Rhinocrisy

We’re all Abu Ghraib guy. Hooded and muted, afraid to move.

We who oppose The War, the great global death worship of all against all from Sierra Leone to Kashmir to Utah, “The War itself as tyrant king,” we are terrified of the big pronouncement, the demand for what we and our families need, the truly human statement that we have a better way to do things.

I don’t mean a program, a manifesto, a six-point plan. I mean a diagnosis and the simplest prescription

Patient: Doctor, doctor, it hurts when I go like this.
Doctor: Try not ramming that pitchfork into your forehead.

We don’t just need to “get out of Iraq” or “elect Ciro Rodriguez” or “stop the war machine.” We need to give up the empire.

By comparison, here’s what we’re up against. Yesterday, hours after it came out that the Saudi ambassador had gone home to “spend more time with family,” Josh Marshall of Talking Points Memo wrote a column in which he laid out a scenario he said is supported by some Washington “hawks” (more accurately vultures). They want to create a pro-U.S., Shia-dominated country or group of countries in control of Iraq, Iran, and the oil-rich north of Saudi Arabia.

We hate the Saudis and the Egyptians and all the rest of the standing Arab governments. But the Iraqi Shi’a were oppressed by Saddam. So they’ll like us. So we’ll set them up in control of Iraq. You might think that would empower the Iranians. But not really. The mullahs aren’t very powerful. And once the Iraqi Shi’a have a good thing going with us. The Iranians are going to want to get in on that too. So you’ll see a new government in Tehran. Plus, big parts of northern Saudi Arabia are Shi’a too. And that’s where a lot of the oil is. So they’ll probably want to break off and set up their own pro-US Shi’a state with tons of oil. So before you know it, we’ll have Iraq, Iran, and a big chunk of Saudi Arabia that is friendly to the US and has a ton of oil. And once that happens we can tell the Saudis to f$#% themselves once and for all.

This scenario gained credence today with this N.Y. Times story, “Saudis Say They Might Back Sunnis if U.S. Leaves Iraq.” Those of us with critical faculties might find it hard to imagine the U.S. voluntarily signing up to fight a proxy war against Saudi Arabia, the Iranian mullahs and Iraq’s Sunnis, while also trying to hold off the depredations of anti-American Shiite Moqtada al-Sadr. Then again, we probably wouldn’t have set up the baroque lunacy of the Arms-for-Hostages deal, which involved our new Secretary of Defense.

While we fiddle and diddle, the people who started the war — people who might share this insane, bones under the tread of tanks babies with bloated bellies child amputee rape rape power drill to the forehead vision of the future — try to convince the world they’re the sane ones, that no one questioned the War (the 15 million on Feb. 15 (as important a date as March 19) 2003 were ghosts and figments, easily canceled noise against a signal of necessity to kill, maim, wreck) and no one truly questions it now.

The latest CBS News poll gives me hope that their magical thinking is running out. 21% of U.S. poll respondents say Mr. Bush is doing a good job in Iraq. That represents 60 million people, which sounds like a lot until you recall that just as many believe that justice was served in the O.J. Simpson trial, approve of how the Catholic Church handles pedophilia and think the killing of civilians in Vietnam was “relatively rare.”

Speaking of Vietnam, CBS News also found this remarkable fact:

Today, 62% of Americans call it “a mistake” that the U.S. sent its troops into Iraq, considering the developments that have occurred since the war began.

WAS SENDING TROOPS TO FIGHT IN IRAQ A MISTAKE?
Yes 62% No 34%

These sentiments are slightly higher than any recorded in Gallup Polls in the early 1970’s about the Vietnam War. During the Vietnam War, the percentage that felt sending troops there was a mistake rose as the war went on. 24% called Vietnam a mistake in a 1965 Gallup Poll, 41% called it a mistake by 1967; 61% said so in 1971 and 60% thought so in 1973.

Of course this isn’t another Vietnam, because the Vietnam War took place in Vietnam, and Iraq is very far from Vietnam. (Old joke.)

No, I did not. Sadly, he has disappointed even my low expectations.

Brass band with tubas! Silly parade float. Tumblers! Clowns! Tumbling clowns! Tumbling clowns with tubas! Hooray! The Democrats have saved us from… err.. wait, what’s that? Is that a cloud? Is someone raining on my parade? No! Nooo!! Quick! Cover the crepe-paper flowers decorating the giant bust of Richard Helms! Secure those blue-liveried donkeys! Cover those color guard girls with a plastic tarp! For the love of god, someone get John Kerry off the mic before something terrible happens!

Gosh, isn’t that just awful? Even AFTER losing their majority in the Senate and the House, the Bush Administration has the gall, the nerve, the gumption to refuse the right of Guantanamo prisoners to challenge their detention? And on top of that to further claim that they can arbitrarily detain any non-citizen in the United States without the right to a hearing? Those rat bastards! How do they think they can get away with this? Rubbing their lawlessness in our faces!

Wait… what? What’s that you say, small boy?

[Puts hand to ear.]

You say this is all on the legal-up-and-up? They passed the Military Commissions Act of 2006 just at the end of October, stripping away habeas corpus rights for non-citizens and legalizing the detention process? What, even creating legal means for allowing torture to be used as testimony?? Oooh, the nerve! The sheer nerve! Well, their last-minute-Charleying won’t save them, this time! The new Democratic majority will overturn that law, lickety-split. We’ll show them to mess with the will of the American People!

What is it now? Be quiet, small boy, be quiet! No one wants to hear from you. Wait… say that again… are you certain? It passed both the Senate and the House with substantial support from the Democrats? They sold us out? Even when electoral victory was imminent? Why? Why, small boy, why would they do such a thing?

Now what do we do? Who shall save us when our saviors themselves have left us in the mud? Leave me alone, small boy. I’m going to sit in this puddle and weep.

Check out this bizarre segment on Fox News, where a reporter has himself waterboarded in order to, essentially, redeem the technique. His report concludes that, since he was “feeling fine” moments after his “torture”, waterboarding was really “an efficient mechanism to get someone to talk and still have them alive and healthy”.

This should go without saying, but judging from the comments on the linked thread, it needs to be said: this is deeply fucked up. Let’s first briefly mention the fact that there really is no way to properly simulate torture in this situation - the victim is a volunteer, his interrogators^* are merely demonstrating, and he is free to tap out if he feels uncomfortable. Needless to say, this bears little resemblance to actual torture. Other accounts of waterboarding I have read emphasize that the purpose is to convince the subject that they are going to die; that this is an execution.

Now, what is apparently being proposed is that torture (as the reporter candidly calls it) is fine so long as it doesn’t do physical damage to the subject, or cause excrutiating pain. I’m appalled that this is being discussed. We are not seeking the most efficient and least physically invasive mechanism of information-extraction, here. The reason torture is unacceptable is not because it merely leaves scars on the victims (although, obviously, mental scars do not fade as quickly as physical ones), but because it makes a beast of both the torturer and the tortured, both of whom must lose a part of their humanity in the process.^† Cruelty should not be held as a virtue by civilized people. And I think civilization (in the sense of civility) is something we should still be aspiring towards.

But it seems I am wrong. I simply don’t comprehend how we’ve lost our way so thoroughly. This flies in the face of the most basic principles of freedom,^‡ which we allegedly prize so highly that we fight and die in wars around the world to preserve. We’re off the slippery slope. We’re in freefall down a sheer rock face. And there’s broken glass at the bottom.

^* Who are apparently active duty soldiers, and quite gleeful that they know not only how to perform these torture techniques, but lots more. Presumably this story was reported with the eager cooperation of the Pentagon. I don’t know what to make of their desire to advertise their prowess in this odious field, especially since the “reporter” neglected to clarify where or whence this training came from.

^‡ E.g., due process, presumption of innocence, and the basic right not to be subjected to barbaric punishments.

It appears that Saddam Hussein’s attempt to steal the jobs of hard-working Americans went further than burying people alive.

“The Iraqi forces pounded our village in April 1987, forcing us to hide in nearby mountains which were later surrounded by the Iraqi army,” said the woman, the 14th complainer in the Anfal case.
“In the detention camp of Debis in Kirkuk, several masked soldiers sprayed us with unknown substance, which caused spreading diseases like whooping cough among children, and many of them died of the diseases later,” she said.
“Six months later we were released by the Iraqi army, only to find all family members disappeared for good,” she added.
A second witness who spoke anonymously told the court that rape was frequent in detention camps and many detainees died during their captivity, their bodies were eaten by dogs.

The guy was a trooper among despots, but he really shouldn’t have tried to challenge the masters.

Indiscriminate aerial bombardment
Chemical warfare
Disappearances
Routine rape in prison
Improper disposal of remains

Now I know this is a bit sophistic — you could go back into the history of any country and find a lot of horror, and I’m not sure that Teddy Roosevelt or George W. Bush are really worse than Saddam Hussein. What I’m trying to show is that the Iraqi leader’s problem may have been a failure to think as big as the Americans.

This is true even when it comes to deaths. In 22 years running Iraq, the most exaggerated estimate of the murders he oversaw is 1 million. By all accounts I’ve seen, private-sector murders were pretty much nonexistent during that period. In the three and a half years that the U.S. has nominally run the joint, we’re up to between 300,000 and 900,000!

Which just goes to show: If you want quality, you should stick to the brand you can trust.

1988:

A witness in the trial of former Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein has said her family was “buried alive” by government forces who attacked her village.

She gave evidence as the trial for alleged war crimes and genocide resumed in Baghdad after a two-week break.

1991:

Thousands of Iraqi soldiers, some of them alive and firing their weapons from World War I-style trenches, were buried by plows mounted on Abrams battle tanks. The Abrams flanked the trench lines so that tons of sand from the plows funneled into the trenches. Just behind the tanks, actually straddling the trench line, came Bradleys pumping 7.62mm machine gun bullets into the Iraqi troops.

“I came through right after the lead company,” said Army Col. Anthony Moreno, who commanded the lead brigade during the 1st Mech’s assault. “What you saw was a bunch of buried trenches with people’s arms and land things sticking out of them. For all I know, we could have killed thousands.”

A thinner line of trenches on Moreno’s left flank was attacked by the 1st Brigade commanded by Col. Lon Maggart. He estimated his troops buried about 650 Iraqi soldiers. Darkness halted the attack on the Iraqi trench line. By the next day, the 3rd Brigade joined in the grisly innovation. “A lot of people were killed,” said Col. Davhttp://www.blogger.com/img/gl.link.gifid Weisman, the unit commander.

One reason there was no trace of what happened in the Neutral Zone on those two days was that Armored Combat Earth Movers came behind the armored burial brigade, leveling the ground and smoothing away projecting Iraqi arms, legs and equipment.

Fortunately for Messrs. Powell and Schwartzkopf, memory was banned in the Patriot Act. Or was it the 1996 Counterterrorism Bill. Or maybe the Constitution. I don’t remember.

Update: I forgot to mention that my bothering to compose this post is largely the result of my ongoing amusement with Mr. Schwarz’s liveblogging of the memory hole. He was still gracious enough to give us some hot link action. Hi TinyRevolutionaries!

I read Chris Hitchen’s 9/11 editorial in the WSJ last night. I realize Hitchens jumped the shark quite a while back, and one really should give very short shrift to everything on the Journal’s editorial page, but I’m continually astounded that people can openly espouse doctrines that should, at least ostensibly, be anathema these days. Here’s his conclusion:

The second point makes me queasy, but cannot be ducked. “We”–and our allies–simply have to become more ruthless and more experienced. An unspoken advantage of the current awful strife in Iraq and Afghanistan is that it is training tens of thousands of our young officers and soldiers to fight on the worst imaginable terrain, and gradually to learn how to confront, infiltrate, “turn,” isolate and kill the worst imaginable enemy. These are faculties that we shall be needing in the future.

This is what happens when you stay up late nights watching “Commando” and “Rambo, First Blood: Part Two” on FX.

I’m only three years late discovering this - maybe I heard it before and it slipped my memory. Yes, yes, that will do nicely.

Anyway, it was a bit about Iran offering a fairly comprehensive negotiation with the U.S., including ending support for armed groups, recognizing the state of Israel, and accepting much tighter IAEA controls, in exchange for access to “peaceful nuclear technology”, normalization of the relationship between the U.S. and Iran, and a two-state solution for Palestine. Some more detail is here, including the incredible U.S. response:

But in 2003, Bush refused to allow any response to the Iranian offer to negotiate an agreement that would have accepted the existence of Israel. Flynt Leverett, then the senior specialist on the Middle East on the National Security Council staff, recalled in an interview with IPS that it was “literally a few days” between the receipt of the Iranian proposal and the dispatch of a message to the Swiss ambassador expressing displeasure that he had forwarded it to Washington.

Astounding. I think my blood is actually boiling - steam is coming out of my ears.

Is the lack of cages for large numbers of humans. Thanks heavens that’s being taken care of.

… You promise to veto a bill because it contains provisions condemning the use of torture against detainees and sets up comissions to investigate the possibility of torture. You do that despite the fact that it passed the Senate 90 to 9.^*