That’s the headline in the San Jose Mercury News today. I’ve got news for you, Mr. President: Just having you in the oval office is torturing a lot of us.
Okay, okay. I suppose that, by some tortured logic, it may be true what you said: "This government does not torture people." True. Technically. If guns don’t kill people, then probably the government doesn’t torture them, either.
Right. It’s the people in the government who do it.
Not that I think you, Mr. President, are standing behind that sophistry to try to wiggle out of this one. I hear that the Department of Justice just defined "torture" to exclude a few unpleasant things. Does that mean you’re planning to be President for life? Better start making plans, because you are leaving a tremendous moral dilemma for the next CINC.
If I were you, I’d be careful what I let out of the torture bag. You never know. The next President could be someone like Hillary Clinton. What if she decides to torture all former male Presidents? Scary, huh? Maybe she could get the truth out of you by dunking you in cold water and then slapping you around a bit.
Let me make this clear: We don’t believe you. We don’t think you are telling us the truth when you say our government isn’t torturing people. We think you ordered it. We think you approve of it. We think you got angry and decided that a little torture wouldn’t hurt anyone you cared about. You just wouldn’t be able to get away with calling it what it is. Prove me wrong, if you can.
Meanwhile, let’s have a frank discussion about what you did order and what you did approve. Let’s have the details about what’s in the 2005 legal opinions from the Justice Department authorizing the CIA to torture people. I’m not going to beat around the Bush on this; it’s torture. "Painful physical and psychological tactics, including head-slapping, simulated drowning and frigid temperatures" are ways to torture people. I’m just going to call them that, not "harsh interrogation."
Caution: Serious point coming up.
The American people deserve to know and pass judgment on what their government is doing. You can tell that to Tony Fratto, who complained about The New York Times revealing the memorandums. Let me address you directly, Tony, too. Undermining the U.S. Constitution is treason in the strictest sense. Blocking information that the American people have a right to know and an obligation as citizens to assess is undermining the First Amendment. To call for others to censor this information is a blasphemy in the halls of democracy. I have no doubt that you have your supporters for this, but all sensible people will shun you and your fascist ways.
We all know what this is about. This is about destroying western democracy. A little secrecy here. A little torture there. Throw a few people in prison, a prison that isn’t even accessible, and keep them there without trial. Bankrupt the middle class. Attack as "traitors" or "phony" anyone who speaks out. Sound familiar? We aren’t supposed to compare anyone to the Nazis because their evil is supposed to be "unique." It’s not unique. It’s garden variety evil, and if your garden starts to sprout weeds, then you’d better get to weeding, because if it spirals out of control, a full-blown Nazi regime is what you’ll get. What more does the Bush Administration need to do to make them completely comparable to the Nazis? Genocide? No, sorry, they’ve killed perhaps a hundred thousand Iraqis and smashed their country. Torture? Ha. Leader held up as above the law? Check. Secret prisons? Secret police? Give me one thing that separates them from the Nazis in their earliest days in anything but scale. Please find me something. I’m hoping. Bring it on.
The primary reason it doesn’t feel like the Nazis is because the U.S. in 2007 isn’t Germany in 1937. The ground on which this seed has fallen isn’t fallow earth to fascism. It’s a much more diverse and a much more tolerant society. But the seed is the same seed. You can tell because they are not willing to have transparency. They are not willing to have a truly independent body take a look or have a say, whether it’s Congress, the courts or the media. And when someone is doing something totally in secret and won’t allow a reasonable, independent body to take a look, then you can be sure that corruption and criminality lie below the surface. Otherwise, there would be no problem with the FISA court reviewing everything; there would be no problem with the intelligence committees of both houses knowing all. This isn’t about security. It’s about criminal behavior. You can tell just because they are blocking proper oversight.
This is a prototype fascist administration. These people are trying it out to see if it works. Believe me, if they get it to work, they’ll scale it up. People have to be blunt about what this is and their disgust for it. Even the Mercury News wimped out a bit. Their inside headline was: "Bush defends harsh interrogation" not "Bush defends torture." Of course, they have to retain a little bit of journalistic distance, but when the plain truth is that he is defending torture, then maybe it’s time that they put that in 36 pt. type.
I’m going to be counting. I’m going to be counting the Democrats in Congress who take a stand on this. I’m going to be keeping track because next year there are going to be congressional elections* and I’m going to want to know who to support and who to oppose. Right now, I’ve got about a handful of congressional Democrats on my list who I would give money to. Out of the rest, I’m going to pick a handful to target, and I don’t mean in a good way. Every one of them will have a challenger. I’m going looking and I’m going to find challengers in the primaries. You do to. If you have any plans to give to a Democrat next year, start thinking about who you want to replace your current members of Congress if they don’t get with the program. The congressional elections are where the real action will be next year, since the heat is really off on the presidential race.
Thank goodness.
(See "Bush defends harsh interrogation: methods are not torture, president says" by Sheryl Gay Stolberg of The New York Times, in the San Jose Mercury News page 4A, October 6, 2007.)
* Call me naïve. Call me optimistic. Call me what you will. This is what I believe, and God help us if I’m wrong.