who would jesus torture?

Oh my. What a giveaway, as Michael Palin would say.

Pew Research recently conducted a poll on people’s approval or disapproval of the use of torture. They came up with some startling (or perhaps not so startling) data:

“WASHINGTON (CNN) -- The more often Americans go to church, the more likely they are to support the torture of suspected terrorists, according to a new survey.”

Wow. So what happened to all that love and brotherhood shit? You know, all the stuff that Jesus guy was always on about?

“More than half of people who attend services at least once a week -- 54 percent -- said the use of torture against suspected terrorists is "often" or "sometimes" justified. Only 42 percent of people who "seldom or never" go to services agreed...”

It is interesting to note too, that if American soldiers or even journalists (filthy beasts that they are) are found to have been tortured or killed outside the arena of combat, it is considered a heinous crime. Look at the mileage John McCain got out of his treatment at the hands of the Viet Cong during the presidential campaign. Note also the many current references to the Japanese soldiers who were tried and convicted for torture (waterboarding, etc.) after World War II.

Not to diminish in any way the misery McCain or anyone else suffered. Indeed, that’s the point: every fiber of my being says that treating another human being this way--ANY other human being--is wrong. We know it’s wrong if it’s done to us. But if it’s wrong for them to do that to us, why is it not also wrong for us to do it to them?

Here’s the scary thing that this poll reveals: this blithe, casual dismissal of other people’s suffering comes directly from Judeo-Christian teachings. The double-think at the heart of the pro-torture camp (the very idea that a great many Americans could rightly be identified as “pro-torture” in this day and age is in itself repugnant) that is, the contradictory notion that we can look away when torture is performed on terror suspects while simultaneously denouncing the same treatment as inhumane when it is performed on Americans can be said to stem directly from the Bible.

If you read the Bible closely, (and, yes, Virginia, I have read it, in its entirety--more on that in a future rant) retribution against The Other is a long-held and intrinsic part of the whole deal. Granted, it’s a remnant of our tribal roots, our desert nomad ancestors who lived in a violent, brutal, and lawless time, and who had good reason not to trust outsiders. But that fear and hatred of The Other remains today, and it informs the book that was supposedly put down by God’s stenographers, direct from The Big Guy Himself.

Indeed, violence against The Other, that is, one who is deemed unworthy of God’s love--again, despite the fact that we are meant to believe that He created them too--whether that means other tribes, family members, children, or the countless women who are portrayed in the bible as little more than sex toys to be bought, sold, used for men’s pleasure and/or killed, is part and parcel of the Christian faith. With so much suspicion and rage and vengeance woven into the entire system of belief, is it any wonder God’s foot soldiers would have internalized these base and brutal impulses?

It’s the ultimate ‘top-down’ argument: not only did Rumsfeld, Cheney, Bush, et al order and approve of torture--so did God.

So it can be said that this has been a rigged game all along: sure, be nice to your mom and dad, don’t murder each other, don’t steal, etc. (oh, and be sure to obey Moses’ rules on when and how to go about selling your daughters!) But only within the tribe. When it comes to anyone outside of our tribe, all bets are off. Is it any wonder that so many supposedly ‘good’ people, church-going, religious people, the ‘moral’ ones among us, the ‘values voters’ whose beliefs we are told must be respected at all cost, would support the wanton and useless torture of godless brown people who are not part of our tribe?

In fact, biblical scholars, in particular evolutionary anthropologist John Hartung says that the admonition “Thou shalt not kill” was originally intended to mean “Thou shalt not kill other Jews.” (I am referencing a paper Hartung wrote on the evolution and biblical history of in-group/out-group morality that was in turn referenced by Richard Dawkins in ‘The God Delusion,’ but I admit I haven’t read the entire paper itself)

Of course, self-proclaimed Godly people routinely violate this most inviolable of commandments at will anyway. Just as routinely, they forgive themselves for these transgressions, creating all manner of justifications that allow them to see these acts as forgivable, if not blessed.

But it is downright hilarious that these most revered of God’s supposed words--the words that countless Christian demagogues would like to see plastered on every public building, even if they can’t recall very many of the commandments--may not even apply to those of us who weren’t born of a Jewish mother.

And it isn’t so far-fetched. You don’t have to read much further along in Exodus to find God’s command to go out and slay the Hivites, Canaanites and the Hittites (who were people, presumably, and people who were presumably also created by God, as Christopher Hitchens points out in ‘God Is Not Great.’)

Seems to me that He could have spared everyone a lot of trouble if He had simply foregone creating those other tribes in the first place and instead erected a big old ‘For Lease’ sign in Judea.

So, when He said ‘Thou shalt not kill,’ what could He have meant? Too bad there was no such thing as ellipses in the biblical times. It should have been ‘Thou shalt not kill, unless...’ and ‘Thou shalt not steal, except...’

There is so much gleeful butchery in the Bible--Old Testament and New--that if an alien species were to come to earth and be given a copy, and told, ‘This is the book by which we conduct ourselves, and which we hold to be the highest truth about how to live,’ the aliens would surely nod, nervously smile, and rapidly say a polite good-bye.

Then they would proceed to run for their lives--that is, if we let them live long enough to actually read the damn thing.

The bible is more sado-masochistic than DeSade’s ‘Justine,’ by a mile. DeSade is a rank amateur compared to the Creator, who created us in his image. One of the most revered and oft-cited scholars of Christian philosophy, Saint Thomas Aquinas came up with what he called the Cardinal Virtues: prudence, temperance, justice and fortitude. Of course, he also wrote: “That the saints may enjoy their beatitude and the grace of God more abundantly, they are permitted to see the punishment of the damned in hell.”

Guess he should have added schadenfreude to the list.

As physicist Steven Weinberg said: “Religion is an insult to human dignity. With or without it, you’d have good people doing good things and evil people doing evil things. But for good people to do evil things it takes religion.”

That is torture, in a nutshell. It may be God’s law, according to the countless scribes who wrote, re-wrote, purged and re-interpreted the bible over the centuries, but it is not our law. It is not the law of a modern, enlightened America.

We know better than to sell our children and we know better than to stone ‘disobedient’ women.

And we know better than to torture.

###

shepard smith, my new hero

Finally found the embed on the Shep Smith blowup from the other day. It's one of those rare, shining moments of honesty on Fox News. Must be that ol' Shep hasn't been drinking the Roger Ailes/Fox Noise/GOP Kool-Aid lately. Although, if I remember correctly, he has grown increasingly disgusted with the bullshit spewed out 24/7 by his co-workers.



How much you wanna bet the Fox News brass uses this on-air oopsie as a wedge to ease Smith out of his contract? Gotta keep the troops in line, after all, and any opinion other than the pre-approved one really freaks these people out. viz:

olbermann and brig. gen. karpinski

Okay just a couple of quick posts. I'm working hard at working on writing instead of spending ridiculous hours screwing off on the net.

Visit msnbc.com for Breaking News, World News, and News about the Economy

I saw this on Olbermann's show last night, and the piece literally sent shivers up my spine. This woman is pissed. She is the retired brigadier general who, I believe, was in charge of our prison system in Iraq. She takes Cheney et al to task for coming out now and saying things like these acts of torture were necessary, and that we 'got good intel' out of tormenting people (not that i agree with that statement). Her question is, then where were they five years ago when all the supposed 'bad apples' were being prosecuted for doing what they were told?

Uh, short answer, they were letting nobodies take the fall for the illegal acts they authorized. Nobodies, it should be noted, who are still serving time.

Not that this woman is a saint, although she says she took the directives on torture--that were brought in directly from Guantanamo, btw; remember who ordered that these tactics be used down there?--and took them up the chain of command repeatedly, asking if this was really, really what we wanted to be doing.

At any rate, watch the piece. It's quite moving.

Here's a quick one (scroll down to the lower clip for the short version): Shep Smith, of Fox News, freaking out on live tv and pounding the table saying what thinking Republicans should have been saying since 2003: "We are America! We do not fucking torture!"

Yep, unless we're so hopelessly blinded by partisanship that we follow wherever our Great Leader tells us to go. And do not dare make the argument that this is the same on the left as it is on the right. Bush's supporters followed him mindlessly; at least Obama's supporters have the gray matter available to occasionally raise questions.

torture memos II

Wow, so I ran across this article--I swear to god--just moments ago, after I had posted my last entry. Bruce Fein, from The Daily Beast, puts it much better than I did, and he goes a step further, saying that Obama is abrogating his Constitutional duty by not prosecuting the torturers:

"The evidence is now undeniable. President Barack Obama is flouting his unflagging constitutional obligation enshrined in Article II, Section 3 to “take Care that the Laws be faithfully executed.” He is also reneging on his signature campaign promise to restore the rule of law, transparency, and accountability to the White House. He is displaying the psychology of an arrogant Empire as opposed to a modest Republic in continuing and escalating the Bush-Cheney duumvirate’s global and perpetual war against international terrorism heedless of foreign sovereignties or the lives of civilians."

Heavy shit. Read the whole thing. It's worthwhile.

Also, ran across this post on Stinque:


"The smiling Dad in this picture is the Honorable Jay S. Bybee. He is a judge on the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals. He’s a practicing Mormon. He has taught constitutional and administrative law. He worked at the Department of Justice until he was nominated for the Ninth Circuit. A Bush appointee, he was confirmed in March of 2003.

There's only one problem. Judge Bybee is also a monster."

Yes, that's the very same Bybee who wrote the first of the infamous torture memos, in which he states that in order for something to defined as torture, it must include 'severe pain,' which, by legal definitions he cites, must rise to level that could result in organ failure or death:

"They treat severe pain as an indicator of ailments that are likely to result in permanent and serious physical damage in the absence of immediate medical treatment. Such damage must rise to the level of death, organ failure, or the permanent impairment of a significant body function. These statutes suggest that "severe pain," as used in Section 2340, must rise to a similarly high level — the level that would ordinarily be associated with a sufficiently serious physical condition or injury such as death, organ failure, or serious impairment of body functions — in order to constitute torture."

In other words, if what you do to someone's mind or body couldn't or wouldn't result in organ failure or death, it can't by definition be torture.

Did I mention he's a fucking Mormon?




Go God!

torture memos

Apologies in advance for including disturbing photos with this post. Don't scroll down if you have a weak stomach. (You can click on other entries to the left if you want to skip this one.)

But it's a disturbing fucking topic, and frankly, I think it's a bit too easy to intellectualize and compartmentalize the word 'torture' without fully understanding what it means. Not that you or I or anyone who hasn't undergone torture will ever fully understand what it means. But closing our eyes to it, literally, is another cheap way out to me, another way to absolve ourselves of its frankly gruesome reality.

I’m sure by now everyone has heard about the Bush-era torture memos that were just released, and Obama being either praised or vilified for releasing them. (As Howard Rodman points out in Huffington Post, he did something “which is now thought of as optional for high officials...he obeyed the law” by releasing the documents after an ACLU lawsuit.)

And if you’ve been paying attention, you’ve heard that Obama is playing down any possibility of bringing the perpetrators of these acts--acts that were performed in our name--to justice. The logic seems to be that, since there were legal opinions written that justified these acts, the torturers shouldn’t be prosecuted, since they thought they were obeying the law. (‘Just following orders’ anyone?)



But Obama’s stance has the hair-splitting political calculation that demonstrates to me what drove some of his opponents insane during the campaign: by essentially exonerating the torturers, he has exonerated everyone. You would have a really hard time prosecuting a lawyer who merely wrote an opinion as part of his job, however heinous that opinion was, unless he did the waterboarding himself. So, in his haste to have us look forward, not back, Obama is essentially saying, just let it go. Move on, people. Nothing to see here.

Well, bullshit. I’m sure the political tenor of Wingnuttia these days has something to do with the decision to play it this way--Obama doesn’t want to give them fuel for their nutty, delicious fires by opening a criminal investigation on Bush officials. On the other hand, while moving forward is indeed an essential part of the make-up of the United States, doing so without examining our mistakes fully and exacting a price for them is not possible. (See Olbermann’s special comment on this from last night.)



Not only that, Obama has painted himself into a logically untenable, if politically safe position here: Torture is wrong, he says. It is illegal. We have changed the directives to make this clear. We won’t do it under this administration. However, we also won’t prosecute those who have done it in the past, those who have committed clearly illegal acts.

Huh? You can’t have it both ways. You can’t take the pious high ground and proclaim (which I agree with) that torture is an illegal, inhumane, inhuman and ultimately self-defeating and useless practice, and then refuse to do anything about those who have done it, no matter how many legal opinions have been written supporting it.

And what I find most disturbing about this stance is that, when you think about it, isn’t Obama taking an eerily similar position to presidential usurpers of Constitutional powers we are all-too familiar with from our (very) recent past? By saying, 'I as president choose not to prosecute illegal acts,' is Obama not placing himself above the law much as Bush and Nixon did?

A final note: what I found most disturbing about the memos themselves was the clinical, almost instruction-manual tone they took. The word 'Nazi' gets thrown around a lot, and far too cavalierly, but, sorry, these documents are something you could see as having come out of Nazi Germany, for their precision, their dispassionate nature, and their utter cold inhumanity.



This is not us. This is not America. And by placing both the torturers and the architects of torture safely out of the way of prosecution, Obama is essentially laying out a blueprint for how future presidents can basically do anything they want without fear of consequences:

Lawyer writes memo. Operatives perform as memo states. Future president says: for operatives, acts were legal. And lawyers didn’t actually commit any crime, therefore:

Sweep under rug. Rinse, repeat.