When patriotism becomes sadism
With the inauguration of Barack Obama less than a week away, all the regular cable chatterers have been fretting than Obama is going to shut down Gitmo and renounce torture. Bush and Cheney have admitted to ordering it, Pelosi, Rockerfeller and other halfwits in the Democratic party okayed it, and at this late date no one pays a bit of attention to the semantic games played with phrases such as “enhanced interrogation”, everyone knows what we do. For crimes we once sentenced Japanese to death for committing, we now have as policy.
Even as the very people tasked with torturing state that it doesn’t work, and cases are unable to be tried because information gained from torture is inadmissible in any court in the world, still the practice is championed by our media and accepted by a too large segment of our population. Equally passionate rebuttals to the cruelty appear day after day, attempting to argue, to persuade, to convince, and all fall short. They do not fail because they are confused or inarticulate about torture- they fail because they refuse to accept a basic truth about the defenders of the practice.
People support torture because it makes them feel good. They don’t give a shit about results- because we never know the results- they support it because they feel wronged, and if we’re able to dunk an Arab into a bucket of water or sodomize his child in front of him, well, they deserve it.
They deserve it not simply because people like them might have flown planes into buildings, but rather, its because they dared object to American imperialism. Our rape and pillage of the planet has only been possible by brute force, and after a while, people start to take offense. To object. To strap bombs to their children or crash planes into towers. Every time another wall is built in Gaza, or another Iraqi child goes without fresh water, another terrorist is born, and we as a nation hate to be reminded of the results of our actions. Hence, we kill- or at least torture for a while- the messenger. We do it wrapped in a flag, supporting our troops, rah rah rah, America Uber Alles, when we’re actually nothing more than a nation of sadists.
Obama may well close down Gitmo, but that simply removes a symptom without addressing the disease. His talk of expanding our presence in Afghanistan- when we should be packing up and leaving, or his staunch support of Israel against all boundaries of humanity, that speaks far larger than removing brown men in orange jumpsuits from the world stage. Without a complete renouncement of what got us here- basically, American foreign policy since at least Vietnam if not far earlier- then all Obama is doing is a kinder, gentler version of the same dehumanizing brutality that makes some of us targets and others torturers. Until the talking heads of cable TV die off, and their message of “hey, we’re not actually hurting real people– nudge nudge” is replaced by something more humane, then we as a people will continue to be given exceptions for our cruelty. Until our “leaders” are arrested, tried and convicted for breaking not only our judicial laws, but the natural ones as well- the ones that stop our fists from our neighbors face- until they are held accountable, then nothing will change.
American has bankrupted itself both financially and morally with our Machiavellian mentality, that whatever we choose to do we can do by virtue of being America. If we can continue to convince ourselves that our enemies are our lessors, then our sadism will continue unabated. Because if you insist on reminding us that that the American Dream is nothing more than hysterical hypocrisy sustainable only by war crimes, then it will remain acceptable public discourse to defend the undefendable, to make sadism a policy plank, and to champion the evil that better men refute within their souls.
So to all of those who wrap themselves in the flag and applaud torture, you aren’t being good Americans.
In fact, you aren’t even human.
