12/16/05 "SF
Gate" -- -- "We do not torture." Remember
it, write it in red crayon on the bathroom wall, tattoo it onto
your acid tongue because those very words rang throughout the
land like a bleak bell, like a low scream in the night, like a
cheese grater rubbing against the teeth of common sense when
Dubya mumbled them during a speech not long ago, and it was,
at once, hilarious and nauseating and it took all the
self-control in the world for everyone in the room not to burst
out in disgusted laughter and throw their chairs at his
duplicitous little head.
Oh my God, yes, yes we do torture, America that is, and we do
it a lot, and we do it in ways that would make you sick to hear
about, and we're doing it right now, all over the world, the CIA
and the U.S. military, perhaps more often and more brutally than
at any time in recent history and we use the exact same kind of
techniques and excuses for it our numb-minded president cited as
reasons we should declare war and oust the dictator of a
defenseless pip-squeak nation that happened to be sitting on our
oil.
This is something we must know, acknowledge, take to heart
and not simply file away as some sort of murky, disquieting
unknowable that's best left to scummy lords of the government
underworld. We must not don the blinders and think America is
always, without fail, the land of the perky and the free and the
benevolent. Horrific torture is very much a part of who we are,
right now. Deny it at your peril. Accept it at your deep
discontent.
Torture is in. Torture is the tittering buzzword of the Bush
administration, bandied about like secret candy, like a hot
whisper from Dick Cheney's gnarled tongue into Rumsfeld's
pointed ear and then dumped deep into Dubya's Big Vat o' Denial.
The cruel abuse of terror suspects is sanctioned and approved
from on high, and we employed it in Abu Ghraib (the worst
evidence of which -- the rapes and assaults and savage beatings
-- we will likely never see), and we use it in Eastern Europe
and Guantánamo and in secret prisons and it has caused deaths of
countless detainees. And Rumsfeld's insane level of Defense
Department secrecy means we may never even know exactly how
brutal we have become.
Torture is right now being discussed in all manner of
high-minded articles and forums wherein the finer points of
what amount of torture should be allowable under what particular
horrific (and hugely unlikely) circumstances, and all falling
under the aegis of the new and pending
McCain anti-torture legislation that would outlaw any and
all "degrading, inhumane" treatment whatsoever by any American
CIA or military personnel at any time whatsoever, more or less.
All while, ironically, over in Iraq, our military is right
now inflicting more pain and death upon more lives than any
torture chamber in the last hundred years, and where we have
recently discovered the fledgling government that the United
States helped erect in Saddam's absence, the Iraqi Interior
Ministry, well, they appear to be
so giddy about torture they might as well be Donald
Rumsfeld's love children. But, you know, quibbling.
There is right now this
amazing little story over at the London Guardian, a
fascinating item all about a group of hardy hobbyists known as "planespotters,"
folks whose solitary, dedicated pastime is to sit outside the
various airports of the world and watch the runway action and
make intricate logs and post their data and photos to
planespotter Web sites. It's a bit like bird-watching, but
without the chirping and the nature and with a lot more
deafening engine roar and poisonous fumes.
These people, they are not spies and they are not liberals
and they are not necessarily trying to reveal anything covert or
ugly or illegal, but of course that is often exactly what they
do, because these days, as it turns out, some of those planes
these guys photograph are involved in clandestine CIA
operations, in what are called "extraordinary renditions," the
abduction of suspects who are taken to lands unknown so we may
beat and maul and torture the living crap out of them and not be
held accountable to any sort of pesky international law. Fun!
It is for us to know, to try and comprehend. The United
States has the most WMD of anyone in the world. We imprison and
kill more of our own citizens than any other civilized nation on
the planet. We still employ horrific, napalm-like
chemical weapons.
And yes, under the Bush-Cheney-Rumsfeld regime, we abuse and
torture prisoners at least as horrifically as any Islamic
fundamentalist, as any terrorist cell, to serve our agenda and
meet our goals -- and whether you think those goals are
justifiable because they contain the words "freedom" or
"democracy" is, in many ways, beside the point.
Go ahead, equivocate your heart out. It is a bit like
justifying known poisons in your food. Sure mercury is a known
cancer-causing agent. Sure the body will recoil and soon become
violently ill and die. But gosh, it sure does taste good. Shrug.
Maybe you don't care, maybe you're like Rumsfeld and Cheney
and the rest who think, well sure, if they're terrorists and if
they'd just as willingly suck the eyeballs out of my cat and rip
out my fingernails with a pair of pliers as look at me, well,
they deserve to be tortured, beaten, abused in ways you
and I cannot imagine. Especially if (and this is the eternal
argument) by their torture we can prevent the deaths of
innocents.
Maybe you are one of these people. Eye for an eye.
Water torture for an explosive device. Does this mean that
you are, of course, exactly like those being tortured, willing
to go to extremes to get what you want? That you are on the same
level morally, energetically, politically and, like Cheney and
Rumsfeld, you are dragging the nation down into a hole with you?
You might think. After all, fundamentalists terrorize to further
a lopsided and religious-based agenda. We torture to protect
ours. Same coin, different side.
It is mandatory that we all acknowledge where we are as a
nation, right now, how low we have fallen, how thuggish and
heartless and
internationally disrespected we have become, the ugly
trajectory we are following.
Because here's the sad kicker: Torture works. It gets
results. It might very well save some lives. But it also
requires a moral and spiritual sacrifice the likes of which
would make Bush's own Jesus recoil in absolute horror. Yet this
is what's happening, right now. And our current position demands
a reply to one bitter, overarching question: What sort of nation
are we, really?
Thoughts for the author?
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Mark Morford's Notes & Errata column appears every Wednesday and
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