My God, do we really have to talk about torture again?I'm afraid so!
The response of the Codpiece Administration to the Hamdan decision of the Supreme Court last summer , marking as unconstitutional its detainment and treatment policies of often un-named prisoners was to ask Congress to pass a law making it legal.
We were then treated to a charade where a few congressmen made a pretense of opposing the bill. The dance ended with a law which forbids torture and arbitrary detainment -- unless it is called by a different name.
The Military Convention Act. Such a bland name for such a travesty -- and Congress, the elected represenatives of the American people, passed it!
Mistreatment of people you have under your complete control is torture.
All other definitions of torture where you draw lines like "no organ failure" – all definitions of this sort are bullshit on a waffle.
There is a broad acceptance of torture when people are asked if it is okay to torture if it can save lives. Also this is bullshit on a waffle -- usually served up as the "ticking bomb scenario" on the order of a scene from "24 Hours" or some other crap from the Bankers of Illusion.
The thing is, you don't get reliable information using torture.
So, why torture? Well, there are two "good" reasons to torture.
The one is that you like to hear people scream, that you enjoy the feeling of empowerment when a man pisses in his pants out of sheer fear.
This is a constant danger when people are incarcerated and cut off from the outside world. Such situations attract goons who like to do a little free-lance torture now and then.
The other "good" reason is when there is a political will to subdue a population. Here we are talking about systemic torture. Systemic torture can exist only where there is a political will or social culture.
Torture dehumanizes. When the humanity of a single human being is injured or destroyed, something in the common humanity we all share is injured or destroyed.
In a word, it destroys the human soul.
That's the bottom line.
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"Bullshit on a Waffle" was intended to bring up an image of something disgusting served up on something nice and sweet. Also, "waffle" has a second connotative meaning of ambiguity.
2 comments:
Great post title.
I think this is on the money:
The one is that you like to hear people scream, that you enjoy the feeling of empowerment when a man pisses in his pants out of sheer fear.
Shrubco believed that torture, including the cultural kind (panties, pictures of nakedness, etc) would intimidate the people they tortured, and serve as a lesson to other brown people.
As always with this crew, the exact opposite happened. The brown people rose up and started fighting back.
Heaven forfend Americans get the same idea; fighting back, that is.
Actually the line about enjoying the sight of a grown man pissing himself out of fear was taken from a quote of Sgt Charles Grainer.
He was the former PA (I think) prison guard who had the good fortune to be picked as prime "bad apple" in the Abu Gharib spin down and got 10 years in the shade for his poor sense of humor and bad timing in the use of a digital camera.
People who would start wars should be made to read Thucydides "History of the Peloponnesian Wars" and write long sentences on the blackboard.
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