By releasing the torture memos and then rebuffing calls for an independent truth commission, the president is doing much worse than cementing a reputation for compromise: He’s siding with the rightwingnuts and with all the Congressional pols — Republicans and some Democrats — who want to bury the past. Does Barack Obama truly believe that “looking forward” without laying blame will erase what happened during the Bullshitter-in-Chief‘s regime? Does he really want to become known as the Eraser-in-Chief?
In another context, he might find it worth reading Benjamin Schwartz’s article in the current Atlantic, describing how the Nazis established the genocide of the Jews as a pervasive “open secret” so that all Germans would be made complicit. Then, as long as I’m on the subject, he might read Nick Bravin’s article in the current Foreign Policy, describing how Lithuania’s chief war crimes prosecutor has — tragically and absurdly — targeted Jewish Holocaust survivors as war criminals. And finally he might want to hear Mandy Patinkin sing the Yiddish song Oyfn pripetchik, accompanied by images to remind him of history’s worst war crime — because he apparently needs that kind of reminding.
Postscript: April 25 — From Josh Brown’s point of view:
PPS: May 15 — To release pictures of detainees being tortured like this one will “further inflame anti-American opinion” and put U.S. troops at greater risk, says Mr. Obama, who is fast becoming the Eraser-in-Chief. But ordering more drone attacks that kill indiscriminately — including this strike in Afghanistan — won’t? Americans who voted for him believed he would spare the bullshit. Sadly, he is proving them wrong. I recall Paul Krugman saying way back before the Bullshitter-in-Chief was returned to power in 2004 that if “regime change” comes he hoped the next administration would “throw open the records” and not be “too magnanimous” to the BananaRepublicans. Five years later regime change has come, but that hope fades with each passing day.
Arts, Media & Culture News with 'tude
This blog published under a Creative Commons license
an ArtsJournal blog
Something is very wrong with this cartoon: the bars are missing.
Since torture is “inconsistent with American values,” there’s no need to strip him, starve him, tape his hands together, cover him with a hot blanket, sic dogs on him, attach electrodes to sensitive areas, have him hang from a hook, or humiliate and brainwash him. Or attempt to drown him to get information on his crimes.
That would be “inconsistent with American values…”
This might not be consistent with “American” values, but it does seem consistent with our former vice-president’s values. He seems to believe that “results” are the core issue here and not the “means” by which those results are obtained. He believes that the Rules of behavior set up by the Geneva Convention is something that can be “interpreted” as an issue of “law” rather than followed to the letter as a firmly stated moral commitment.
Having said that I wouldn’t be completely opposed to having Dick subjected to a session of “water-boarding,” just to let him fully understand what it is he is advocating. More importantly I want to know “exactly” who was sitting at the table when he and his cronies formed our country’s energy policies during the Bullshitter in Chief’s reign of excrement.
Would it take just one water-boarding or well over 100 water-boardings before he gave up the list. And why would the inquisitors believe him anyway. Dick isn’t a “terrorist” but in my humble opinion he is an evil ultra-right-wing neo-con who thinks he is above and beyond moral and legal commitments when it comes to “National Security.”
Now there’s a man with “values” – NONE BUT HIS OWN.