Regaining perspective

I don't want to get overoptimistic at small advances.  But it's good to see the recent activity among the Democrats in Congress to confront the issue of an "exit strategy" in Iraq and to highlight the "Downing Street Memo" and related documents and what they mean to the way the United States is being governed right now.

And the torture scandal isn't going away.

If you find yourself succuming to giddy optimism, Steve Gilliard can usually provide a good cold-water-in-the-face moment:  Torture? No big deal. They deserved it. 06/16/05.

The growing amorality of the Republican Party, their utter soullessness, has become a danger to this Republic. Not in the sense of the brownshirts marching down the Mall, but of something deeper. As religion becomes more of a political tool, it's lessons are forgotten and the soul of this country becomes rotten. Since they have no stake in the war or the courage to fight it, they embrace the morality of the Gestapo and the Allegemine SS, shooting deserters who had grown sick of war while they sat in offices and tortured the unarmed and innocent before shiping them to a death camp. When finally faced with combat, they ran just like the men they condemend to death.

Americans have never been as morally clean as we pretend, our history lionizes criminals and murderers. But Gitmo is wrong. We know it is wrong, our enemies hope we continue it as it is the biggest thing they have to recruit others. When we release people from there, their stories serve as an excellent reason to fight the US. (my emphasis)

Okay, I don't really believe that it's very meaningful to speak about a nation's "soul" or "national character."  But he's making a very good point.

Obviously, he doesn't have much use for the Republican dittoheads who defend torture with arguments like "it's not as bad as the Soviet gulag":

But the larger point is this: America is supposed to have higher standards than the Nazis or Stalin, not embrace them or use them as a defense. There is no reason that we should have a gulag in the sun or be accused of torture. We should have jailed and tried these people legally. Not acted like the people we're supposed to be fighting.

One day, Americans will be subjected to this and then what will these people say "it's unfair"? Well, we tossed away our conscience and morals to achieve this end, and the result will be grim. But they won't be the ones paying it. They will be hiding behind their keyboards like the cowards they are, whining, lying and rejoicing in the suffering of others and wishing to see [even] more brutality, but only from a safe distance.

He holds forth on the same theme in a response to a correspondent: You cannot defend torture 06/17/05.

Torture is wrong and unAmerican. I'm sorry you didn't read the Geneva Convention when you were in the military. The reason it exists is to prevent people from being tortured. ...

Instead of revelling in cruelty, think about your reaction to the way Iraqis kidnap and kill westerners. Now, imagine you were an Arab and your kid was in Gitmo because some chieftain sold him to the US. How would you feel then.

I don't want a contest of wills with murderers. I want the rule of law and justice to render their arguments pointless. ...

The best thing we have as Americans is a belief in fairness and the rule of law. If we could try these people, with a full and fair defense and expose their heinous ideology for what it is, then we win. We show that law trumps violence and torture and can protect democracies. Gitmo is a stain on our honor and hurts our ability to defend this country.

The difficulties in regaining perspective and returning to something more like decency and the rule of law in foreign policy are illustrated in this piece by Daniel Ellsberg: The Courage to Talk Withdrawal Antiwar.com 06/09/05.  Yes, trolls, it's that Daniel Ellsberg. 

His opening is memorable:

I'm often asked whether there aren't big differences between the Iraq War and Vietnam. And I'm always quick to say, of course, there are differences. In Iraq, it's a dry heat. And the language that none of our troops or diplomats speak is Arabic rather than Vietnamese.

But the language we choose for "democratic" representation in the country is the same for Chalabi or Allawi or any of those people. Miraculously their leaders speak fluent English, as in Vietnam.

His article is mainly a thoughtful look at what we Americans tend to call "moral courage" and the Germans call "civic courage."  Specifically, he talks about the practical reality that anyone, public officials in particular, who straightforwardly advocates withdrawal from the Iraq War faces potential stigmitization.  And he offers this grim thought:

[I]t was very hard to exit Vietnam, to end the American war in Vietnam. And there was no guarantee that it would end in 10 years from 1965, as it did. It was likely to have gone on much longer, and would have without a combination of Congressional pressure, pushed by public pressure, and luck of various kinds, including the revelations of Watergate.

I believe it will be much harder and longer to get out of Iraq. There was no oil in Vietnam. Our need for bases in that area was not what we perceive our need for bases in the Middle East to be. Vietnam was not next to a highly influential ally of the United States, like Israel, with great influence on our policy that demands our continued presence in that area.

What he has to say about civic courage for elected officials is worth reading in full.  It's much different for an elected official whose career can be drastically affected to straightforwardly oppose the Iraq War than it is for most of us bloggers:

I would say that many, I could say thousands, but it's really hundreds of thousands, and when we include the Vietnamese, millions, have died in the last century because American politicians were unwilling to be called names. They were unwilling to face, however invalid, however ridiculous, the charge that they were weak, unmanly, cowardly, defeatist, losers, and whatnot. ...

We were lied into Iraq the same way we were lied into Vietnam, even though the war initially, the blitzkrieg phase, looked very different. The war is now looking very similar. Kennedy and Byrd, two senators who were still there who had voted for the Tonkin Gulf resolution, pleading with their fellow senators, both said "I am ashamed of what I did almost 40 years ago. Don't live with that for the rest of your lives." Most of them will have to live with that for the rest of their lives.

That is the kind of courage that is needed. The courage to say that we need to get out. The courage to speak the truth. That will save us and the Iraqis from the occupation.