Torture is in the news again, big time. I just wrote a post about it on a local newspaper’s Web site, in response to someone’s comment about the effectiveness of waterboarding. The writer – whose anonymous user name suggests he/she is a veteran – makes the claim that waterboarding produced the intelligence that foiled the plot to fly a jetliner into the library tower in Los Angeles. Of course, the claim falls apart on the most superficial level. The Bush administration took credit for foiling the plot in February of 2002; the torture (“enhanced interrogation”) program went into effect in August of that year. I can understand the writer’s confusion, though. There has been so much garbled noise around this issue in the past few weeks, much of it stirred up by that bloated ex-Vice President of ours, whom Gore Vidal once likened to “300 pounds of condemned veal in a gray suit.” Yes, Dick Cheney, evident war criminal, wants more memos released – the ones that show how effective his war crimes truly were in producing actionable intelligence. I say, tell it to the jury.

Cheney’s not the only one blowing smoke, though he’s certainly among the most visible. (Christ, you can see him from space!) Other ex-minions of the Bush team are creeping their way through the media hive, popping up here or there to offer a spirited defense of the indefensible. Some, like Phillip Zelikow, Executive Director of the 9/11 Commission and adviser to Condi Rice, have appeared mainly to distance themselves from the controversy. But a lot of the noise reflects the same type of argument Bush himself used throughout his presidency – this is not torture, and it is being used to keep your families safe. Doesn’t matter that it breaks both domestic laws and international law. Doesn’t matter that aside from being fundamentally wrong and immoral, it is ineffective and known to produce unreliable information. (In fact, torture of the kind implemented by the last administration was formulated specifically to elicit false confessions.) Doesn’t matter that the examples they provide of terror plots foiled through torture hold not an ounce of water. The big lie continues.

I heard Pat Buchanan on MSNBC this past Friday defending “enhanced interrogation techniques” partly on the basis that most Americans favor their use against terrorists. I don’t know that this is true, but it wouldn’t surprise me. People have become so used to the idea, both through the actions of their government and via television shows like “24,” that they consider the “smoking gun” scenarios constantly referred to in the media as plausible. This is a bit like the phenomenon of judges – actual trial judges – deciding cases partly on the basis of science used in shows like “CSI”. It’s as if NASA started basing everything they do on the scientific principles embodied by “Lost in Space.” That’s kind of scary… almost as scary as the torture itself. If we’re getting that detached from reality when we set policy or even just consider its effects, we are in “deep doo-doo,” as Bush’s father used to say. Just the fact that Khalid Sheikh Mohammed was waterboarded more than 180 times over the course of a single month should indicate that, as a “smoking gun” remedy, this does not work.

In any case, forget whether or not psychos on the talk shows say it works. If we resort to Cheney’s hammer, we’re sacrificing what’s left of our humanity.

luv u,

jp

As some of you know, I’ve been around more than a few years (get off my lawn, you kids!), so I’ve heard my share of triumphalist rhetoric about some military action against a “worthy” opponent. But the U.S. Navy vs. some teenage pirates… that’s about as lopsided a contest as I can imagine. Sure, they needed to get that ship captain out alive. Perhaps there was no other way to resolve the standoff – I can’t say, really. But this is nothing to crow about, and certainly not some enormous success that strikes a blow against tyranny. These pirates are desperate young men driven to a bandit’s life by circumstances we can barely comprehend. The very life’s blood of international commerce flows right past their shores in the form of these enormous freighters and tankers, and they see this as a meager opportunity to scrape some wealth out of a global system that passes them by. Not surprising that they grasp this nettle, even at risk of life and limb.

I, of course, have listened to NPR and other news sources in vain to hear someone give some meaningful background on why the Somali coast has become the piracy capital of the modern world. One would think we would hear something about the fact that the U.S. government had supported Ethiopia’s invasion of Somalia in December 2006, which overthrew the nascent national government of the Union of Islamic Courts. The Bush administration accused the Union of being in league with Al Qaeda, but (as was typical for them) offered no proof of same. In any case, the Ethiopians had received millions in military assistance and were happy to act on our behalf, with the support of U.S. air power, intelligence, and special forces participation. Perhaps 10,000 have been killed since then, with as many as a million refugees. Just as bad, Somalis have seen a return to near-total chaos, marked by growing civil conflict and a breakdown in even basic government services. Controlling piracy is not at the top of their to-do list, I’m certain.

It is in this context that young Somalis are taking to the sea with guns. Many may have formerly earned a living as fishermen, but without a functioning government to control their coastal waters, they have been unable to compete with unregulated fishing vessels from elsewhere in the region as well as Europe. Groups of Somalis have attempted to interdict illegal fishing, and these efforts have been conflated with piracy. There has also been a history of illegal dumping of toxic materials in Somali waters – something discussed in some detail on Democracy Now! just recently – which affects the fishing industry. In addition, with the increased presence of military vessels in the Gulf of Aden, any Somali in a small fishing craft is liable to be mistaken for a pirate; many are harassed. My point is, this is a desperate country filled with desperate people, and we bear a substantial responsibility for their situation.

Count me glad that that crew got out without serious injury. Now if we can start undoing the mess we made out of Somalia, that would be good for everybody.

luv u,

jp

Another young person from my part of the world was killed in Afghanistan this past week – a Marine who grew up a stone’s throw away from where my sisters lived in one of the many small towns that dot the landscape of central New York. He’s the second local K.I.A. in the space of about a month or so, and it’s disgusting. What the hell are these kids dying for? How could we justify (if any justification were required before allowing it to happen) sending them into this hopeless situation, sacrificing life and limb for a cause most people in America wouldn’t give up a meal at Wendy’s to advance? Pundits and politicians never tire of telling us that we’re a nation at war, but it’s not so – we’re a nation whose all-volunteer military is at war, while the rest of us busy ourselves with other matters. This is the trap that empires are liable to fall into. The foreign legion will protect our overseas possessions, while the homeland is bled dry by the cost of underwriting the global projection of military power. Not worth that young person’s life… nor anyone else’s.

Not, may I add, worth the lives of those who inhabit the lands we invade, either. From the perspective of a well-insulated stateside public, they die nameless, sometimes killed by remote control from a command center in the heart of America where faceless technicians murder strangers with the wag of a joystick then drive home for dinner with the family. If there ever was a truer illustration of the moral bankruptcy of empire, I’ve yet to hear about it. War should never be risk free and tidy, particularly for the aggressor. It becomes too attractive an option, as we have seen in recent years particularly. I suppose by allowing us to see the returning coffins of military dead, subject to the consent of the family, the Obama Administration is at least providing some rudimentary means by which Americans may become better acquainted with the notion that we have wars going on, and that those wars are a major problem worthy of their attention.

As I write these lines – not long after beginning this column – news has come through of five more U.S. soldiers killed in Mosul, Iraq. This comes on the heels of a multi-billion dollar supplemental appropriations request from the Administration to fund the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. This feels like a perpetual motion policy machine to me. Bush is gone and Obama has climbed into the cockpit, promising to be a better, more thoughtful driver than his predecessor… but it is still this massive killing machine designed to do only one thing. The only thing powerful enough to stop it is, well, us. Only we have to be aware of the fact that it needs stopping. And right now we’re busy with other stuff. As Obama said, you gotta be able to do more than one thing at a time. Let’s take his advice.

Well… what are we waiting for?

luv u,

jp