The Cheney-Obama Dance to Rehabilitate Torture in the Public Conscience
Despite what anyone says about Holocaust denials, be it in Europe, Rwanda, Turkey, or Ukraine, it is, if nothing else, a natural reaction. The more unthinkable something is, the harder it is to believe, the more it conflicts with your world view or opinions, saying it never happened is the first and most logical reaction. It requires the least amount of work, the most superficial introspection if the charges are aimed at your own people or an ally, political, cultural, be it in the present or who you hope to deal with or be identified by or with in the future. Or if such comparisons or relationships cannot help but be made by others.
When this fails, the second reaction when denials are no longer possible, when ones view of how they wish reality was or should be seen fails or no longer will prevail over creeping cynicism, is a far more dangerous one. Beyond mere minimalization of the charges or 'so-called crimes' becomes the inevitable turn into the storm of outrage to head it off, defeat it, and make it run away to whimper in a corner and never dare show its face again. The proverbial “So what?” So what if it was done, we admit it, we own it now, it is ours to spin, to justify, to make right, to rehabilitate such 'so-called' atrocities in the public's imagination, and to make sure it is never mentioned again without the proper 'respect' that it was due!
The initial spin regarding how it is outed, what registers when the initial shock hits home, this will last years, generations even, for that which is difficult to face up to, when one is forced to confront ugly truths they would far more prefer to not be made to deal with, to have to face up to when hiding ones head in the sand is far easier, it will be that much harder later to revisit and rethink. Yes, we did that, we dealt with it already, decided it wasn't that big of a deal, and 'moved on'. Making us face it again, why that would just be reopening old wounds, dredging up the past we would rather not have to ever again need to recontemplate. We've crossed that bridge already, move along now.
This is the little minuet that Cheney and Obama have been playing into equally, each step of one creating the dance toward the inevitable “So what” which will define the notion that torturing people was ever once shocking at all. Anyone who thinks that Cheney is 'losing' the torture argument is living within their own assumptions that people think such things are naturally wrong. Nothing of the kind is happening. Obama by revealing such 'so-called' abuses or 'seemingly potentially criminal' atrocities, and then doing nothing about them, certainly not holding anyone accountable since no 'clear' crimes were committed, is making sure whoever stands up to defend them has his unspoken acknowledgment that such things were potentially reasonable, even possibly necessary. Cheney wins every argument thereafter by default since no one of similar stature dares to argue otherwise, simply to stand by smugly by thinking 'who would ever listen to him?' when, silently, most would prefer to think such things.
Thinking otherwise is hard, uncomfortable, and who in America would wish to question the rightness of what we have done in the past? Leftists, radicals, un-American Americans of course! The President sure as hell won't, not this President, nor the one before, nor the probable ones to come. If we did it, it must have been for a good reason, and anyone wishing to be 'vindictive' to question the inherent rightness of our actions, if sometimes for no other reason than because it was we who did them, is standing on shaky ground when outright potentially treasonous or un-American. Especially when such things were truly bad, and the worse they were, the more they ought to remain unspoken, and the more right our President is when he makes sure they are either glossed over, never be forced to have to be admitted to, and minimized or trivialized when that is no longer possible when they are exposed. Isn't that the true lesson Obama has decided to give by his actions? Has he not shown this is inescapably how he is to be defined now? He doesn't own the torture, but he does own its rehabilitation, its now every day more and more undeniable 'utility'.
Emphasis usually my own in the following excerpts...
In reversing himself and declaring that the US government will not release further photos in its possession of torture being practiced on captives held by the US military and the CIA, President Obama is sounding increasingly like the Bush/Cheney administration before him.
It may well be that, as Obama says, release of those photos could lead to anger in the Islamic world and perhaps to recruitment gains among groups like Al Qaeda that are attacking American troops in Iraq, Afghanistan and elsewhere, but this is only true because at the same time, the Obama administration is opposing taking any legal action against the people who authorized and promoted that torture.
If the Obama administration were to open a full-scale legal investigation into torture, with an independent prosecutor assigned to go after anyone who violated the Geneva Conventions and the US Criminal Code outlawing torture and the authorization, condoning or covering-up of torture, quite the opposite would happen: people in the Islamic world would see that this nation was coming to terms with those who abused the law....
... Obama has endorsed that situation by again referring to the torture as just the actions of "a few people."
It was hardly that, however, and he knows it. Torture was a major part of the Bush/Cheney so-called "War" on Terror, and was being conducted on an industrial scale, with White House lawyers providing legal cover, the Secretary of Defense sending memos urging every more aggressive techniques, and government doctors and psychologists working assiduously to make them more "effective." ...
The truth is always better than a cover-up, and what we now have the president advocating is a cover-up of American torture.
But that's only part of the president's slide into Cheneyism. We have the president now calling for the possible indefinite detention of terror suspects--an idea that only insures that there will always be an incentive for recruiting more terrorists (to avenge those in captivity)--and that makes a joke of our own Constitution, which guarantees everyone--not just citizens--the right to a trial, the right to a presumption of innocence, and protection from "cruel and unusual punishment," which indefinite detention certainly is.
By raising the stakes over the torture issue with his repeated appearances, Dick Cheney isn't merely daring Democratic Congress and the Obama administration to investigate him and other members of the Bush torture team. Cheney's is a scorched earth game he believes he can win.
Cheney's MAD strategy goes something like this. If the DOJ or Congress proceeds with torture probes or prosecutions, Republican retaliation will be massive and total. Nominees will be blocked, legislation filibustered and the gridlock in Washington permanent. The blame for the carnage, the theory goes, will go to the side (in this case, Democrats) which launched the first strike. As Ronald Reagan was fond of saying, "a nuclear war cannot be won and must never be fought."
With the prospect of an atomic political conflict assured of leaving both parties devastated, stalemate is the only alternative. And in Dick Cheney's case, stalemate equals victory. By ratcheting up the public pressure, Cheney is forcing Obama's hand: act on torture, or back down. And by backing down, Obama would in essence codify the Bush administration's criminality. In the unsteady equilibrium which would endure, the Bush torture team would appear to be right, seemingly vindicated. Like the Soviet threat, the risk from torture prosecution would be successfully contained. In his eyes, Cheney's omnipresence isn't a nightmare for Republicans, but their path back.Cheney's MAD, By Jon PerrSlowly but surely, Obama is owning the cover-up of his predcessors' war crimes. But covering up war crimes, refusing to proscute them, promoting those associated with them, and suppressing evidence of them are themselves violations of Geneva and the UN Convention. So Cheney begins to successfully coopt his successor.
May 14, 2009: Crooksandliars.comBased on this sampling of polling results, it is easy at first to be surprised and troubled by the degree to which Americans have expressed support for the inhumane treatment and torture of detainees. But public sentiment on such matters does not emerge in a vacuum. Rather, it often reflects the influence of carefully orchestrated marketing campaigns by powerful vested interests eager to shape opinion in support of a specific agenda or facts on the ground. Certainly it is now well known that the Bush administration embraced the use of "enhanced interrogation techniques" in national security settings. It is therefore instructive to carefully consider the five-pronged message that they and their backers promoted to create a citizenry supportive of torture.
In sum, this seemingly successful campaign of mass persuasion depended upon convincing the public to believe five things: (1) our country is in great danger, (2) torture is the only thing that can keep us safe, (3) the people we torture are monstrous wrongdoers, (4) our decision to torture is moral and for the greater good, and (5) critics of our torture policy should not be trusted. And all the while, the marketers painstakingly avoided using the actual word "torture"--and contested the word's use by anyone else. Of course, this strategy is by no means unique to the selling of torture. A similar approach, designed for hawking war, was used with devastating and tragic effect in building public support for the invasion of Iraq in 2003.
But don't dismiss Dick Cheney as a fading punch line, or as tragedy reprised as comedy. While the Obama administration has adopted large numbers of policies that directly contradict Cheney's positions, it would be a mistake to overlook Cheney's continued influence on the executive branch through the precedents set by the Bush administration. Among the former vice-president's most important legacies is increased government secrecy. Obama's Department of Justice continues to rely on an alleged "state secrets" privilege. It has thus tried to block lawsuits by victims who alleged they were kidnapped and tortured by U.S. intelligence even though they were innocent of wrongdoing, on the grounds that such trials would reveal state secrets. The same state secrets doctrine was used by Obama's DOJ in an attempt to block investigations of Bush-Cheney warrantless wiretaps. Likewise, the DOJ has attempted to block lawsuits seeking the release of Bush-era e-mails and to prevent prisoners held at Bagram air base in Afghanistan from appearing before a judge to challenge their imprisonment. ...
In the government's commitment to a doctrine of "state secrets" that protect the executive from the scrutiny of other branches of government, in the continued attempt to block lawsuits and release of important documents, and in the shielding of secret programs of torture, unlawful kidnapping and warrantless wiretapping, Obama is preserving policies to which Cheney is deeply committed. In configuring Pushtun fundamentalists in southern Afghanistan and northern Pakistan as a mortal threat to the U.S. and potentially even a nuclear power, the Obama administration is picking up themes from Cheney's old speeches and running with them. Cheney may or may not win his struggle for the soul of the Republican Party. If we are not careful, he will win the struggle for the soul of the country as a whole.
>>Actually covering up evidence of torture is a criminal offense for which you can go to prison here in Britain, and I imagine in the US but I'm not quite sure about that. And the idea that the British government would conspire with the US or be threatened by the US to do this is again an independent violation of the law. . . .
The British courts are saying that the British government relied on President Obama's view that this material about torture shouldn't be released to the public. It became clear to us in Britain that actually President Obama had never made that decision and that the British government had somewhat misrepresented his position to the courts. And what I thought was only fair and appropriate was for President Obama to make a decision himself: Do you, President Obama, I voted for you and I think he's a good man, do you really, really tell your officials to cover up evidence of torture committed by US personnel?<<
That question about Obama's intentions -- along with Obama's decision last month to release the 4 OLC torture memos -- is what led Smith to make his motion for the British High Court to re-consider its ruling that it would not make the torture details public: namely, he wanted definitive evidence one way or the other as to whether Obama really was issuing these threats to the British government.
That definitive evidence came, and it leaves no doubt that these threats to the British government are now being issued every bit as emphatically from Obama. ...
>>>Mr. Smith said that by attempting to keep evidence of Mr. Mohamed's "abuse" secret, the U.S. official who communicated the threats to the British Foreign Office was in breach of British law, specifically the International Criminal Court Act of 2001.
"The U.S. is committing a criminal offense in Britain by seeking to conceal this information. What the Obama administration did is not just ill-advised, it is illegal," he said.<<<
Independently, Article 9 of the Convention Against Torture requires that "States Parties shall afford one another the greatest measure of assistance in connection with civil proceedings brought in respect of any of the offences referred to in article 4, including the supply of all evidence at their disposal necessary for the proceedings." If the U.S. were a country that adhered to its treaty obligations -- rather than systematically ignored them whenever the mood struck -- that, too, would be significant.
Obama administration threatens Britain to keep torture evidence concealed, By Glenn Greenwald
May 12, 2009: Salon.com
posted by Jared DuBois | 11:07 PM
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