Another torture link
Dec. 1st, 2005 10:01 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
pecuniumDigby (who reminds me of someone I know by that name, but I am sure it isn't him... it's very strange. I want to meet him just so the disconnect of hearing his words in someone else's voice will go away) has a piece up (Burning Witches about torture, and why we need to keep railing against it.
Why it must remain completely beyond the pale of what we will accept.
Do I think the US has used, winked at, conived and suborned torture? Of course I do. Do I think it recent, and only of such recent ilk as the present flap has brought to light? Of course not.
We supported death sqauds in El Salvador. We knew they existed, and the Reagan administration broke laws (a lot of them, from the Boland Amendment to letting cocaine come in the side door while we were slipping illegal arms out the back) to keep the people who had them in funds so they could keep up the killing.
Digby points out one of the crucial things about torture, it isn't really about getting information, not when it becomes an instrument of policy.
One might assume that there is no one on the planet who thinks that torturing innocent people is right. Certainly, it's going to be hard to find intelligent educated people who believe that it is a moral good to do so. But not impossible. As it turns out there is a moral argument for torturing innocent people:
From Orrin Judd:
I think he understands something I failed to understand about this argument. This isn't about terrorism. It isn't about national security. It isn't about the rule of law or enlightenment values. It's about conforming to social norms. That puts the whole thing in perspective, doesn't it? What I call "innocent" isn't innocent at all. Just being a practicing Muslim makes one guilty.
It's nice to know that we shouldn't be persecuting those who have converted to Christianity (or properly protestantised Islam, which translates into an embrace of Western Civilization.) The good news is that "protestantising" (forcing Western conformity on) the billion Muslims out there will be a cakewalk:
And here I thought the whole "End of History" thing had been laughed out of town by the events of 9/11. Apparently History has only been postponed. Protestantism is still on the march, "reforming" witches and Muslims alike. And if it takes a little waterboarding or burning at the stake to get the job done, so be it. These people have to understand that we're going to end History one bloody non-conformist bastard at a time if we have to.
It's all of a piece. Hussien used torture to make people conform, to suppress dissent. Stalin did the same. Say something out of line to the wrong person, and "poof" you disappeared. Hitler, well he could be kinder. Von Stauffenberg was slowly killed, as an example. Rommel, implicated in the same plot was allowed to kill himself, which would spare his family the same, inevitable, fate, if he was publicly accused, and then; of course, convicted.
What could Rommel do? Even if he was innocent, his fate was sealed. Suicide, and his family lives, insist on his innoncence, and they get killed.
Torture works; if a state where fear of the denouncement is the place you want to live.
To quote A.E. Houseman, slightly out of context,
He gathered all the springs to birth
From the many-venomed earth;
First a little, thence to more,
He sampled all her killing store;
And easy, smiling, seasoned sound,
Sate the king when healths went round.
Why it must remain completely beyond the pale of what we will accept.
Do I think the US has used, winked at, conived and suborned torture? Of course I do. Do I think it recent, and only of such recent ilk as the present flap has brought to light? Of course not.
We supported death sqauds in El Salvador. We knew they existed, and the Reagan administration broke laws (a lot of them, from the Boland Amendment to letting cocaine come in the side door while we were slipping illegal arms out the back) to keep the people who had them in funds so they could keep up the killing.
Digby points out one of the crucial things about torture, it isn't really about getting information, not when it becomes an instrument of policy.
One might assume that there is no one on the planet who thinks that torturing innocent people is right. Certainly, it's going to be hard to find intelligent educated people who believe that it is a moral good to do so. But not impossible. As it turns out there is a moral argument for torturing innocent people:
From Orrin Judd:
You might want to go back and brush up on your history, witchcraft was quite popular, even within the Church, for an awfully long time. In fact, it's back today in the form of Wicca. In its denial of the basis of Western Civilization it is so transgressive that it deserved to be and was persecuted. People who deny there were witches because they don't like how the religious treated them are akin to the Left denying there were Communists because they don't like that Americans reviled them. Jews too were justifiably, though unnecessarily, persecuted for their beliefs and inability to conform to social norms. The great injustice was the persecution of the conversos in Spain, who were sincere converts to Christianity.
I think he understands something I failed to understand about this argument. This isn't about terrorism. It isn't about national security. It isn't about the rule of law or enlightenment values. It's about conforming to social norms. That puts the whole thing in perspective, doesn't it? What I call "innocent" isn't innocent at all. Just being a practicing Muslim makes one guilty.
It's nice to know that we shouldn't be persecuting those who have converted to Christianity (or properly protestantised Islam, which translates into an embrace of Western Civilization.) The good news is that "protestantising" (forcing Western conformity on) the billion Muslims out there will be a cakewalk:
You can have a number of voices so long as everyone has just one hymnal. That's the essence of the protestantism that the End of History requires. It'll be easy enough to Reform Islam, just as we did Catholicism, Judaism, and the rest.
Posted by: oj at November 25, 2005 10:56 AM
And here I thought the whole "End of History" thing had been laughed out of town by the events of 9/11. Apparently History has only been postponed. Protestantism is still on the march, "reforming" witches and Muslims alike. And if it takes a little waterboarding or burning at the stake to get the job done, so be it. These people have to understand that we're going to end History one bloody non-conformist bastard at a time if we have to.
It's all of a piece. Hussien used torture to make people conform, to suppress dissent. Stalin did the same. Say something out of line to the wrong person, and "poof" you disappeared. Hitler, well he could be kinder. Von Stauffenberg was slowly killed, as an example. Rommel, implicated in the same plot was allowed to kill himself, which would spare his family the same, inevitable, fate, if he was publicly accused, and then; of course, convicted.
What could Rommel do? Even if he was innocent, his fate was sealed. Suicide, and his family lives, insist on his innoncence, and they get killed.
Torture works; if a state where fear of the denouncement is the place you want to live.
To quote A.E. Houseman, slightly out of context,
He gathered all the springs to birth
From the many-venomed earth;
First a little, thence to more,
He sampled all her killing store;
And easy, smiling, seasoned sound,
Sate the king when healths went round.
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no subject
Date: 2005-12-01 07:24 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-12-01 07:27 pm (UTC)Digby the blogger is younger, as well as all the rest, but every so often.
And it hurts.
TK
no subject
Date: 2005-12-01 07:29 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-12-01 09:14 pm (UTC)"Terence this is stupid stuff"
Given that the name I use most often is diminutive from, Terrence, well it has a certain appeal.
And, as I do a lot of writing in the style of the auctorial voice in that poem, well it has a certain resonance.
TK
no subject
Date: 2005-12-01 09:18 pm (UTC)to justify God's ways to man"
It truly is an excellent poem.
no subject
Date: 2005-12-01 09:33 pm (UTC)The scope, compression, and viscious wit of Mithridates are incredible.
One is hard pressed not to read it as an apologia, and critique, to, and of, his critics.
TK