dump tea in Boston Harbor, 1773
Last week, some Republican-orchestrated tax “tea parties”, meant to remind everybody of the Boston Tea Party, took place all over the USA. The people who attended these very public protests—the Boston Tea Party was a privately attended, costumed bit of vandalism—are called by Democrats part of an astroturf movement, as opposed to a grass-roots one. The astroturf crack is meant to suggest that all the protesters are artificially grass-roots, and are really the puppets if not the paid agents of the Republican Party. While it is true that few Democratic Party leaders seem much bothered by blowing the hell out of the already blown-to-hell US federal budget, and at some point they will have to raise taxes to help pay for all their extravagant giveaways to rich people, Republicans (ironically) are not the only people deeply concerned by this.
But the thing is, the real tea parties won’t likely be organized by conservative goombahs (after all George III was pretty fucking conservative), nor will they just be about some stinking tea or taxes.
They’ll probably be aimed at disrupting or breaking something essential—e.g. the nation’s financial system—oh wait, that’s already disrupted and broken. Hmm—OK, then the nation’s housing market—nope, disrupted and broken. The economy—nope, disrupted and broken. The nation’s computer security—disrupted and broken. The nation’s international reputation—LONG disrupted and broken. The nation’s position as the number one thug in the world! Oh, that’s still safe.
Which brings us to the torture bit of our story.
Now, it isn’t really news that the United States has for a long time been the biggest thug in the world. Hell, it’s the only nation that has ever thought it was OK to actually nuke cities. It acts a lot like Southpark’s Jimbo Kern and Ned Gerblansky, who regularly violate Nature, and hunting regs, by loudly proclaiming that anything they are about to shoot is “coming right for us”. Of course Jimbo and Ned are just redneck morons, whereas the United States of America is—uhm—a whole nation of redneck morons, armed to the teeth with nukes, tanks, aircraft carriers, a really hateful shoot-first-and-count-the-collaterals-later attitude, and of course the CIA monsters who work for the Ministry of Love.
Granted, from a Western point of view, Qaeda guys are real scumbags, but is it really doing the US any good whatsoever to now be known as the nation that thought it was wise to waterboard 2 Qaeda bozos 266 times!? If that doesn’t violate the US constitutional prohibition against “cruel and unusual punishments”, I don’t know what would. Iron maidens and the rack, followed by a little drawing and quartering? And oh by the way, how fucking effective is a method of interrogation that has to be employed that many times on the same person, and how worthwhile is the information you’re likely to get from a victim that you’ve driven insane with that monstrous kind of treatment?
Now, it’s true one of the Qaeda suspects nearly drowned over 100 times was Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, always noted as being “the self-described planner of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks”, which is a pretty bad thing to be. But last time I checked, describing yourself, especially under torture, as a mass-murder-planner is not necessarily the same thing as being one. Even Charlie Manson got a trial after all. And they didn’t have to torture anybody to convict and put away the Manson family.
In fact, they didn’t have to torture the Qaeda guys to get whatever information they thought they wanted. Nope. The CIA just decided to torture people, in some cases we now learn with a fervor that would have done Torquemada proud, and with Bush regime OK, because they wanted to expand the scope of legally acceptable “interrogation methods” to include torture, and also to test the ability of the victims to withstand the various methods.
You can understand that, right?
In addition to torturing alleged evil people, Pakistani agents of the US government were reportedly happy to also torture Khalid Sheikh Mohammed’s children, using methods, involving “ants or other creatures put on their legs to scare them”, we now understand were OK’d to use on CIA torture victims also.
You can understand that too, right? You can understand the word “Orwellian” too, right? Because that isn’t just an adjective describing a work of fiction. It is the nature of the political system presently enveloping the “civilized” world.
And what is Barack Obama going to do about this awful torture faux pas?
Nothing, as usual, nothing at all.
Note, the questions raised here ask in part whether war itself, especially as perpetrated by the USA on thousands of innocent victims for almost eight years now, is unconstitutional.
A nation cannot and should not stand upon ideals of respect for human life and liberty, when that nation daily offends those virtues with ghastly war crimes. Indeed, such a nation should not stand at all.
Fast spread the tempest’s darkening pall,
The mighty realms were troubled,
The storm broke loose, but first of all
The Boston teapot bubbled!
Update April 21, 2009, 3:38PM CDT
I note that the MSM is widely reporting the premise that Obama has now "opened the door" for possible prosecutions of Bush regime torture-policy makers. As noted here, this contradicts what Obama's Chief of Staff, Rahm Emanuel, said in an interview on Sunday, and the possible prosecutions would still not include any of the CIA personnel who actually conducted the tortures, but it might include people such as former Attorney General Gonzales and the infamous torture-enabling law professor, John Yoo. As we have seen so far with Obama, opening a door and hinting, is hardly the same thing as walking through it. At any rate Obama says he will wait for what his Attorney General, Eric Holder, decides after reviewing the matter. Of course Obama has no control over what investigations of Bush regime torturing (and for that matter kidnapping) the US Congress might decide to pursue. In fact, in order to prevent a wider-ranging Congressional inquiry, which Obama has said would likely be destructively partisan, the White House might offer Democratic leaders a sacrifice or two of Bush thugs.
(jk)
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