jail Free card for the incumbents and their enablers-- well, as Madeleine Albright notoriously once remarked, "we think the price is worth it".
And anyway, the new incumbent will feel entitled to a funeral at least as splendid as Gerry Ford's, and what better way to guarantee it?
So, invariably the plutocrats, kleptocrats, kakistocrats, and retinue of brutal fixers and yes-persons will all live happily ever after, prosperous and socially active in the amoral demi-monde of elites, where the only blood is a Bloody Mary, and conviviality reigns. And they'll be all over the teevee to admire, especially now that we have a permanent campaign estrus. And the media celebrity infotainwhores will invite them on for bouts of mutual slobbering in the guise of inside information and cutting-edge analysis.
On a slight tangent, I have a pet theory asserting that politics itself has become steadily but somehow almost imperceptibly transmogrified in my lifetime, i.e. since JFK's administration. I have lots of dots to connect, and blanks to fill in, but I argue that in the last few decades, politics has become corporatized.
I envision this as a gradual process, like silicates saturating a chunk of wood, replacing its cellulose, and turning it into petrified wood.
Similarly, our political offices have increasingly required candidates and incumbents to manage and develop an operating budget, and spend a good deal of time raising capital. Think about it-- political office is corporatized, symbiotically fused to financial and corporate interests; where rivers of money flow, third parties settle, as everyone from fishermen to millwrights settle on the banks of a teeming river.
IMO, the basic Constitutional framework, including its descriptions of the duties of the branches, are perceived by the current political elite as if through a glass, darkly. Because there are bits that are simply irreconcilable with modern business practice. There are courses of action in that obsolescent charter that are baldly politically risky, and divisive.
In short, the Constitution presupposes that there are circumstances in which a politician is expected to abandon business-as-usual, and actually devote time, energy, and political capital in an exhausting and dubious struggle involving some troublesome political contretemps!
That's more than enough for now, I think. FWIW, the insight that our politicians have degenerated into para-corporate middle managers, wrapped in para-corporate culture like a shroud (ah, the Rhetoric of Excellence!), struck me when I heard politicians like Barney Frank, David Obey, and John Conyers scold and rebuke anti-war, pro-impeachment, and social-justice advocates' criticisms of them.
They sounded like irate corporate vice-presidents crankily dismissing a gaggle of Michael Moore wannabes. They were nettled that these normally supportive and adulatory constituents dared to express disappointment and disagreement with their work. The crybabies weren't living in the "real world", didn't realize that taking the trick, doing the deal, was what politics is all about.
All this to say that I don't see any pervasive support in the dominant duopoly for social justice beyond platitudes and lip service. Glenn, Digby, Jane Hamsher, Media Matters, and others I'm forgetting at the moment are all the Justice League of Amerika we've got.
PS: I'm leaving room for a response that my final comment couldn't be more wrongheaded, and that all of us who aren't rectocranially compromised are the Justice League of Amerika! Or "America", if you're one of those "what's up with this 'Amerika' crap, anyway?" people.