More on Obama's reducing Torture to merely bad judgment, certainly not a crime (Updated above and corrected)

Indeed, serious circumvention of statutes should always result in legal proceedings and usually does so unless some affair is settled, to the satisfaction of all parties involved, outside of judicial processes. At the same time, refusal to obey illicit orders, even when commanded to conduct them by superiors, does stand as defense in courts as events related to the My Lai slaughter and similar incidents verify. As such, any claim that one is forced to obey wrongful orders has no weight any more than it did during Stanley Milgram's experiments wherein subjects assumed that they were electrically shocking others and carried out the action merely because they were told to do so.

Therefore, it seems easy to conclude that anyone either authorizing or implementing illicit and agonizing practices on captives, prisoners legally deemed innocent until proven guilty, needs to be publicly investigated and brought to justice when found culpable. That it is not expedient due to extrajudicial complications, such as pertain to future behaviors of CIA agents and as President Obama alleges, should have no bearing. In the end, the whole matter is this simple. ...

On account of such a viewpoint, Major Edwin Glenn was sentenced to ten years of hard labor for inflicting simulated drowning upon a Filipino prisoner at the turn of the century and a US military tribunal found at least one Japanese officer, Yukio Asano, guilty of war crimes after W. W. II for his use of the "water cure" and other acts of cruelty upon Americans and for which he was sentenced to fifteen years of hard labor. In a similar vein, a US army officer was court-martialed in 1968 after assisting in a water boarding exercise executed upon a Vietnamese insurgent.

Just how could the memos' authors and the prison torturers have missed the implications of these prior judgements? If appropriate rulings are not applied to law breakers in the event that they are given undeserved dispensations or pardons, what will serve as impediments to these laws being broken again in the future? Moreover, does the military ban on water boarding and other horrors need to be more defined than these prior happenings irrevocably prove?

The report from the Senate armed services committee, written at the end of 2008, hints at the answer: "The abuse of detainees in US custody cannot simply be attributed to the actions of 'a few bad apples' acting on their own. The fact is that senior officials in the United States government solicited information on how to use aggressive techniques, redefined the law to create the appearance of their legality, and authorized their use against detainees."

In a similar vein, water boarding and other forms of severe torment are condemned by Geneva Conventions, the Torture Act, the Detainee Treatment Act and United Nations protocol, as Manfred Nowak, U.N. special rapporteur, makes clear, "The United States, like all other states that are part of the U.N. convention against torture, is committed to conducting criminal investigations of torture and to bringing all persons against whom there is sound evidence to court."

Lies and Torture: When Policies and Words Diverge,
by Emily Spence, Countercurrents.org, 4/22/09

Even if experts have differing views about torture’s effectiveness, there is one point on which they cannot disagree: It violates U.S. and international law. ...

It will be hard to stop this train, though. The rule of law is one of this nation’s founding principles. It’s not optional. Our laws against torture demand to be obeyed—and demand to be enforced.

Torture Is a Crime, and Crimes Demand Prosecution,

by Eugene Robinson, Washington Post, 4/23/09

"Nothing will be gained by spending our time and energy laying blame for the past." So declared President Obama, after his commendable decision to release the legal memos that his predecessor used to justify torture. Some people in the political and media establishments have echoed his position. We need to look forward, not backward, they say. No prosecutions, please; no investigations; we're just too busy.

And there are indeed immense challenges out there: an economic crisis, a health care crisis, an environmental crisis. Isn't revisiting the abuses of the last eight years, no matter how bad they were, a luxury we can't afford?

No, it isn't, because America is more than a collection of policies. We are, or at least we used to be, a nation of moral ideals. In the past, our government has sometimes done an imperfect job of upholding those ideals. But never before have our leaders so utterly betrayed everything our nation stands for. "This government does not torture people," declared former President Bush, but it did, and all the world knows it.

And the only way we can regain our moral compass, not just for the sake of our position in the world, but for the sake of our own national conscience, is to investigate how that happened, and, if necessary, to prosecute those responsible. ...

Some of them probably just don't want an ugly scene; my guess is that the president, who clearly prefers visions of uplift to confrontation, is in that group. But the ugliness is already there, and pretending it isn't won't make it go away. ...

For the fact is that officials in the Bush administration instituted torture as a policy, misled the nation into a war they wanted to fight and, probably, tortured people in the attempt to extract "confessions" that would justify that war. And during the march to war, most of the political and media establishment looked the other way.

It's hard, then, not to be cynical when some of the people who should have spoken out against what was happening, but didn't, now declare that we should forget the whole era - for the sake of the country, of course. ...

We need to do this for the sake of our future. For this isn't about looking backward, it's about looking forward - because it's about reclaiming America's soul.

Reclaiming America’s Soul, by Paul Krugman, NY Times, 4/34/09

Bush-defending opponents of investigations and prosecutions think they've discovered a trump card: the claim that Democratic leaders such as Nancy Pelosi, Jay Rockefeller and Jane Harman were briefed on the torture programs and assented to them. The core assumption here -- shared by most establishment pundits -- is that the call for criminal investigations is nothing more than a partisan-driven desire to harm Republicans and Bush officials ("retribution"), and if they can show that some Democratic officials might be swept up in the inquiry, then, they assume, that will motivate investigation proponents to think twice. ...

The reality is exactly the opposite (as usual) of what is being depicted in our media discussions. The call for criminal investigations of torture and other forms of government criminality is the most apolitical and non-partisan argument one can make. The ones who are trying to politicize the justice system and exploit the rule of law for partisan gain are those who are arguing against criminal investigations. John Cole explained this point perfectly yesterday:

>>>At some point they are going to figure out that for most of us, we don’t care if the person has a (R) or (D) behind their name when they were instituting a policy of torture. That is what is so depressing (to me, at least) about the Ari Fleischer’s and the Thiessen’s of the world. They honestly seem to think this is nothing more than a partisan witch-hunt, the same old Washington gotcha politics. It isn’t. When you torture people, you have crossed a really clear line. Innocent people are dead. Lives have been ruined. Our international reputation has been destroyed. Yes, the Bush administration will get most of the blame, but that is because they were in charge and they did this, not because of what party they happen to belong to. If Jane Harman and Nancy Pelosi knew about this and ok’d it, they are just as culpable.<<<

Precisely. To be fair, there are disputes about what exactly Democratic leaders were and were not told, and there are disputes about what they said or did not say. That's what happens when a government operates in virtually total secrecy and does everything possible to stonewall public disclosure. The dispute over the role of Democratic leaders further bolsters the need for full-scale investigations: we ought to know everything that led to these crimes, including the true extent to which the "opposition party" was informed about what was being done and approved of it. The failure of the Democratic Party to meaningfully oppose what was done over the last eight years is a crucial part of the story here and light needs to be shined on that as much as anything else. I don't know of a single person who has devoted themselves to arguing for investigations who contests that fact.

The inability of so many people (both Republicans and Obama-loyal Democrats) to view the need for prosecutions independent of political considerations is a potent sign of how sick our political culture has become. The need for criminal investigations is motivated by one simple, consummately apolitical fact: serious and brutal crimes were committed at the highest levels of the government, ones that left a trail of many victims. A country that purports to live under the rule of law has no choice but to treat its most powerful members who commit serious crimes exactly the same as ordinary citizens who do so. That has nothing to do with Republicans or Democrats.

It has to do with the most central premise of the American system of government: that we are a nation of laws, not men, and all are equal before the law. People like John McCain argue that only "banana republics" prosecute former political leaders, but the reality is exactly the opposite. As the Western world has spent decades pointing out, the hallmark of an under-developed, tyrannical society is the very same premise we have embraced: that political elites are free to break the law with impunity and never suffer the consequences that ordinary citizens do.

Democratic complicity and what "politicizing justice" really means,
Glenn Greenwald, Salon.com, 4/24/09

President Obama and several of his senior advisors are now plainly concerned about the torture issue and the momentum it has achieved. They are troubled that it will seize center stage in Washington and disrupt the president’s ability to implement his agenda. These concerns are reasonable to some extent, but in fact that very concern provides a very good reason to remove the next steps in this crisis from the political process. Unlike the Beltway chatterboxes who fill our airwaves, most Americans appreciate the importance of the torture question. It is not a matter of partisan intrigue. It is a fundamental question of national identity and principle. ... The second prong will be a prosecutor who can take a look at all the facts and decide who should be charged for criminal wrongdoing. We know now that the White House considers it politically “inconvenient” to do this. So the big open question is whether we have an attorney general who enforces the law, or a Democratic version of Alberto Gonzales. That will become apparent soon enough.

Straight to the Top, by Scott Horton, Harpers.com, 4/25/09

"Time, you left me standing there
like a tree growing all alone
the wind just stripped me bare
stripped me bare

Time, the past has come and gone
the future's far away,
it all only lasts for one second, one second

Can you teach me about tomorrow
an' all the pain and sorrow running free
'cause tomorrow's just another day
and I don't believe in time,
you ain't no friend of mine"

Excerpt from lyrics of "Time" by Hootie and the Blowfish

        I said it yesterday and I will say it again and as often as I think necessary. It is not the Fox News pundits, the Republicans, the Dick Cheney type politicians, the Sean Hannitys or the Glenn Becks that are cementing or making 'reasonable' torture. No person bears more responsibility today that torture is becoming a 'legitimate policy difference' than President Barack Obama himself. Glenn Greenwald and others were on the right track in mentioning a short while ago that it looked like Obama was accepting the logical and reasonable, not to mention the only LEGAL course, that it is not even up to him, if the law is followed, whether there are investigations or not investigations. As he said on the campaign trail, if there is evidence of wrongdoing, that if crimes were committed, it must be looked into. Backing away from that, acting like he has the power to tell the Justice Department to ignore that crimes were blatantly committed is to do exactly what the Bush Administration did illegally, not only in the same way, but by an order of magnitude many times greater. It is to ultimately covey upon such a crime of obstruction of justice as well as the crimes that obstruction covers up as well, legitimacy and legality. And it is 100% being done in the open in defiance of both American law, and for those fewer Americans who accept there is such a thing, international laws against torture, the UN Charter, and crimes against humanity.

        I broke off my criticism and toned it down many times over years ago now, not only because such a course was ill advised or possibly counter-productive, but because I bowed to the inevitably inescapable conclusion I was the wrong person to be pushing such things. I leave aside the notion that such things going on illegally are 'classifiable' and 'nobody's business' when a government is operating outside of the law, that it is every single one of its citizens right, and even duty, to expose such things because a government which does not follow its own laws is an illegal and criminal organization, period. But I also understand the efficacy of an argument is determined not only by the choice of words, as well as timing being optimal for being heard, but due to a large measure by the person saying it. What is their status in society? What is the position they are in? How did they come into the picture?

        Such things were a concern but were a concern from the start. I broke off, lowered my criticisms greatly and took a longer road because inescapably to me, the environment had significantly shifted by that time. Even within the previous Bush Administration, movement was clearly heading in a different direction. That movement toward a greater openness and honesty was undeniable but the events of this week capping of a general trend during Obama's presidency has meant that things have taken an enormous turn toward the exact opposite of Obama's words. The words and the actions are not only not matching, but the actions show clearly the words have become meaningless.

        Bush said famously 'America does not torture.' Obama says 'Ok, that was not the case, but we will not do that anymore' (for awhile at least while he is in charge). Bush said “The secret prisons that never existed, well they really don't exist now.” Obama improved that to, “Well they did exist, but now we are really closing them down for good.” It is not the rhetoric though but the actions. An executive order is a meaningless self-restraint. Even a specific hard fought bill outlawing (fought because we were told it already was illegal and unnecessary) waterboarding and other such methods too secret to until recently even legally mention were overturned instantly via a presidential signing statement mentioning that the prohibitions against torture which were signed in from of the cameras could simply be ignored at will. And NOTHING which Obama has done cannot be undone just as easily 10 seconds into a new administration, or if he were to decide to simply change his mind.

        The ideal way for this to play out, I acknowledged, was for those in a position to approve such things, ideally those who carried them out, to be the ones to call for an inquiry. In my notes at the time I put it as “2nd Church- ask for”. Later I expanded that a bit because if I abbreviate something a bit too much, I can forget what it was supposed to mean. More fully to remember it later, it became “2nd Church (Commission, who should) ask for”. I chose at the time to believe, as many I think did, that given the chance those who did the worst most illegal things under the Bush Administration, would when the time came, be willing to go public themselves. To think otherwise might have been more accurate, but who would wish to more accurate at the expense of giving people the benefit of the doubt to be so less human as to feel no guilt, no remorse, and be content not to come forward if given the chance, but to instead to choose to keep such things buried forever?

        Little by little, the Obama Administration began closing off those doors, eliminating such potentials one by one. Then more and more, and now to shut everything down completely. The release of the torture memos is clear to many it was the exact opposite of shedding light on the subject. Obama himself stated that the contents were already for the most part publicly known, and that he was legally required to. That part did not keep him from having to 'agonize' over the decision for many months. The term 'legally required to' when pertaining to the President of the United States has been watered down to having little meaning if any. Everything, all laws, treaties, commitments, are merely guidelines if even that.

        The release of the memos was more notable for the cover it gave to go in the other direction. He immediately promised there would be no criminal charges brought for blatantly illegal acts, the highest possible crimes, and all done and admitted to publicly. That he has no authority to shut down such inquiries matters not to the 'unitary executives' like the presidency has become even to the 'good' ones. After all of the criminal wrongdoing of the last administration, what is a little more if done 'for the good of the country' and for 'moving on'. I am not talking about the pardon or even preemptive pardoning, which is within his right, though that right has been abused politically in the past in would be abusive in this case as well. I am talking about a wholesale using the Justice Department in the same way as the previous administration did, for political ends, whether to protect his own party and politicians (and inevitably some of them are culpable) or of wrongdoing by the 'opposite' party. One may think, and unfortunately many do, that "if the president does it, it can't be illegal.” Obama has clearly decided upon doing things that if anyone else did it, it would most certainly be illegal. The freedom to act outside the law, to make criminal investigations of politicians, lawyers, required both by domestic and international laws, subject to the whim of the leader alone. I believe it used to be called, the King's prerogative.

        As I said before, when Bush came out in front of TV camera's and admitted to illegally wiretapping phones against federal laws against it, no matter the fig leaf explanations, basically daring anyone to call him on it, I was completely caught off-guard as I am sure many were. However, as on one hand commendable it was for him to admit that he personally authorized waterboarding upon leaving office, it setup the circumstances of today. Though American's honestly think, contrary to all legal precedents, that because people were ordered to break the law, they ought not to be punished for it. This of course is an excuse we reserve for ourselves because we never have allowed it before and certainly would never allow any other country to use it in defense of protecting those who tortured Americans because they were 'simply following orders'.

        Thus the second front to holding someone, anyone else accountable. Go after those whose completely criminal rendering of the law, done in full knowledge of what the law most obviously and unequivocally states, making the most serious tortures declared 'legal'. But now the cover is over them as well by suggesting that they were only following orders as well. By suggesting that they were told to illegally give invalid justifications for torture from the former president or vice-president, that somehow gives a pass to them as well. If the president or vice-president can do no wrong or anything that they do cannot be illegal, why then the whole mess is exactly what Obama by action if not in words says it is, a legitimate policy difference, albeit a 'stupid' policy. But hardly criminal.

        What surprised me about the article mentioned in the previous post was that it had all the elements I could have hoped for in the 'torture debate'. Unlike criticism from someone 'who was not there so how could you judge?' it was confessions from someone equally guilty. And it nailed it by saying those going out on limbs on similar issues were doing so knowing that such things were criminal when done by others, and that they did so without legal cover and at great risk to themselves for doing so. And even more than all of that, the bravery of addressing the mentality behind it all which is never discussed, that makes it all beyond question no matter how insane or inhuman.

        Obama has seen fit to make sure no Americans will ever be bothered by seeing them testify to how they tortured or whom they tortured while doing so without any legal cover whatsoever. He has gone so far as not only to preemptively put their actions beyond question, but to label them as 'heroes' despite what they may know about it themselves but now never will have to tell. And he even gave their egos a good stroking in case they have second thoughts they might have done anything wrong by torturing people, often innocent, and sometimes to death. Nothing but bad judgment there. No, not even that. Heroic behavior deserving of emulation and praise.

        As I said above, I am not in a position to be the one to condemn this as I was not in their shoes, not in possession of the facts that they were. However, Obama, despite all promises about 'open government' has made the worst crimes America has ever committed now not even crimes in a legal or technical sense. Thank god we did not have similar 'pragmatists' as that when the original Church Commission did manage to bring the US into some semblance of a nation abiding by laws. Ironically their courage allowed people like Obama to reach the point and become president to be able to flush all of that down the drain today. Similar inquiries and truth-outtings are 'mistakes' he at least will not let happen again. Abuses of and by the system are inevitable. Learning of them and correcting of them has become optional no matter how much the corruption destroys us all.

        What I can condemn is that Obama has said those who committed crimes because they were told to, they were heroes. But as others have rightly pointed out, what does that make those who refused to follow illegal orders? Obama has thus far to my knowledge upheld that those who exposed criminal wrongdoing by the government were the criminals, and not those higher ups they reported on. Not the illegal programs because there is no such thing anymore, an illegal program, if it is authorized by the president in violiation of US law, international law, human rights treaties, the UN charter, and even in direct violation of the US Constitution itself.

        These people who have revealed such crimes, who have actually when taken an oath, have been punished for upholding that oath for their noble deeds at grave personal risks, and those that did the blatantly illegal things Obama may as well have given medals to them for their crimes. It is impossible for anyone to be impeached when the only law remaining left is that it is whatever the president, whoever it may be, says it is. One president ignored the Constitution, the present one simply, and completely, made it retroactively legal to do so.

        If he thinks it is not the Justice Departments place to look into such things, if making sure politicians and Justice Department officials must actually follow the law on little things such as torturing human beings, breaking the most serious international laws on human rights possible, if this is not the job of the police, the FBI, or the Justice department to look into, just whose job does Obama think it is? The press, some reporters, left-wing ACLU types, some right-wing get-government-off-our-backs types, bloggers, whom?

        As if they have the power or even the right anymore to expose crimes the government itself is committing expecially since 'President' Obama, unlike 'candidate' Obama or 'Senator' Obama, has stated exposing criminal acts and programs by the government is itself again a higher more punishable crime than the criminal programs themselves, even and especially when those crimes are the most indefensible acts one person can do to another, and the exposure, letting the public know, is actually as required by law to be told as the memos he was so 'tortured' about whether or not he would follow the law in revealing?

New Hope Falters In the Torture 'Debate'

        It is easy to predict that humanity has no long term prospects for survival, at least free, and easier still once thinking that way, to make it come true. Its continuation based on how we live, treat each other, and the direction we seem to be headed in, expecting it can go on like this for very long defies logic, common sense, and even reason. We are teaching and being taught every day to despise the very international institutions we founded generations ago to bring us together and promote peace. Greed and power frames all discussions on how to treat each other. Those who would profit from setting us apart from each other, forever at each other, never seeing or admitting we all, all around the world, are ohana, family, brothers and sisters, they always rise to the top and forever divide us. I forget often that hope needs no reason nor foundation. It grows even in the most abysmal and desperate circumstances. That is why it is so hard to kill it. Hope is forever our only road forward, and even blind hope might help us find our way forward. Hope must flow into us from beyond this world, for otherwise it would have been stolen from us and sold back to us like everything else.

Notes- Part 2 (2004)

        I am not pointing fingers at anyone. It is a dangerous world we live in. Torture being done, scientists perfecting it. People have been promoting it (TORTURE!) here on TV or making it palatable to the general public and are getting multi-million dollar salaries in return. But others have silently, and some not so silently, rebelled against this. It is in them and in their lives the hope of any bright future is to be found. Some when asked to torture, to murder unjustly, to go on TV and say how it is debatably reasonable to do such things to people who quite possibly are completely innocent to "possibly" "save" others, namely yourselves from some threat, real or imagined, they quit.

Open House at US Torture Sites, If We Do It, It Is Not Torture Giuliani, 10/26/2007

        105 years ago, those who were found guilty of practicing waterboarding at the behest of the US government not only feared jail, they went to jail despite that it was approved of by the President. Congress was not willing to simply sweep it all under the rug and give everyone immunity before the truth could come out, and thankfully for awhile, then at least, a little sunlight was shown, and for awhile at least, publicly at least, it was a crime. And all that even though then, there was no Geneva Conventions then for America to have been violating by such torturing of its prisoners, whereas now they are indeed international war crimes and not just bad manners. Just back then, a sense of decency, morality, and possibly military codes of action that were deemed by some to be "quaint" until there were, somewhat reluctantly reestablished.

What's Different: The New Norm, Your "Right" to remain silent while being Waterboarded, 11/12/2007

        I have mentioned him before in my writings, and mentioning him now is because so many have not heard his most famous words, now dead in the hearts of Americans, many but not all, and need rekindling now more than ever. All that was great about America, the government at least, that small portion of what is America, has gone terribly wrong. Former President James Carter's belief in a self-correcting mechanism is unfortunately seemingly misplaced at the moment. We have been fed illusions of our worth, blinded to the suffering we are inflicting all over the world in the name of values it is apparent to all all over the world we are not living by and seemingly no longer believe in except to use as an excuse to take what we wish and do whatever is our will.
        Nothing can I remember having moved me more deeply than when I read the words below. It is not just words, not just pain or agony at the reality of war we have been sanitized from, protected from, and because of which, that distancing, we watch men and women without hearts advocating things on television to us and to children, what they are teaching to a new generation, advocating avoidable attacks that would cost thousands of innocent lives, without guilt over what they say, without hesitation in what they are advocating, and without regrets. Joseph's pain inoculated me against thinking like that, and his words will outlive the hate mongers, the torture advocators, and those who scorn diplomacy and the avoidance of war as "weak".
        These words, his words, will outlive those people because the world they advocate cannot endure, would not survive. A world which not only remembers these words but learns from them, takes them into its heart as I have into mine, that is a world which can endure. That is the future I work for, hope for, would live and die for, but the future we are creating now, what our present leaders wish to give the world, that is nothing I would want to be a part of. That world in which we have already recently killed tens of thousands of innocents in cold blood unnecessarily, and would kill millions if not billions to prevent the world from growing beyond the systems we have now, based on the need for war, the rewarding of aggression, and the sanctity of mass murders beyond scale in the name of country and in the name of God. May their notions not be passed on. Humanity could not long survive it if they do.

When I think I might never see Hawaii again, 9/24/2006

        It is not always easy for me to have hope for things outside of my control. For many the election of Barack Obama was the beginning of a renewal of hope. Those without that hope will have a much harder time getting through what will no doubt be one of the most severe trials America and the world will have to endure, the economic crisis and wildfires of ethnic hatred, micro- and neo-nationalisms, and worse. From the previous post, I have a hard time with the idea that one can or should simply bury ones head in the sand, flash forward to a few years and say, "Gee wasn't it stupid we thought we had anything to worry about, of course it was all going to turn out alright."

        My hope is diminished by the general loss of ground. Not of any political view or viewpoint but that of general tolerance, civility, and even a loss of humanity. And the focus of hope, President Obama, and not without due reason, has fallen repeatedly to doubt, callousness, and lack of fortitude. So many will say, rightly, one has to choose ones battles carefully, not do what is doomed to failure at the expense of doing what one can succeed at, and thus lessening ones potential to do any good at all.

        By the most unflattering view possible, President Obama has made some of America's worst transgressions of International Law 'popular' and even 'cool'. Having lost control of the debate over torture, he risks institutionalizing it, doing what Democrats have done at the since the beginning of my time, taking it and making it their own rather than to risk looking weak by opposing it. Think this is an exaggeration or no longer valid? Take as an example of Bill Richardson's recent rationalization of signing a bill outlawing the death penalty in his state by having to caveat it with roughly, "But this is even more cruel than executing them. They will be wishing they could die." Thus America's so-called 'left' destroying further (and far more than any Republican could) any rationale behind condemning what almost all of the West outside of America believes to be a barbaric punishment. We will end it, but only if we can justify making prisoners lives even crueler than death so they will literally be praying daily to die.

        The torture debate will be over, and in the Dick Cheney's of the world favor soon simply because President Obama thinks "I have closed that chapter," as if it is just another autobiography book of his. "Not in MY courts!" Winning the war, losing the humanity. I was shocked that 8 years ago 20 to 40 million Americans could be so moved against Democracy by the television that they could answer in a Gallup poll that regardless of who won the election, they wanted George Bush to be president anyway. That was a pittance of the hope destroying fact that today, a mere 8 years later, 20 to 40 million Americans can be moved by the same sort of television commentators (and sometimes the same ones) to justify or even argue about justifying the torture of human beings. If Obama truly was looking forward, it is not hard to see where such a trend is going, and fast, and that nothing could EVER be more important.

        That is what crushes my hope. Not that people can be that mislead, that mistaken. But because the system my government functions with and by rewards such terror advocators with million dollar salaries, makes those who would advocate the worst abuses possible by humans to other humans as 'responsible distinguished commentators' and not least of which, one of only two major parties in the country cannot help but be flirting with coming out in favor of torture, within limits of course. (Of course.)

        Obama may yet rise to the occasion and recognize what he himself far more than the television commentators is creating, the normalcy of American Torture, not in secret, but as a political issue embraced by tens of millions of Americans as a reasonable means of action that only the wimps would wish to do away with or rule out. Cheney only set up the shot. It is Obama who is making it his own legacy and advancing it far further than any Republican ever could.

        But for now, my hope has been emboldened a bit by yet another diatribe by some war resister. Not by flowery words, not by outrages, or by a good hope inspiring speech. By introspection, self-indictment, and looking at the larger picture of what is being created. Even the brave have things about themselves, things they have done, how they think, how these influences combine and effect or harm much else, that they are afraid to look at. He did so quite bravely by many different measures. THAT gives me hope. When the average person starts to demand honesty from himself or herself, it is not long before they start DEMANDING it from their leaders as well. It is only our cowardice to admit our own weaknesses, our own mistakes, to ourselves and thereby to then be able to outgrow them which permits us to create and live in a country that is incapable of doing the same. And right now that shortcoming of honest self-reappraisal is perfectly embodied by our very leadership itself.

        Another day I will write about torture, believe it or not, far from my favorite subject and one difficult to balance my outrage, hurt, and hope. This short post is because that, for today anyway, my strength to confront such topics honestly without shrinking (despite what I have written well about it before is not always easy for me) was helped due to foot soldiers willing to risk everything to expose truths and stand up for truth, instead of by leaders elected to expose the truth and promote peace, who seek rewarding that trust with burying the truth as well as their causes, to increase their political power and their ability to get on with 'more important' things. And in the process undermining and sabotaging all those who seek to improve the country by searching out and knowing and telling the truth.

The article mentioned here is best read in its entirety but a short unrepresentative excerpt is below.

        IVAW represents the voices of conscience for an entire generation of Americans, and really our entire society. We, the Winter Soldiers of the War on Terror, who will speak our truths, no matter what the personal cost, and stand our ground no matter what adversity we may face, and reflect openly and honestly upon ourselves, we represent hope for this nation.

        In South Africa after Apartheid fell, truth and reconciliation commissions were set up to investigate crimes committed by both Apartheid forces and rebel forces. To bring about witnesses to reveal crimes which they participated in or knew about, the commission had to grant amnesty to a large number of people who testified to things not greatly different than we do.

        And we risk everything to come forward and are asking for NOTHING but an ear to hear us, and the means to carry on, and the willingness to know the truths of our government's policies. And it lays so many of us so very low, as we struggle in a society that would rather shut our real histories, us, who we are, out, for a lie, one big murderous soul-sucking lie.

        Well we're done taking it, we're done being victims, and we are organizing a victory, for truth, for the people of Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan, for our nation in distress, for the people of the world who we have treated like dispensable objects for too long! For the troops, who languish and grow further away from us while our nation worries about paying rent! For the veterans, who are sleeping homeless on the streets and stuck with the image of a gun in their mouth, or with the sounds of screaming babies. For the women, who are first and most being made the victims of these policies and occupations, and for the female Soldiers in Iraq, don't ever forget that THIS IS NOT NORMAL!!! And for the Muslim people in the United States who have languished in this climate of racism and hate. We are sorry! Your liberation is most important to us!

        IVAW represents hope for all these people, and it represented hope for me, when I needed it most, and it continues to represent so much hope to me. We are going to end this war and we need the support right now folks, more than ever, and we need your energy as we move into Spring and Summer.

Confessions of a War Resister, by Matthis Chiroux, April 25, 2009
http://www.commondreams.org/view/2009/04/25

Newer more uncertain ground and a wider variety of pasts

Walking through forests of palm tree apartments
scoff at the monkeys who live in their dark tents
down by the waterhole drunk every Friday
eating their nuts, saving their raisins for Sunday
Lions and tigers who wait in the shadows
they're fast but they're lazy, and sleep in green meadows...

The rivers are full of crocodile nasties
and He who made kittens put snakes in the grass
He's a lover of life but a player of pawns
yes, the King on His sunset lies waiting for dawn
to light up His Jungle as play is resumed.
The monkeys seem willing to strike up the tune

Excerpts from "Bungle in the Jungle" by Jethro Tull

In the year 9595
I'm kinda wondering if man's gonna be alive
He's taken everything this old Earth can give
and he ain't put back nothing

Now it's been 10,000 years
Man has cried a billion tears
for what he never knew
Now Man's reign is through
but through the eternal night
the twinkling of starlight..
so very far away..
maybe it's only yesterday..

Excerpts from "In the Year 2525" by Zager and Evans

        When going back to college a few years back, there were three movies which were shown which I will write about a bit here. The university had “movie nights” for their foreign students (both colleges I went to in Europe did) in which they showed movies at night which they thought might be of interest from different countries, and sometimes had discussions about them afterwards. Two of the ones I will mention were of those type, on topic to related subjects being taught in the program, but one was not. It only relates to them superficially though it is a funnier movie, not too serious, and a good place to start.

        The first movie I regret not going to see then was “Monty Python and the Holy Grail.” It was not a part of any formally organized movie night, but it was shown in the dorm and all the foreign students were invited. And alcohol, which was very cheap in Estonia, (so much so that thousands of tourists from Finland go there regularly just to get drunk, among other reasons of course,) that was to be a big part of it too. Serious drinking for a seriously funny movie.



        I thought about going but decided not to in a large part because I had recently seen it by renting it off of Netflix a few months prior to then. I would have had to have gotten very drunk not to remember all of the jokes beforehand, especially since I had seen the movie many more times before that years ago. The reason I regretted then and now not going was because it was with a group of people that I was to be studying with, later got to know a bit, and a movie like that is a good way to get to know people better, in a relaxed sort of way.

        The second movie I regretted not seeing was a far more serious movie, a part of the unofficial curriculum of the college program, and one I also was on the dividing line about seeing up until soon before it began. I was simply not in the mood that day to see what I knew to be a very depressing movie. It is an excellent movie by any measure and far more worthy to write about now than a Monty Python movie, but its practically impossible for it not to be disturbingly upsetting, especially if you are in a bad mood to start with. I don't regret it as much now because I did get to see it when I was in Sweden, and since it was a Swedish movie filmed both in Estonia and Sweden, it made sense to see it later when I did. Eventually it turned out there was enough time to eventually get round to it, and after I had been living for awhile in both countries where it was filmed.

        The movie was “Lilja 4-ever” and was set in a vaguely defined area called “somewhere in the former USSR.” The idea was that it could have been set in any number of countries. And the areas where it was filmed, due to standardized Soviet housing, also could have passed for any number of cities in a number of different former Soviet countries. The tale could have been also from a number of countries as well. It was one of those kinds of movies that could never be made in the United States. It was raw and real, and more honest than most movies I have seen.



        It was about human trafficking on one hand, but it also showed the aftereffects of the breakup of the Soviet Union in a devastating light. A real unvarnished look at the destruction of societies due to “economic shock therapy” and “collateral economic damage” from bad policies and corrupt governments. Poverty may be poverty, but how it is inflicted, how it is addressed or not addressed, and how a society can break down, is all shown there between the lines.

        When I say it is honest, it is because it does not exactly show Sweden in a good light either (not that I want to piss off both countries I have studied in: Just like the vague “somewhere in the former USSR” of the first half, the flip side second half could well have been set “somewhere in the West” and could have been any number of Western countries as well). It is not just the traffickers or even the pimps that are bad in the movie, but it is also a bit of an indictment of society as a whole itself which creates and perpetuates these things. That is why I say it is a movie outside of those that can be made in America. (Ask Obama, we don't indict our own societies elites, no matter what. Literally, no matter what. We're not Spain, or Argentina or Peru.) The worst in a way was not the traffickers but those who would get off on raping someone chained to a bed. The doctors, the stockbrokers, the “respectable” members of society whose funds and lack of humanity made and make the trade possible, the market.

        There have been American movies about the drug war which have tried occasionally to be as honest, but that is another area which not only is insufficiently looked at in fiction, but as dishonestly in government as well. The movie “Traffic” was notable trying to cover different aspects of the problem. Few if any movies explore these things in a societal context, as how all the parts of a society function together creating the problems, the connection between the moralist politicians and criminal organizations that “accidentally” work together and promote each others interests. The only more cancerous “adversarial partnerships” to societies as a whole has been between those who would start “pre-emptive” wars and the terrorists they battle, as well as the greater numbers they create as an “accidental” side-effect. They feed each other so much and so completely, they need each other and after a few years depend on each other even when not overtly helping sustain the other. They use the “battle” to their mutual elevations and reputations, as well as their very livelihoods and purposes.

        The third movie that I will mention relates to the other two and connects them in a way. This one I actually did see then. I also did not want to see it at the time because like the Monty Python movie, it was a British comedy which I had seen recently via Netflix. I also, like when “Lilja 4-ever” was shown, was not really in the mood to go. But I could not not see it. It was too perfect to where I was. That movie was “Dr. Strangelove, or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb.”

        To see that movie at that time with people whom I knew who grew up under Communism, to see the ultimate black comedy about a nuclear war with people who for half of my life were “the enemy” and most of my country would not have really minded to see dead, “nuke worthy” so to speak, and laugh about it together as something of the past, was too great an opportunity to pass up because of not being “in the mood” for seeing a movie. Americans in general don't know the difference between the former Soviet Union and Russia, nor that some of those countries are our allies now.

        Indeed, one of our esteemed Congress persons recently said of Russians, simplifying complex International Relations to something his constituents could digest in a way as to produce the desired excrement of reactions, “they're still Communists.” He nor they care about what the word “Communists” meant, just like the word “Socialist” is just as inappropriately thrown about these days without concern about the little things, like what the words actually mean. Meaning is irrelevant now, most neither know nor care. Simpler to say, “bad people, those people, bad. Grrr. Hate hate hate them, they hate you.”

        Thats always good enough to get you elected or rile people up even if you don't have elections or honestly count the votes if you do. For the record, Estonians are now the “good guys,” Russians are still sometimes the “bad guys” depending on if Russia is not doing what the American government wants recently, and the world “Communist” applies far more to China (in which it is actually) which is now so rich and powerful that no American politician would dare point that fact out in a negative way to his constituents if he thought it might get picked up on, any more than one of them might criticize Israel these days. They own us, or at least them. And through their corruption, now they own us.

        Now if we had what Reagan entertained was possible, and many neo-cons wish was still possible, a “limited” nuclear war in Europe, Estonia, now our allies, would still be just as dead. Only now, if we survive, we would put up a monument or a plaque somewhere to say we feel bad about losing them in the war and what a shame it was and all that. They have, usually without consulting their public's opinion about it or due to any of their actions, been “good guys” to us at times, and “bad guys” and back again. And usually likewise, off and on on how bad we would feel if we felt we had to “obliterate” their lands with nuclear weapons.

        Slowly the world may be learning it doesn't matter where you might live in the world, you are just as irrelevant. No matter which side you choose, and you usually will not get a choice, you are ultimately on the frontlines and will be just as dead as those countries literally on the frontlines and traded back and forth every couple of generations as to which side would mourn you or feel worse about the fact your whole country was incinerated, which inevitably it would be.

        At that time we could watch the same classic Cold War comedy about mutually assured destruction and the death of humanity knowing that at that moment anyway, we were on the same side now. Though it is a comedy, it is a sane movie about an insane set of circumstances, which has surprisingly little abated since the end of the Cold War. Not this year perhaps, but no one of power would want to rule it out either.

        Whether the Communists, the Terrorists, or eventually, seemingly, the Chinese, (whatever political or economic system they may be under in 10 or 20 years,) we need someone to play the “other” to keep up our weapons industry, our sense of purpose, or need to fight something and someone, afloat and forever as propped up as Citibank and AIG, no matter how much it bankrupts us or is likely to kill us, or anyone and everyone else. We know nothing else, and the final punch line, laughing at our own fatal stupidity is still as timeless as ever. Still though, we are very privileged when we are able to laugh about it together with others who were former enemies. It is the sliver of hope in the darkness.



        In that very room, a not unintelligent instructor seemingly pondered over how Gorbachev's reforms always seemed to lead to events which made the Soviet Union further disintegrate. Was he inept or incompetent as many Russians and others whose lives have been destroyed by the “economic collateral damage” which came after the Soviet Union fell believe he was? Were his reforms a logical course of action to take given that the results were the opposite of what was intended, contributing to the collapse he was purportedly trying to stave off? Was he a traitor to his people selling his country off to the West and to gangsters within it, as some allege?

        Not that I could read his mind, or see things as he saw them, but the answer that came forward seemed to me self-evident. He was buying time. Each of the reforms, though ultimately making things worse for the survival of the Soviet Union in the long run prevented catastrophes imminent in the short term. Buying time does not get you monuments usually, nor heroic songs written about you, especially when your country is no longer there at the end of your term. But it is the best thing one can really ever achieve. More time makes everything else possible.

        The myth is of the great and final grand victory over the enemy ushering in a final peace. That is the greatest bullshit story of all time if you look at history. Peace gives way to more wars, and sometimes not long thereafter. We, especially in America, celebrate the “Warrior” far more than any “Peacemaker.” Buying more time is what most people do collectively. It is not glamorous, not earth shattering or earth healing, but it is what each person in a society can contribute to equally and enjoy the benefits of equally. To keep things on track to go another day, live another day to die a different day. It is never ignoble and sometimes the best you get. And it is far from insignificant.

        A different instructor would say later in a room just down the hall from that one, a great truth about what was accomplished by that “failure” of Gorbachev's efforts. Though not talking about that specifically, he hit the nail on the head of the most important thing to buying that time, what it was which gained us the time to be reflective about it now. The biggest concerns he said about the collapse of Soviet Union from the point of view of the US were “loose nukes, loose nukes, and loose nukes.”

        We, the world, in a sense got lucky. Though it is hard to justify much of what came later after the collapse of the Soviet Union, opportunities lost for partnerships, stronger alliances, staving off the general disintegration of public services, the corroding eventually of many societal organizations and structures, Gorbachev's “ineffective” measures to keep an admittedly bad system going a bit longer while a new system was being worked out from scratch, it worked at the time. From the point of view of what else could have been, it could not have worked more brilliantly. It bought the added time necessary. A potentially fatal catastrophic event of a flood of nuclear devices into the wrong hands was almost seemingly miraculously averted.

        And it is in that seeming miraculousness about dodging such bullets that keeps us from ever learning. It is the blindness humanity never seems to overcome. We can say before something happens, it can happen any number of ways and be prepared for many of those equally. But after a few years, then a few dozen or hundred, it becomes fated. We can look back at history and say, “See, wasn't he stupid for not seeing how it was going to turn out?” Literally, we say that thinking God ordained that it must or would have turned out that way.

        One of the most disturbing notions to me about how America has slowly become immunized to the horrors of torture, how it has become debatably reasonable to do, that even a Supreme Court Justice can feel no shame in publicly saying that there is nothing illegal about torturing people so long as you do not charge them first, was that Americans began losing sight it could be any other way. That it should be any other way. Day by day, year by year, whatever atrocities are going on become less and less shocking and more and more normal. Its just, after awhile, how the world is. What can you do?

        Religion, even science, becomes a blanket settling in that things had to have happened the way they did. God meant it to be this way. Saying it should have occurred otherwise is blasphemous after a few years. Many but not all people can be bothered by leaders who get messianic, thinking that God is working through them, guiding them, that whatever bad things he does is justified because it is simply God working his will on Earth through him.

        It seems crazy when directed at the future, to many people. The future most believe can happen differently than these people expect. But after a few generations, in those instances where the world was not destroyed, they look more sane every day. Surely, we will think, such things were necessary to “keep us safe,” that they were vindicated merely by the fact that we still exist, and that “our existence, our children's new existences” were divinely inspired and occurred on schedule, and happened all according to “God's Plan.”

        The flip side of that coin is believing, silently, those who were killed, tortured, raped, murdered, villages wiped out, lands stolen, peoples and cultures wiped out to extinction or near extinction were necessary for our “higher” cultures to replace them. And that bias is in every single fiber of our cultures. We no longer see them or are aware that such biases exist.

        I watched a show about religion recently which mentioned how the notion of “a single God” replaced the “primitive” beliefs of the past. It was not a controversial thing to be said in even in a scientifically responsible documentary. Surely the numbers of Christians and Muslims which numerically make up the majority of humanity would agree that their religions are more “evolved” than “pagan” “primitive” religions which have more than one deity. Who would dare argue otherwise who could not be easily discredited within those cultures, if not ostracized or even killed for trying to promote that their own religion may be equally as “primitive” of a notion, if not more so?

        The biases that are most dangerous are the ones we don't even see that they are there. We change the definitions of words when we do not like what they say about us, exempt ourselves and cultures from how we judge others and other cultures we do not like or disagree with. And worst of all, we are losing the ability to gauge how much hypocrisy is inherent within it which allows two sets of rules to exist, one for the rich and powerful, one for the poor and weak, one for the chosen ones, one for the pagans or primitives, one for Gods own, and one for the forsaken. It all is just becoming normal.

        It may seem too obvious to need to state, but if one believes that the future can go in any number of different ways, it should not be much of a stretch to think that the past could have happened differently as well. Those who did the horrors of the past ought not to be given an automatic pass after a few generations, that they were doing God's will. That it had to happen that way, that it was fate.

        However much time is bought now or by others in the future, I cannot help but feel sometimes it is wasted if we never learn this most simplest of lessons generation after generation after generation. The past did not have to go the way it did. There were other roads. This way was not necessarily the best nor the most just nor the most holy nor the most right. Learning that, feeling that, living that belief every second of every day is the best assurance that new routes will be taken and new patterns of behavior will become better norms, and that the worst of history which we repeat every day and every generation helplessly, will fade out of us in time.

        The song “In the Year 2525” was for me a huge leap in perspective. It was played often on the radio when I was very little and is among my earliest memories. For people to actively and often contemplate cultures many thousands of years into the future, to grow up with pondering such notions, is to give themselves a greater perspective on their own cultures. What religions and governmental systems, ideologies and theories existed 10,000 years ago? How unthinkable would it be if they were still around today? How insane it would be to think ours will still or should be still around 10,000 years from now? As I wrote once in a poem, “as maturity carries with it ingrained superiority saving me from feeling now I am tomorrow's ignoramus.”

        We need to know and remember constantly that we are today the ignoramuses we will ourselves one day see ourselves as, should we get the time to learn more and to know better. If we do not get further, get a better perspective on where we were now, what better use could time be for? If not for nothing, it will be far short of what it could have been. And to believe it always could have been better, always, no matter how good it was, is to better enable it to one day reach more fully toward becoming something better.