The bill was instigated as slapdash buffoonery, and we will all pretend to take it as serious policy matter. It seeks to strip even more American rights, and invalidate more American laws. It seeks to remove Constitutional protections. And, of course, it seeks to provide mealy-mouthed, "compromising" wording to allow the United States of America to engage in the torture of prisoners under their control. No abandonment of Abu Ghraib, here; just acceptance. That was the Republican lesson learned from Abu Ghraib, from the capture, torture, and eventual exoneration and release of individuals from CIA-provided secret prisons. Not that we needed none of it, but that America needed
some of it, a healthy dose, and that a healthy compromise would be one that authorized the deeds in advance, so long as, you know, the torture did not get
out of control...
And it exists, all of it, because the administration is so devoid of competence, of strategy, of moral boundary, and of basic plan, in the war on terror, that legislation like this is literally all they can come up with.
It sounds horrific to say, and it is, but: allowing for the torture of prisoners in U.S. custody was intended as a distraction from weightier things. No, you should allow that to sink in. It is the truth. There is no pressing need for new torture-authorizing legislation. There is no value in taking up the pro-torture banner now, as opposed to during the next session of Congress. The Bush administration had made it clear that they believe they themselves have the right to authorize the torture of U.S. prisoners. The Congress has, in a fit of very balanced, very sensible, very moderate pique, decided that they wanted to play a role too, in authenticating the U.S. positions on torture, rather than leaving those positions merely dangling, like stray veins and sinews, from the administration's stained teeth.
The anti-torture choice was abandoned long ago. The "moderate" Republicans could have chosen to block any authorization for torturing U.S. prisoners right from the bat; they refused.
This legislation is political salve; it is not required law. The Constitution and existing law, presuming for the faintest half-shadow of a moment that the administration could be expected to follow it, speak clearly and decisively on the issues of habeus corpus, and trial, and on torture. This legislation is simply a show trial against the Constitution, done for the expediency of displaying Republican toughness, where toughness is defined as having no moral, ethical, or legal boundary that cannot be moved, if a poll number sticks up against it.
This legislation, allowing torture, is meant to distract from Iraq, where torture is now more commonplace than under Saddam Hussein, terrorism thrives in a swamp of resentment, hatred, and despair, and the country itself has lost all cohesiveness. It is meant to distract from the very real failures of a war on terror that sees the Taliban resurgent, Pakistan playing both sides of the fence, and American attention shifting between the waning and the sporadic.
So torture, then, even torture, is considered a suitable salve. Instead of foreign policy competence, we are told that a haphazard grab bag of law-busting measures is the closest thing Republicans will ever have to a "strategy." Instead of a plan in Iraq, we are told that torturing U.S. prisoners is the more necessary thing. Instead of bringing international terrorism to heel through a foreign policy plan that drains those swamps, we are told that our own American laws are the problem, and that we must abandon them.
And torture becomes the salve for the war. Torture becomes, of all abominable things, the distraction away from the worse things we have done, the even less competent things. Torture is easy. Torture is just another way to retaliate against the unknown brown face, possibly one full of malice, possibly not, perhaps picked up on a battlefield, perhaps arrested off an airplane, perhaps turned in by a rival tribe seeking quick cash rewards for finding "terrorists" in whatever taxi cab or faded hut is most convenient.
Quick and dirty retaliation, as opposed to basic competence. Feel-good brutality, as opposed to a recognizable and consistent foreign policy. An issue to rally the stupid around, while the smart preen and titter and shed a little more law, a little more humanity, and pick at the politics of the thing without quite tasting the meat of it.
If we find enough faces to torture, we allow for the most Republican solution available. Do not think about the Iraq; think about the evil men. Do not think about incompetence; think about the evil men. Do not think about Afghanistan, or Pakistan, or Iran, or Shock and Awe, or of men before us, greater men, men of higher caliber, who knew not to do such things, who felt their country above such things.
Do not think, merely hate, and you will be a conservative, and our country will bleed as salve for your wounded pride.
There is one thing and only one thing that I am most worried about here. We've known for a little while now that this appears to be the first post-9/11 national election in which questions about (and failures of) Iraq are now cutting as a clearly Democratic issue; that is, the blind, frothing inanity of the administration and Congress no longer seems like wisdom, to most Americans, but simply like blind, frothing inanity. If those that want America in a better place can move the national public argument to the place we want it to be -- that Iraq is a failure, has made us less safe, has been handled with incompetency, and is creating a more global and pernicious terrorism problem, and that this administration has not gotten close even to the shadow of a whisper of a plan -- then the entire sphere of foreign policy opinion starts to benefit the Democrats, not the Republicans.
All that is needed in order to take advantage of that is to simply take advantage of that. And despite our blustering over what the Democrats in Congress are or are not doing, I don't see any particular brilliance on our parts on maintaining our frame either. Clinton's Fox slam was an expertly done bit of cannonfire getting that Democratic theme out -- that we are the ones who are responsible leaders in the fight against terrorism. The media didn't give a rat's ass about it, but it made quite a bit of impact, nonetheless, by simply reminding people of presidencies that were not George Bush, and competencies based on something other than five-word, doe-eyed soundbites.
So yes, we fight against this bill to authorize American torture and de-authorize American laws -- but we fight against it using our frames, not theirs. We point out the bill is a sham. We point out the bill is merely to make even supposed Christians support torture. We point out that all of this -- all of this -- is yet another case of a Republican party so incompetent, so broken, so devoid of any plan in the war on terror or on Iraq that literally all they can come up with, as a cohesive strategic foreign policy, is "dunno, maybe let's waterboard some guys?"
The Republican Party has one huge advantage here. At some point in the next month, they are going to unveil their "surprise." Their new foreign policy fiasco, their new "intelligence", their new something-or-other that attempts to rework the whole War on Terror once again into a vote-Republican-or-die framework. We know they will do it; we do not know what it is. But we've got between now and then to set up the American public with the innate, gut feeling that the Republicans are so incompetent on Iraq and on terrorism and on matters of morality and law that they simply can no longer be trusted at all.
That is what will end the torture; ending its support in the White House. Ending its support among the people. But even now, even at this late date, America has fallen farther than mere torture. We have gone to war based on false pretenses. We have killed, conservatively, tens of thousands of innocents. We have violated international laws and conventions and treaties. We have violated our own laws and our own Constitution. And amongst all of this, torture -- even torture -- is not the end-all, be-all evidence of our moral failures. If we attack Torture merely for being Torture, we will not get the support of the American people, many of whom like Torture just fine. But if we attack Torture as just another thorn in this entire crown America has fashioned for itself, crucifying its own values and humanity yet again, and show how it fits with every other Republican failure, then we will sow the seeds of doubt.
Do not think that merely being against barbarism will earn you a single vote, in America. You are dealing with a country that does not believe it is barbaric. You will have to show it, not preach to it. Show Iraq as moral failure; tactical failure; failure of competence. Show the fight against the Taliban as a collapsed and ignored effort. Pakistani double-dealing. Stovepiped Iran intelligence. And every violation of law and propriety that we have been subjected to.
This election is, as brutal as it sounds, not about torture. Not even that. We have fallen farther than that already. This is a rear-guard action, and abandoning all fights but that one will do nothing for us but swamp all our other battlements and leave us alone in this one, small tower. Those other fights; those are just as important.
We have already devolved into barbarism, by attempting to define boundaries within barbarism that are good and bad, that are moderately barbaric vs. too barbaric, and calling all of it moderation, and praising it in our press, and praising it in our politicians. We are already a broken country, made more broken by men looking for any distraction, any shred of bloody color to help hide the deeper truths of their incompetence and failure.
But this fight will not be the end, just as it was not the beginning. There will be plenty of other politicians willing to give the Devil his due. There will still be uncountably many among the press for whom matters of God and law come secondary to the tally of who may benefit politically from a rousing defense of the indefensible. There will still be those among us for whom torture is considered good form, when done against an enemy, and for whom the laws of the country that have survived this long cannot possibly survive another day, not now, at long last, when faced with the one and only one thing law cannot survive -- the petty scorn of those charged to defend it.
In our incompetence, we have done worse things, and we have killed more than a mere handful of people, and we have carved up lives with viciousness in a vain attempt to find a policy the Bush administration could find themselves even the slightest bit capable of implementing without catastrophe. Compared to the failures of this hollow group of foolish men, even torture is not the worst that we have done. This bill will not make a thin reed of difference.
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