Quote

"Democracy is the theory that the common people know what they want and deserve to get it good and hard."

H. L. Mencken
US editor (1880 - 1956)

Eureka! I've got the answer! It IS torture, it doesn't work, and we shouldn't be doing it!

In the news these days we are seeing senators, military brass, civil servants, and lawyers trying to figure out what the definition of torture is and whether or not certain, shall we say "techniques" might be alright for America, world beacon of freedom and justice that it is, to officially espouse and engage in. It is instructive to note that certain things that sound like torture to the rest of us are being called something else by some of these same senators, military brass, civil servants, and lawyers. In fact, some of these influential and powerful people are claiming that making someone believe that they are being drowned repeatedly over days and weeks and months does not constitute torture. They are claiming that denying someone sleep over days and weeks while making them bake and freeze intermittently...also is not torture. These "techniques" are simply being referred to as tough interrogation that is necessary to coerce people to to tell the truth.

This is all the worst kind of nonsense. First of all, there is an easy way to know whether or not a given treatment of a fellow human being should be called torture or not, and that is to ask the following questions: "What would you call it if it were being done to you? What would you call it if it were being done to your mother, your child, your spouse?" And secondly, the debate itself is doubly nonsensical in that there has been a parade of formerly tortured people coming to Washington to vouch for the fact that the tortured do not provide useful information, but rather simply say whatever they think might stop the torture. As if that weren't bad enough, we now also have more and more former captives of our side of the war on terror coming out and saying that they were tortured in foreign lands at the behest of this country's government, real torture by any definition such as genital mutilation. Well let me tell you, for every time another one of those stories hits the news, this country's credibility in the world sinks another few notches and the credibility of our enemies is enhanced.

So there you have it. Torture is easy to define, it doesn't achieve anything but to satisfy the dubious personal needs of sadistic individuals, in fact it is directly counter-productive for our needs, and those who attempt to legitimize and promote its use are not to be trusted. Basta.

No Longer the Land of the Free, but boy is it still the Home of the Brave!

If you do a web search of of incarceration rates (average number of people serving prison sentences per 100,000 people in the population), one thing remains constant for every source, and that is that the US has hands-down got the highest rates in the world. That means that the US has more prisoners per capita than Vietnam, Cuba, El Salvador, Jamaica, Congo, Uzbekistan, or Russia. It may even have more than China though accurate numbers are hard to come by for China. What does it say about a country when its state locks up more people more frequently than ANY other country? At the very least, it says that the country in question cannot legitimately call itself the Land of the Free, however it can definitely still call itself the Home of the Brave because to live there requires more and more bravery for every year that passes.

The Clever Formulation of Blame and the Cultivation of a New Myth of Betrayal

September 11th is a time to remind ourselves that it is always wrong to try to influence the behavior of your fellow human beings by killing them. But since pretty much everything that can be said about 9/11 has already been said a thousand times (apart from the things that will not be revealed for another 15 years or so), I am moving on to another subject.

For a long time I have been trying to figure out exactly how the Administration and its handlers were going to explain away their failures in Afghanistan and Iraq and explain how these failures occurred despite them having been given a blank check to spend from the American people plus almost zero political opposition to these measures over the first three years or so of both operations (Afghanistan and Iraq). Obviously, for them to simply admit to have been serially and consistently wrong is out of the question for them. I finally decided that in the tradition of party politics, when the day finally comes that both Afghanistan and Iraq have to be acknowledged as failures in terms of American involvement, the Administration will have to find a way to blame the Democrats. This will be difficult since the only Democrats that have had any influence on the events in Afghanistan and Iraq have been the ones that have played along with the Administration (and it would be foolish for the Administration to blame them for agreeing with policy). And as for opposition to policy, well the tiny number of active and vocal Democratic dissenters have been simply ignored to the point that they cannot be said to have unfluenced events at all. Hence, how to blame the blameless? So for the Administration, how do you take a situation where you have had it your own way for years and years and then afterwards try to pretend that the resulting debacle is somebody else's fault? This is the dilemma for Bush and Co. as well as Cheney Inc.

My feeling is that the technique that will be used is the creation of a myth involving the "Dolchstoss" (German for "Dagger Thrust) i.e. Stab in the Back. I first learned about this possible way out for the Administration's troubles from a Harper's article entitled, "Stabbed in the Back" (http://www.harpers.org/StabbedInTheBack.html) where the author traces the origins of how leaders and regimes have dealt with loss through the use of a mythology of betrayal from within. The idea is that when you promote the idea that your military and country are unparalelled in their righteousness and invincibility then the only way that failure and loss could legitimately occur is by way of internal sabotage of some kind. For example, even though the rest of the world knows that the US lost the Vietnam War, the prevailing story here in this country is still that the war was not "lost" but rather that the war effort was stymied and held back by dissenters at home. It's a convenient way to avoid admitting having been wrong and a way to avoid admitting losing a war.

Fast forward to our time. How are the Republicans going to find a way to blame the Democrats for the failure of Republican policies, wars, and other disasters? The answer is through claiming that the tiny, largely ignored anti-war liberals somehow demoralized the entire rest of the country plus its troops by exercising their constitutional right to question policy. Additionally the Administration will try to claim that this same largely ignored, small percentage of people somehow emboldened America's enemies despite their being small in numbers and with effectively no clout policy-wise. It will be a delicate dance, but I think the Republicans will pull it off....for a time.

Olbermann Blasts Rumsfeld and the Bush Administration

Must see TV:

We need more Olbermanns in the media.