They pretend to be offended by what was done while offering Reasonable Person theories to forget about all of it and even implicitly believe that it was done for noble ends. Most of all -- worst of all -- they seek to depict their own ambivalence about torture (American Torture, that is) as the only morally and intellectually respectable position...

My mother used to tell me horror stories about the bad things that nazis and communists did and tell me I was lucky that I lived in a country that didn't do those things. She's a rock-ribbed Republican-voting catholic conservative, and I know it's killing her to see her own country doing all the things she taught me were bad. She breaks down and cries whenever discussion turns to politics.

I suspect that the more devious defenders of Bush's policies have figured out that Bush created a real problem for a large chunk of the Republican base, and they're trying to salvage that part of the base by rationalizing away the evil.

After reading Glenn's column the first thing that came to my mind was part of a song lyric from a John Stewart song:

"Don't it make you feel like kicking in a white wall".

All of these beltway snobs are nothing more than enablers for this criminal administration. For crying out loud when you've lost the ability to recognize that this administration committed war crimes and MUST be held accountable and then go and tell everyone your vacuous thoughts you might just as well take an ad out in the newspaper telling everyone that you're nothing more than a self-important ninny with no moral compass whatsoever. How pathetic.

Received his Nobel prize yet?

I always hesitate to cite the manifold ways in which current horrors parallel prior ones, since this could be seen as a mitigation for the current horrors. I don't intend that on any level--I'm a lifelong student of American history and culture who still has and believes a bumper sticker that reads "Worst President Ever." But I do think it's important to recognize that at least some of what Glenn describes here is a centuries-old American problem.

Edmund Morgan wrote a pretty significant historical work called _American Slavery, American Freedom_, about the complex ways in which slaveholding (so common among the drafters of the Constitution, our first handful of Presidents, etc) enabled many of the arguments about and for freedom in our founding moment and documents. The same could be said--and has been argued by various scholars--about Manifest Destiny and the violent extermination of the Native Americans that accompanied that narrative. And so on.

Somehow, I guess I'm saying, American exceptionalism partly elides, but also somehow depends upon, these American horrors. Don't know what to make of that, exactly, but I think it's one of those complex American realities with which all of us who care about this nation (past, present, and future) need to engage.

Ben

What a pair of pompous, arrogant, gasbags.

It's ben awhile, but I don't recall any college professors even close to this level of both personal and intellectual deficit.

This is one of the best blogs I have seen. The reason Cheney et al get away with murder, literally, is the so called centrists who provide the defense.

Hi, Mr. Greenwald:

I enjoyed this post, as I usually do. However, while you usually do a good job of pre-empting possible criticisms of your viewpoints, I think you may have missed one here.

I suspect that detractors of yours may wish to call you hypocritical for some things you've said here. You have often criticized the Bush administration for their Manichaean worldview. Some may say that you are demonstrating the same tendencies here.

I personally can understand the difference between reflexively seeing the entire world as a struggle between Good and Evil (as the Bush administration has done) and seeing a few specific acts as intrinsically Evil and unjustifiable (as you feel about a relatively small number of things, even saying torture is "one of those few absolute taboos"). I just can imagine someone on the other side of this debate trying to make the argument that you are being Manichaean here.

That was a magnificent article and I hope you don't mind if I link to it from the website Torturous Timeline.

If I'm not mistaken, wasn't it the Rightwing (Limbaugh comes to mind) which always reminded their detractors that those who take the center position are "roadkill"? Why then, do our current crop of Rightwingers seem to forget their mantra about "black and white" on moral issues and now wish to become "roadkill" when there is a clear Legal issue, which also happens to be inextricably linked to the obvious moral issue of torture? Oh, it's wrong, but...

While there are many issues where the clarity required to categorize something as either "right" or "wrong" isn't present, Torture of human beings isn't one of them. This is especially true since we, both the United States and the international community, have laws regarding the issue and the passage of those laws have decided this particular issue.

It is especially galling to recall one of the excuses for our invasion of Iraq being "because Saddam tortures people" and we must invade a soverign country to bring Saddam to justice, while at the same time, our country tortured people in the furtherance of that mission because the invasion was part of the War on Terror.

I have an idea that regardless of whether the American people suddenly experience a sea change in their attitude toward other peoples, the economic times we live in will introduce them to the reality which is that we are no longer seen as the shining light upon which the world will rotate. If we allow the goodwill of other peoples toward the United States to be squandered by our "leaders", regardless of their party affiliation, we're only setting ourselves up for a bigger fall than would otherwise be necessary.

Have a Great Holiday.

I have not been able to listen to the whole thing, and I do not want to. After listening to most of it (they are talking about the election.), I am appalled, and I have had enough. How can two well-educated highly motivated intellectuals sound so clueless?

Just one thing that struck me: I hear that preventative detention might be OK because we would only be locking up the bad guys. Can they not see that this is not what happened, and it is not what would happen if we were to do it again?

Glenn, if they comment on your post, they will sound very unhappy; they will say you have demonized them. But the fantasies they discuss! How can they be so stuck in their own worlds?