Power of fear

“Can't the United States see that when we allow someone to be tortured by our agents, it is not only the victim and the perpetrator who are corrupted, not only the "intelligence" that is contaminated, but also everyone who looked away and said they did not know, everyone who consented tacitly to that outrage so they could sleep a little safer at night, all the citizens who did not march in the streets by the millions to demand the resignation of whoever suggested, even whispered, that torture is inevitable in our day and age, that we must embrace its darkness?

“Are we so morally sick, so deaf and dumb and blind, that we do not understand this? Are we so fearful, so in love with our own security and steeped in our own pain, that we are really willing to let people be tortured in the name of America?”

--Chilean exile Ariel Dorfman

Graphics courtesy The Heretik

Don't fence me in

And the hits just keep on comin’.

As if a productive week of torture legalizing and habeas corpus flushing and indefinite detainment cheering wasn’t enough for the Orc Congress, the Washington Post notes that they also approved 700 miles of fencing along the U.S./Mexico border late last night.

Slipped that one in under the cover of darkness, they did.

The “fence” will cost an estimated $6 billion between now and 2008, when it’s supposed to be finished.

Um, guys? Our soldiers need new fortified vehicles. The old ones are junk, and there were never enough of them in the first place. And body armor. They really, really need adequate body armor.

Those who didn’t have the fortified vehicles and were issued either substandard armor or none at all are straining the military health care system at the seams in their thousands. Six billion dollars would go a long, long way towards thanking our brave and maimed boys and girls for their sacrifices: their arms, legs, hands, feet, eyes and often, brains. They’re going to need lifelong care from the country that destroyed their futures. And you know, it’s not like their numbers won’t keep growing, what with George W. Bush still madly determined America will “stay the course” in Iraq, even as he lobs firecracker-stuffed frogs at Iran.

Of course, the Secure Fence Act is pure politics. There’s a real good chance the fence won’t ever be built, because the terrain it will follow is just too wild – mountains and gorges and rivers, oh my – so I guess that means the $6 billion in taxpayer dough will mostly be wasted. How much you want to bet Halliburton builds fences, too?

Makes me proud to be an American.

***

Via Hullabaloo, I note that Susie of Suburban Guerrilla noticed it was Michaelmas yesterday, the old holiday celebrated by Christians, Muslims and Jews alike that honors St. Michael the Archangel, the protector of light against the forces of darkness. She suggests that those of us who oppose the destruction of America by the Orcs adopt St. Michael as our patron saint.

I’m not Christian, Muslim or Jewish, and I wouldn’t know a patron saint from a Flat Daddy, but hey – sounds good to me. We could use a pissed-off archangel on our side, you know?

There's a lot of excellent thinking and writing at Hullabaloo today, as usual. I never fail to learn when I stop by for a visit with Digby, Tristero and Poputonian. Drop in and say "hi".

Last chance

Yesterday, Sept. 28, 2006, Congress passed the torture bill and destroyed American democracy as we know it. Even if the Supreme Court overturns the bill as unconstitutional, America has been changed forever.

I was nose-down at work all day, busy getting a newspaper and an advertising tab ready to publish. Not a single person who came through my chaotic office mentioned the dark work Congress was up to. Talk was about everyday things: the nice weather, a jammed thumb, the tasty bread, fruit and vegetables available from the local farmer’s market. Candidates running for local boards stopped by or called to make sure we knew their views on things important to the community. The Department of Homeland Security awarded the local fire department a big grant – close to a million bucks -- to hire more firefighters over the next five years to protect the growing bedroom community from wildfire and, one guesses, to try to save our lives should we be attacked by terrorists wielding bio-bombs and box cutters. Yet another local kids’ soccer team won yet another local championship, and adult league volleyball got off to a nice start.

But on this sunny, early autumn day, no one talked about the torture bill. It was a day like any other. Late in the afternoon, I got a news alert e-mail from CNN that told me the Senate had passed the bill. Now it will go on to the president, who will sign it, and in so doing, end this great democratic experiment.

I used to wonder how it was that the German people could accept Hitler and his Third Reich. I wondered how they could avert their eyes as the killing commenced all around them. I wondered why they didn’t rise up in outraged protest.

I don’t wonder anymore. Now I know how they did it, and I wish it was something I’d never had to learn.

Taken on day-to-day basis, the process of changing the face and workings of a government seems very, very slow. We have busy personal lives. There’s a paycheck to earn, bills to take pay, meals to cook, bathrooms to clean. The front lawn needs raked and kitchen floor swept, that report to the boss has to get done, the kids need help with homework. The dog upchucked on the carpet, it dried into a gristly crust and now we need to figure out how to clean it up. We have family get-togethers to attend, funerals, weddings, graduations. We go to church and bible studies, to the gym, to cultural events.

By the time all that’s done, most of us want nothing more than to be left alone for a few hours. We watch TV, play video games, read books. Some of us fill those few empty hours with volunteer work, others with hobbies. We sleep at night, then get up and start all over again.

In the meantime, the outside world in all its legal and governmental complexity continues on around us. Most of us aren’t very interested in politics. We complain about higher gas prices, cuss at the price of a cut-up chicken at the grocery and bemoan the gridlocked traffic we fight each day as we go to work. The high cost of health care and prescription medications make us hot under the collar.

But these things are beyond our control, we think. They’re just the way things are. The only option is to tighten the belt another notch and get up a little earlier so we show up at the job on time. Without a paycheck, it all falls apart.

The TV we watch doesn’t tell us the whole story about the larger world. We get skewed and, increasingly, propagandized snippets that tell us only part of the story. What we learn from the talking heads convinces us that whatever it is our country is doing out there in “the world,” it must be right, because America is always on the side of right.

We’re the good guys, the white hats. We’re the culture that came up with Superman, right? Our parents were the “Greatest Generation.” We’re doing what we can to live up to them -- and many of us have.

So when we learn that our government has just legalized the detainment and torture, without hope of trial or release, of anyone declared an “unlawful enemy combatant” – including American citizens living on American soil -- we hardly miss a step. Can’t be real. Oh, it is? Well, our government knows what it’s doing.

Doesn’t it?

Yes, it does. Just as the German government knew what it was doing, ruthlessly and in cold blood. And it’s brought us to this point in just five short years.

I’ve decided I can’t call George W. Bush “Codpiece” anymore. It felt good to throw some snark at him, but the time for that is over. For the last six years, this president has run roughshod over America, her People and her Constitution, doing exactly what he damn well pleases. He cheated his way into the presidency in 2000, ignored warnings of terrorist attacks against the United States on our soil, and after the attacks happened, started two wars – one to make him look good, which he dropped in favor of prosecuting a second war against a weak but oily and strategic country. He did this based on lies and the excuse of his illusory War on Terror. He sent our soldiers into combat without adequate body armor, support or equipment and refused to allow us to mourn their deaths properly. He ordered the return their broken bodies, in flag-covered caskets, to their country only during the dark of night and kept the press from making a photographic record of his -- and our -- shame.

After barely being re-elected in 2004, he turned his dark attention on his own country and began waging war here, blatantly breaking the laws that make America what she is and systematically shredding the Constitution. Today, Americans are the victims of eavesdropping, without a warrant, on their phone conversations by our own government. And now, that same government can, simply by calling you or me an “unlawful enemy combatant,” abduct, detain, and torture us – while not allowing us any opportunity, ever, for a fair trial or justice.

This president and his followers have turned America into a police state.
The only way we, as patriotic Americans, can fight back against this tyranny is by voting. It is, literally, the only way we have to make our voices heard in a country that is increasingly fascistic. The election on Nov. 7 may be our last chance to force change, even in the face of huge odds.

I’m furious with the Democratic party for staying spinelessly silent in the run-up to the vote on the torture bill, and I have little respect for any of them anymore, even if most of them voted, in the end, against it. It was too little and too late, the latest instance of their abject cowardice in the face of political aggression. They’ve let their country down over and over again since the turn of the century, and they make me sick.

Nevertheless, regaining a Democratic majority in Congress is the only hope we have as Americans for preserving our America, the nation that once stood for freedom, liberty, equality, and justice for all.

Please, as angry as you are, as discouraged as you may be, cast your vote on Nov. 7.

If the Republican Congress maintains its majority, and continues to give the lawless and law-breaking George W. Bush and his corrupt and power-hungry administration free reign, there will never be another chance.

Semantics

I do hope that the members of the Senate who vote “aye” on the torture legislation (the House did so, today) realize that once it’s done, we can’t go back.

I’d like to think they’ve thought this through (fat chance) because it has a far broader purpose, in its vague wording, than to simply allow the government of this country to torture “terrorists” in the hope of getting information that will help keep all Americans safe from attacks like those on Sept. 11, 2001.

The language is so vague, and so broad, so easily interpreted to mean whatever the interpreter wishes it to mean, that it will turn America into a police state.

Under this legislation, anyone who “engages in hostilities against the United States” now includes “anyone who has purposefully and materially supported hostilities against the United States.” Under this legislation, people who do this are “unlawful enemy combatants.”

Once again, we’re engaged in a war of semantics, one that no one can win. What defines “support?” What does “hostilities” mean? How about “purposefully?”

At this moment, there are good Americans all over this nation who are appalled by this torture legislation, and large numbers of them are speaking out against it, as they have the terrible stupidity and crime of the war in Iraq and against the very thought of attacking Iran, with or without nuclear weapons.

Will these Americans one day be victims of the easy, broad interpretation of the torture bill? By speaking out, will their government consider them as “unlawful enemy combatants?”

'Tis the season

When Congress decides this week how it will vote on Bush’s torture legislation, which will condone and, in this country at least, make legal the savage torture of our fellow human beings and, in effect, pardon a president and administration who have been, methodically and quite blatantly, breaking the law of the land for several years, I would ask that they think, just for a moment, about the season.

Our representatives and senators are in an big hurry to get torture legalized so they can get out on the campaign trail, since an awful lot of them have an awful lot of ‘splainin’ to do to the Americans they represent. The sooner the better, I guess, since the torture legislation, which makes it OK to attach wires to a detainee’s genitals and turn on the juice, is well, a little uncomfortable. You know. They feel, rightly, that if the vote is rushed, the People won’t have time to really think it through. And then it won’t matter, because it will be too late, and the People will be busy watching the new fall line-up on TV anyway. They’ll forget all about that mean old torture legislation. They will, at least, until they discover that their president can call, say, blogging about their unhappiness with him, an act of terrorism. At which point, they’ll remember the torture legislation very, very well. Perhaps even first-hand.

But let’s move on. Other than the general election on Nov. 7, when the People will decide whether to keep the status quo or wipe the slate clean, what else do we have coming up in November?

Well, let’s see. There’s Veteran’s Day, on Nov. 11. That’s the day we set aside to honor those who’ve served our country in military service, particularly those who’ve served – and survived – war. What better time, then, in light of legalized torture, to consider their sacrifices? Our veterans served and fought for their country – the greatest country on Earth, proudly and without question because it, and it alone, stood for freedom, liberty and democracy. Equality and the right of free speech and the right to worship – or not – as we please. They worked to keep our country safe and preserve the bright light of her Constitution. I’m sure they’ll feel especially honored this year, 2006, since their Congress legalized waterboarding and blunt-object beatings.

Then, we have Thanksgiving. Now this one is near and dear to all Americans’ hearts, the day we stop everything to give thanks for the bounty we enjoy in our lives. Good bread, good meat, good God, let’s eat! Children all over the nation will make paper cutouts of pilgrims, Indians and turkeys to go along with the story of the Mayflower, the ship that brought the first pilgrims from England to America’s shores. And they’ll learn that those good people came to America because they wanted to be able to worship their god freely and as they wished, far away from the rigid, cruel and imperial rule of a King. As we sit down to our Thanksgiving turkeys and honey hams, our big bowls of dressing and boats of gravy, our cornucopias of fresh vegetables, cranberry sauce and pumpkin pies, let us, for a moment, consider the detainees who, even at this moment, will be getting their sustenance through a tube jammed up their noses, down their throats and into their stomachs, courtesy of the torture legislation condoned by good Americans everywhere.

Finally, it's Christmas. Jingly joy! As we celebrate the birth of Baby Jesus, meek and mild, and go on our yearly buying spree in the name of Peace on Earth, Good Will Towards Men, we might pause for a second or two and think about the detainees being held all over the world by our great democracy and how they might be feeling a little, well, passed over this Christmas season. As they shiver in their cells, hung by their arms on the wall, their only gift a bucket of ice-cold water thrown on their naked, shrinking bodies, they might be moved to question the good will and godliness of a People who could legalize such treatment and then, turkey sandwiches in hand, get together to sing Silent Night and laugh, good-naturedly, at the Grinch Who Stole Christmas.

And so, as the holiday season looms, tantalizingly, just a few months away, I would like to ask my representatives in government to consider the abject hypocrisy of passing the president’s torture legislation. As good Christians, I think they owe the American People -- and the world -- that much.

Throw da bums out!

Need a simple, compelling reason to vote the current leadership in Washington, both Republican and Democrat, out of office in November and, more thoroughly, in 2008?

Read:

"A stark assessment of terrorism trends by American intelligence agencies has found that the American invasion and occupation of Iraq has helped spawn a new generation of Islamic radicalism and that the overall terrorist threat has grown since the Sept. 11 attacks.

"The classified National Intelligence Estimate attributes a more direct role to the Iraq war in fueling radicalism than that presented either in recent White House documents or in a report released Wednesday by the House Intelligence Committee, according to several officials in Washington involved in preparing the assessment or who have read the final document.

"The intelligence estimate, completed in April, is the first formal appraisal of global terrorism by United States intelligence agencies since the Iraq war began, and represents a consensus view of the 16 disparate spy services inside government. Titled “Trends in Global Terrorism: Implications for the United States,’’ it asserts that Islamic radicalism, rather than being in retreat, has metastasized and spread across the globe.

"An opening section of the report, “Indicators of the Spread of the Global Jihadist Movement,” cites the Iraq war as a reason for the diffusion of jihad ideology.

"The report 'says that the Iraq war has made the overall terrorism problem worse,' said one American intelligence official."

Pass it on.

Once we’ve booted the incompetents, the fools, the enablers and the downright wicked out of American government, what then? How will we deal with the terrorists they inspired and created?

How about addressing and working to mitigate the underlying issues that make people desperate and angry enough to strap bombs to their bodies and blow themselves up in crowded places in the first place?

I’ll defer to my smart friend Will for a thoughtful explanation. Do go read.

A-twitter

I'm all a-twitter. Ask the fledgling -- just a little while ago I was running through the house, waving a couple of pages in my hand and saying, "A Big Fat Slob loves me!"

"You shouldn't talk about Dad that way," she said.

"No! Not him! A Big Fat Slob! He chose me for his Blog of the Week!"

"Oh." She read Slob's kind words. "Cool," she said, and went back to playing Mass Murder in Space on the computer.

"Well, I think it is. He's a really, really good writer and an astute thinker, and I'm honored," I said, and wandered back down the hall.

I really am. I love writing, but it can be a lonely business. You spend a lot of time in your own mind, in your own little world, and until someone else takes the time to read and notice what you wrote, you don't know if you've really succeeded in making your point or telling the story. Blogging is a delightful way to put it out there and let the comments fly. It doesn't matter if they're praising you or panning you, they're reading you, and that's what counts.

Thank you, Slobby, for all those nice things you said about me. You made my day. And welcome, readers of A Big Fat Slob, one of the best blogs out there.

This is America?

Throw away all the legal language, all the big words, all the distancing tactics and take a look at what it really is our country is poised to do.

We’re about to say, with our eyes wide open, that torturing other people is acceptable.

Our mad president, who tortured small animals as a child, is about to be given the power to decide what “torture” is.

We’re saying this is OK because the people we’ll torture are bad guys. Terrorists. They want to hurt us, so they don’t deserve any better. Make ‘em scream.

But this behavior destroys not only those who are tortured, but those who practice torture. The world has a long and dark history of torture and inhuman behavior. Human nature, always a slavering beast under the thin veneer of civilization, loves a good bloodbath. And once you start, stopping is nearly impossible.

So today, we’re good with torturing people we decide are terrorists, even though it’s been proven time and time again, throughout history, that torture doesn’t work.

Tomorrow, perhaps we’ll torture other people who we think are out to do us harm.

The day after that, the definition of who we torture will grow fuzzy. It could be just about anyone we decide is a threat.

It could be your son or daughter, your mother or father. Your neighbor. Your best friend. It could be me.

It could be you.

You think this couldn’t happen in America? Think again. We’re considering savagery in broad daylight. We’re considering barbarism at the highest levels of our government. Our government in America is representative – it does what we, the American people, want it to do.

Because we’re fearful and think it will make us safer, we’re saying we want our government to shackle people to walls in 50 degree rooms while we throw ice water on them. Or force them to listen to music at decibal levels that can burst their eardrums. We’re saying it’s just fine to attach wires to the most sensitive parts of their bodies and send bursts of electricity coursing into them. Or perhaps merely beat them with fists and boots and truncheons until they’re screaming in agony.

Goodness. Why be coy? Just get the pliers and rip out their fingernails by the roots.

I’m sure that my limited imagination hasn’t even touched on the many ways we can make people suffer horribly. And as long as they don’t actually die, we think this is ... OK?

Is this America?

Is this the “land of the free, and the home of the brave?”

What’s brave about torturing other human beings? We fought two world wars and a Cold War for this?

This is the face of evil, of power gone rancid. This is the face of cowardly fear. This is the face of barbarism, of savagery, the face of a twisted people who’ve lost their souls.

No. No lost. Willingly given them up. And for what? What will America get in return for going over to the dark side?

You know, try as I might, I can’t think of a single good thing that can come of this. Instead, I see nothing but infamy and shame, a once-great country destroyed.

Is this not exactly what Osama bin Ladin wanted when he sent airliners hurtling into the World Trade Center and the Pentagon? My god, it only took five years to bring us down.

We have a brief window of time. We can reject this. We can BE the land of the free and the home of the brave, show some courage, show some moral strength, show that we’re more than vindictive, spoiled, psychopathic children.

We can tell our leaders “NO,” that Americans have honor, that Americans do not torture.

But we’d better not wait long to stand up to those who’d take us, willingly, into the abyss with them. Or it will be too late.

Once it’s done, America will be no more.

Ignominy

So let me get this straight.

The United States of America will be the first country since the Geneva Conventions were created to pass laws saying we get to ignore them and torture anyway, neener neener neeeeener!

My god, I’m proud.

So our Democratic leaders are pleased John McCain and their Republican Daddies stepped up and found a way to rewrite the torture legislation so it sounds a little more ... delicate. That’s nice.

They can all crawl back under their beds now, one thumb in their mouths and the other up their butts, like usual. The whole bunch of them ought be real worried about their jobs, come 2008. I don't know about my fellow Democrats, but I'm not going to vote for a single Democratic incumbent.

I know. It hardly matters anymore whether I vote or not. But at least I can still do that. For now.

Codpiece never cared how Congress would vote on the terror legislation one way or another, of course. Cuz he tortures if he wants to, period, just as he eavesdrops on us if he wants to.

Laws? Hah! Who cares about stinkin’ laws?

He’s the Decider. He was just gonna add one o’them handy little signing statements to the bottom of the legislation saying he didn’t have to follow the law if he didn’t want to, anyway. So there.

And now, he doesn’t even have to do that.

Tristero, over at Digby’s Hullabaloo says,

“So tell me, my fellow Americans:

"How does it feel knowing that your government will pass laws permitting the violation of the Geneva Conventions against torture?

"How does it feel knowing the taxes you pay from money you earned are going towards the salary of legally sanctioned torturers?

"How does it feel knowing that the only political party with an organization large enough to stand in opposition to the American fascists in charge of this country's legislature and executive were actually boasting that they were not going to get involved in one of the most important moral debates of our time?

“And how does it feel to have George W. Bush, that paragon of moral probity, mental stability, and well-informed intelligence, granted the legal right to determine what is and isn't torture?”

I don’t know about you, but I feel ashamed.

Update: I understand that a vote on the torture legislation has not yet been taken by the full House and Senate, but that the Republicans are now all singing the same song, basically giving Bush what he wants: A legal by-your-leave to torture people. This means that there's still a chance that this legislation might not pass into law, but without a mighty roar of outrage from the People of the United States of America and from the Democratic Party, it's pretty much a done deal. Call your senators and tell them how you feel about America taking its place among the other countries that sanction torture, like Egypt, Syria and Saudi Arabia.

The button

It has always bothered me, in a vague sort of way, that the President of the United States was a “push-of-the-button” away from starting a nuclear war.

It was commonly believed that a Secret Service agent followed the President everywhere with a briefcase handcuffed to his wrist. Inside that briefcase was “the button.” If the Soviets launched nuclear missiles at us, the President would open the briefcase, “push the button” and launch our nukes at them in return.

He could “push the button” at a state dinner. Or while traveling. Or in the Oval Office.

I always hoped he had a bunch of very sober, very serious advisors nearby, too, and that he’d be the kind of man who’d consult closely with them before he “pushed the button.” The President, I hoped, would be a sober and serious sort himself, one with a good understanding of the world and of the consequences of his actions. I hoped he would understand that when he “pushed the button” he would actually be “ending the world.”

Because of the twin horrors of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, we believed that the United States would never, ever again “push the button” first.

What bothered me about all this – what niggled -- was that one day we might elect a President who would “push the button” not because there were already missiles streaking from Russia toward us from the outer reaches of the earth’s atmosphere, but just because he could.

When the Cold War ended, so did a lot of my vague worry about such things. Soviet-style Communism collapsed. We had nuclear non-proliferation treaties. The Doomsday Clock was set at 7 minutes to “midnight” by the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists in 1947 to convey the particular peril posed to the world by nuclear weapons.

Since then, the clock’s minute hand has moved forward and back 18 times. The Bulletin set it at 3 minutes to midnight in 1949, when the Soviet Union tested its first nuclear missile, and down to 2 minutes to midnight in 1953 when the U.S. and the Soviets tested thermonuclear devices within nine months of each other.

In 1991, with the end of the Cold War, when the United States and the Soviet Union signed the long-stalled Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (START) and announced further unilateral cuts in tactical and strategic nuclear weapons, they set the Doomsday Clock back to 17 minutes to midnight.

Since then, nuclear weapons have been tested in Pakistan and India, and the world faces the risk of nuclear “leakage” from poorly guarded facilities in the former Soviet Union. Little progress has been made on global nuclear disarmament, and in 2002, the United States rejected a series of arms control treaties and announced it would withdraw from the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty.

Today, we fear terrorists seek to acquire and use nuclear and biological weapons. The Doomsday Clock stands, once again, at 7 minutes to midnight and has since 2002.

Could it be that George W. Bush is the insane President I always worried about, the one who’ll “push the button” because he can? He’s certainly been making all the right noises, with his “bunker-buster” nukes and chest-beating talk about Iran.