While wandering through the woods looking for "terrists" as he fought the GWOT, Cheneylocks eventually found himself alone and lost. The Big Bad Wolf had eaten his grandmother, but he could not get him to confess. He had to find a way to get the wolf to talk before he ate another member of the family, but Cheneylocks felt the need to keep up appearances that his methods were still tame enough to stay out of the Hague.
The first bed of nails he came across was too soft. It was within the law, but the Wolf wouldn’t feel a thing. Even grandmother could withstand this.
The second bed of nails was waaay too hard. The ghosts of the Marquis de Sade and Tomas de Torquemada told him it was over the top. Even Cheneylocks realized that shredded bone and flesh couldn’t confess once they were no longer even attached to each other. After the civilzed world declared that barbaric means were for barbarians, we were supposed to be beyond that.
But the third bed of nails, er – torture – was just right...
(I use Cheneylocks here as a simplified figurehead for Bush/Cheney and whatever other life forms in the Bush administration who dreamt up this great disparaging of our collective reputation in the name of "safety".)
Cheneylocks was sure that this third bed of nails could even plausibly be renamed "enhanced interrogation techniques". Cheneylocks was told by his agents (who knew about it because they had been trained to find a way to survive on this kind of bed when forced to sleep on one in someone else’s house) it was just right to get valuable information from "high-level" detainees. And with a little subterfuge, Cheneylocks favorite wordsmiths in the administration were sure they could fork around with the definition to make it squeeze right into the only hole left between "war criminal" and "we treat terrorists like guests at Motel 6".
Cheneylocks knew everyone would understand – because this was the BIG BAD WOLF – after all, if you couldn’t get medieval on the freakin’ wolf, then when could you? There had to be an exclusion or exemption or some kind of loophole. Besides, people would understand – they were scared of the wolf, too...
And so Cheneylocks went to sleep that night with a big smile on his face. Somewhere in his dreams, Bush and Cheney and all their little playmates at the Office of Legal Counsel just knew that "enhanced interrogation techniques" was so clever a construction that even Frank Luntz would get an erection.
But now that the time is here for Cheneylocks – and Rummilocks and Gatesilocks, Ashcroftlocks, Gonzolocks, and Muckaseylocks, and Condilocks, and even the formerly admirable Colin Powellocks – to be writing their memoirs (Bushilocks don’t count, because anyone who still can’t pronounce "nuclear" and not "nook – u-lar" ain’t writing his own book by himself. He’s still trying to wrap his head around "My Pet Goat".) they suddenly all seem to be wearing this cold porridge on their heads. The whole kerfluffle threatens to put an early end to the "We’re the ones who’ve kept you safe" World Retirement Tour,
Because we – the United States of America – in your name; in my name, in the name of the very same soldiers who had fought and died and been held captive and tortured by our enemies past, have just found out with no way to deny it, that these unconscionable motherfuckers sold our souls.
They sold all our souls – and they’re trying to rewrite history as if it was merely a seven year perpetual rerun of "24". The United States has tortured, and it somehow rationalized for almost eight years that we were so great, so noble, so clever, that we could play word games with "torture" in the same way "shellshock" became "post-traumatic-stress-disorder" that those who authorized it (but never had to put their own scrotum on the line to be responsible for what it meant to the rest of us)would never have to pay the price for what such barbarism could do –has done – to our reputation.
And Rick Perry wants Texas to secceed from the country over taxes.
Torture? He’s got no real problem with that.
Greatest country in the world...indeed.
And now you know why the word "motherfucker" flows from my keyboard like I was the bastard stepchild of George Carlin, Eddie Murphy and Dice Clay. Because if I can’t use that word to describe the kind of unconscionably shameless, arrogant, conceited, delusional, and messianic pricks who thought that somehow this shit could be just what "G"od wanted – and that the rest of us would keep painting Stars and Stripes over all the damage it was doing to our reputation –
...well, then the word just has no meaning. Even to Oedipus.
These men (and women) should believe they've got another thing coming.
And that thing which must be coming should be a few moments of silent swinging at the end of a rope after the executioner drops the gallows floor from beneath them.
Either they’ve got it coming, or we all do.
Maybe the right people at the end of the right rope might be enough to salvage our reputation – maybe. But I’m not sure. We put the world eight years farther behind in the challenge of managing global warming; we pissed away what sympathy and support we had after 9/11 and made ourselves the very "rogue state" that we helped form the United Nations to keep such rogues within check; oh – and did I mention that we also fucked up the world economy in ways that even the guy who came up with the name "the dismal science" for economics never would have dreamt of?
I kept putting this up in the Bush years because I knew they didn’t get it, and it looks like I’m going to keep posting this until Obama makes some gesture that he gets it:
"When considering cruelties committed in the name of a free society, some (may be) guilty, but all are responsible."- Abraham Joshua Heschel
It’s just a real-world redux of the old Fram oil filter commercial: We can pay now, or we can pay later.
If Obama keeps acting like we’ve got bigger fish to fry, there is a world full of pirhanna that eat shit without the need to cook it at all. We have to set the example again. We have to regain our stature in the world as the country who holds the "Higher Moral Ground" because we actually stand on it, not just look up to it like God’s own territory that we’re good enough for just because we aspire to it – but no longer live up to.
Some are guilty, all are responsible.
Do you feel responsible for these guilty monsters? Because you are. We all are. We can’t keep bragging about all the freedom we have to choose, protest, and challenge our government if, when the obvious is overwhelming that we should have, we didn’t, and we continue to say we won’t.
Unless you join the charge to prosecute those who acted in your name, you are responsible. As am I, and everyone else who thinks this is a free country. Freedom also means that we have the freedom to do the right thing.
Now is that time.
The time has past us more than once already, so now has to be that time.
The US Congress "apologized" for the internment of Japanese Americans after Pearl Harbor. Waiting 50 years to sort this out will be as hollow and empty a gesture as that was.
The greatest country in the world wouldn’t be waiting for the right opportunity to do the right thing, because any opportunity is an opportunity to do the right thing.
Maybe the greatest country in the world would have done the right thing to begin with.
Obama, your move.
Make the right one.
...for all of us.