Torture in the Bush Gulag: How prissy should we be in talking about it?

"I wouldn't join the International Criminal Court. It's a body based in The Hague where unaccountable judges and prosecutors can pull our troops or diplomats up for trial.

"And I wouldn't join it. And I understand that in certain capitals around the world that that wasn't a popular move. But it's the right move not to join a foreign court that could -- where our people could be prosecuted." - George W. Bush 09/30/04

"Men without conscience are capable of any cruelty the human mind can imagine." - Dick Cheney 01/26/05

First of all, I was using the word "gulag" to describe the network of torture centers that Bush and his crew have set up in various countries long before Amnesty International used it.  And long before pro-torture politicians like Bush, Cheney and Rummy started twittering about how their delicate souls were offended by the use of that word.  So was Al Gore.  So I'm going to keep using it.

Second, torture is wrong.  For many reasons.  The torture being carried out at Guantanamo and other places is also criminal.  It's illegal under American law and illegal under international laws binding on Americans.  And the practice of torture is not only damaging the so-called "global terrorism" (GWOT) - that's assuming the administration even thinks that the GWOT is still going on.  It's also a serious threat to discipline in the armed forces, especially the Army, which is likely to be the most devastated by the various consequences of the Iraq War.

Here's what Gore had to say about the "gulag."  And it's worth quoting with some context (Speech at Georgetown University 06/24/04 CommonDreams.org) (my emphasis):

It is an extraordinary blessing to live in a nation so carefully designed to protect individual liberty and safeguard self-governance and free communication. But if George Washington could see the current state of his generation's handiwork and assess the quality of our generation's stewardship at the beginning of this twenty-first century, what do you suppose he would think about the proposition that our current president claims the unilateral right to arrest and imprison American citizens indefinitely without giving them the right to see a lawyer or inform their families of their whereabouts, and without the necessity of even charging them with any crime. All that is necessary, according to our new president is that he - the president - label any citizen an "unlawful enemy combatant," and that will be sufficient to justify taking away that citizen's liberty - even for the rest of his life, if the president so chooses. And there is no appeal.

What would Thomas Jefferson think of the curious and discredited argument from our Justice Department that the president may authorize what plainly amounts to the torture of prisoners - and that any law or treaty, which attempts to constrain his treatment of prisoners in time of war is itself a violation of the constitution our founders put together.

What would Benjamin Franklin think of President Bush's assertion that he has the inherent power - even without a declaration of war by the Congress - to launch an invasion of any nation on Earth, at any time he chooses, for any reason he wishes, even if that nation poses no imminent threat to the United States.

How long would it take James Madison to dispose of our current President's recent claim, in Department of Justice legal opinions, that he is no longer subject to the rule of law so long as he is acting in his role as Commander in Chief.

Gore is a tad America-centric in his comment about where modern democracy was born, but his comment was otherwise a good one:

They were greatly influenced - far more than we can imagine - by a careful reading of the history and human dramas surrounding the democracies of ancient Greece and the Roman republic. They knew, for example, that democracy disappeared in Rome when Caesar crossed the Rubicon in violation of the Senate's long prohibition against a returning general entering the city while still in command of military forces. Though the Senate lingeredin form and was humored for decades, when Caesar impoliticly combined his military commander role with his chief executive role, the Senate - and with it the Republic - withered away. And then for all intents and purposes, the great dream of democracy disappeared from the face of the Earth for seventeen centuries, until its rebirth in our land.

And, unless one assumes that the fantasy world depicted on FOX News and OxyContin radio bears more than a passing resemblance to reality, it would be hard to argue with the following assessment on the Iraq War and the GWOT (my emphasis):

We must surrender some of our traditional American freedoms, he tells us, so that he may have sufficient power to protect us against those who would do us harm. Public fear remains at an unusually high level almost three years after we were attacked on September 11th, 2001. In response to those devastating attacks, the president properly assumed his role as commander in chief and directed a military invasion of the land in which our attackers built their training camps, were harbored and planned their assault. But just as the tide of battle was shifting decisively in our favor, the commander in chief made a controversial decision to divert a major portion of our army to invade another country that, according to the best evidence compiled in a new, exhaustive, bi-partisan study, posed no imminent threat to us and had nothing to do with the attack against us.

As the main body of our troops were redeployed for the new invasion, those who organized the attacks against us escaped and many of them are still at large. Indeed, their overall numbers seem to have grown considerably because our invasion of the country that did not pose any imminent threat to us was perceived in their part of the world as a gross injustice, and the way in which we have conducted that war further fueled a sense of rage against the United States in those lands and, according to several studies, has stimulated a wave of new recruits for the terrorist group that attacked us and still wishes us harm.

And here is the specific "gulag" reference.  The "Bush Gulag," actually (my emphasis):

But there has been no more bizarre or troubling manifestation of how seriously off track this President's policies have  taken America than the two profound shocks to our nation's conscience during the last month. First came the extremely disturbing pictures that document strange forms of physical and sexual abuse - and even torture and murder - by some of our soldiers against people they captured as prisoners in Iraq. And then, the second shock came just last week, with strange and perverted legal memoranda from inside the administration, which actually sought to justify torture and to somehow provide a legal rationale for bizarre and sadistic activities conducted in the name of the American people, which, according to any reasonable person, would be recognized as war crimes. In making their analysis, the administration lawyers concluded that the President, whenever he is acting in his role as commander in chief, is above and immune from the "rule of law." At least we don't have to guess what our founders would have to say about this bizarre and un-American theory.

By the middle of this week, the uproar caused by the disclosure of this legal analysis had forced the administration to claim they were throwing the memo out and it was, "irrelevant and overbroad." But no one in the administration has said that the reasoning was wrong. And in fact, a DOJ spokesman says they stand by the tortured definition of torture. In addition the broad analysis regarding the commander-in-chief powers has not been disavowed. And the view of the memo - that it was within commander-in-chief power to order any interrogation techniques necessary to extract information - most certainly contributed to the atmosphere that led to the atrocities committed against the Iraqis at Abu Ghraib. We also know that President Bush rewarded the principle author of this legal monstrosity with a seat on the U.S. Court of Appeals. President Bush, meanwhile, continues to place the blame for the horrific consequences of his morally obtuse policies on the young privates and corporals and sergeants who may well be culpable as individuals for their actions, but who were certainly not responsible for the policies which set up the Bush Gulag and led to America's strategic catastrophe in Iraq.

Reading this speech makes you appreciate even more the good sense the American voters showed in 2000 when we elected Gore as President.

And if an elected Democratic president can call it a "gulag", what is the excuse for the kind of mindless prissiness E.J. Dionne, Jr., showed in this column repeating the phony outrage from the mouths of Dick Cheney and others over the use of the word "gulag"?  Hyperbole and Human Rights Washington Post 06/03/05.  He sounds for all the world like one of those Southern "moderates" in the segregation days who didn't want to be thought of as one of those countrified redneck racists - but who were shocked, shocked over the bad manners of blacks protesting over discrimination.

It's bizarre enough that we have a "press corps" that plays along with the amazingly cynical word-game now being played - by the Party that spent the last 20 years or so mocking liberals for "political correctness" - as they comma-dance over the political correctness of the word "gulag."

That we are actually even having a debate over the virtues of torture is a truly sickening commentary on the state of American political culture today.  For people like Dionne, who are (at least theoretically) liberals and have been critics of torture to adopt the same prissiness is just nuts.  It's a classic example of the saying attributed to Robert Frost that liberals are so open-minded they refuse to take their own side in a debate.  Good Lord!  I'm surprised he didn't say that torture would disappear with "all deliberate speed" if only those rude anti-torture types would show good manners and be polite when they respectfully request the Dick Cheneys and Don Rumsfelds of the world to realize that turning dogs loose on naked prisoners to rip chunks out of their flesh is not a good policy.

With "liberals" like that, who needs overt pro-torture advocates?  Dionne writes, "More generally, a willingness to use hyperbolic language should never be confused with toughness."  I would say that mindless prissiness should never be confused with liberalism.  Or good sense.  And have we really reached the point where opposing torture is a liberal-vs.-conservative and a Democrats-vs.-Republicans issue?  Wasn't there a time, not so long ago,where it was a normal-people-vs.-twisted-sadists issue?

Al Gore, at least, hasn't been mincing words over what he calls the "bizarre and un-American theory" of law that led our now-Attorney General to justify torture and even unlimited Executive power to override American laws.  And if Gore can use "Bush Gulag," then so can the rest of the democratic world.