Torture - after decades of a world-wide decline - has begun afresh, been restored or is now normalized in many non-American countries. The US government's recent record of torture has been routinely cited by foreign torture-masters - to justify their forbidden procedures. As demonstrated by opinion polls, more Americans prefer torture than those who oppose it - at least when it's inflicted on parties other than themselves.
It was a fatal blunder for American political elites to have muddied the torture waters. According to the polls, most Americans no longer harbor ethical gripes against the atrocity, but they should have practical, self-interested motives in opposing it.
Suppose that you and your lovely, new wife Buffy honeymoon in a foreign country, where torture has been restored, that you and Buffy are seized for a misdemeanor - and that both of you are (efficiently) tortured to within an inch of your lives. You and Buffy will pitch a fit, cry foul and squeal bloody murder - but no one will give a hoot. Foreigners will insist: "Americans wanted their torture. Now they have their torture. What are these Americans crowing about?".
One minor flaw with the US universally legislating the practice of torture is that those who devised it: Bush, Cheney, Bybee, Yoo, Gonzales, etc. are too powerful to be captured and subject to its torments; however, you and perky, lil' Buffy, i.e. the common-dispensation of American mallet-heads are the perfect torture-objects.
Under the democratic delusion - when 51% of a nation's people register on opinion polls that they strongly agree with torture, ipso facto/presto chango, torture becomes objectionless, and - in the minds of these citizens, the patriotic duty not to criticize it begins to take effect. As has been inculcated into us from the cradle - by the media, an American majority has the final-say over any question - ethical or otherwise. The polls (which represent the majority) are palmed-off as the ultimate authorities, regulating what is to be construed as right or wrong. [1]
American political elites revived the practice of torture - which had been culled-back or was (in some countries) eliminated. It was they - who slapped an American as apple-pie face on the abomination. The sizzling irony is that: what became America was founded by many who were the victims of torture. They fled the dungeons of Europe for the New World, demanding that a final-end to the vile, ancient practice be codified into the basis of our laws.
The country that was founded by torture victims now produces torture victims (and sanitizes the repellence of its record). Once the legitimacy of exacting these techniques on other human beings becomes part of our national identity, will any American who raises ethical objections to them be automatically branded as an un-patriotic devil?
Whither thou goest America?
Footnote
1. For the past four decades, the US mass-media continue to suppress the evidence that torture was performed by surrogates of the US government on American children in the "treatment facilities", known as Straight INC. Given this precedent, the neo-cons (during the torture scandals of the Bush Administration) made a consistent (though macabre) point, maintaining that it's unpatriotic for the media to disclose evidence of torture, performed on foreigners by US government actors. Since it's the patriotic duty of the media to spike coverage, regarding the torture of domestic nationals, how could it be other than un-patriotic for it to reveal instances of torture, inflicted on foreign nationals?
No comments:
Post a Comment