Month: April 2009

Today on the Dish we saw proof that marriage equality and decriminalizing pot have rapidly gained acceptance among conservatives (but not Republicans, who are too busy trying to frighten you). Also, California moved towards taxing marijuana, while the Washington Times failed to move me on hate crimes. On the torture front, Condi Rice tried to defend it before a group students, Fox News went to the defense of Inquisitors, Clive Crook defended himself, Jonah Goldberg embarrassed himself, a Dish reader shared his experience as an interrogator, Drum analyzed Obama's latest words on torture, and I addressed the charge that the British did indeed torture. On a lighter note, I asked readers to submit scenes of Cheney-like characters from cinema, and you delivered here. On a much lighter note, Palin chatted with American Chopper, and sat on a bear.

Some terribly depressing news. Here’s the poll result:

More than half of people who attend services at least once a week — 54 percent — said the use of torture against suspected terrorists is “often” or “sometimes” justified. Only 42 percent of people who “seldom or never” go to services agreed, according the analysis released Wednesday by the Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life.

So Christian devotion correlates with approval for absolute evil in America. And people wonder why atheism is gaining in this country. Notice the poll does not even use a euphemism like “coercive interrogation” – forcing Allahpundit to substitute it. (Even HotAir, it seems, finds it difficult to write the sentence: “Evangelicals are more likely to be conservative and conservatives are more likely to support torture.”) But it remains a fact that white evangelicals are the most pro-torture of any grouping. Mainline Protestant groups were the most opposed. A mere 20 percent of non-Hispanic Catholics believe that torture is never justified.

In a similar poll last September, Southern evangelicals got suddenly secular on this question:

The new poll found that 44 percent of white Southern evangelicals rely on life experiences and common sense to determine their views about torture. A lower percentage, 28 percent, said they relied on Christian teachings or beliefs.

One wonders how many times evangelical preachers have inveighed against the evil of someone like me getting a civil marriage license compared with acts of cruelty inflicted on defenseless human beings in American custody. But one also sees the impact of a Catholic hierarchy more exercized on these social issues than on a categorical evil defended proudly by a former vice-president. 

A reader writes:

In time of war, whether conventional or asymmetric, people WILL torture other people. International law and treaties can’t stop it, they can only declare it clearly wrong and subject to social justice whenever it occurs. The people who wrote these things knew that torture comes out of anger and fear so they made it clear that once physical control is established those in control are responsible for the well being of those they control.

The goal is to declare what was  a shameful act not fit for civilized man.

The greatest offence in the Bush administration isn’t that torture occurred, it’s the failure to be ashamed of it. They didn’t try to hide it so well it could never be found, they wrote memos about it. They set out to make mundane what should always be monstrous.

And they are proud.

Goldblog-bait:

Foreign Policy: If there were just two options, how would you weigh the choice between an attack on Iran or a nuclear-armed Iran?

Hans Blix: The consequences of an attack on Iran would very likely be a nuclear-armed Iran! There would be a delay, but nuclear weapons that are hypothetical today would be certain in a few years time. Secondly, an attack would probably have horrible consequences on the supply of oil coming through the Persian Gulf; it would impact the world economy. Nuclear arms in Iran would neutralize the threat of the Israeli nuclear weapons. I do not see that as a disaster; these weapons should not have been developed in the first place.

Some more from Wiki on the charges that Alexander Scotland tortured prisoners under his care in London. It seems pertinent to me that the allegations of abuse and torture were reported in 1943 by the head of MI5:

In September 1940, Guy Liddell, director of MI5's counterintelligence B Division, said that he had been told by an officer present at the interrogation that Scotland had punched the jaw of a captured German agent at the London Cage. The agent was Wulf Schmidt, known by the code name "Tate." Liddell said in a diary entry that Scotland was "hitting TATE in the jaw and I think got one back himself." Liddell said: "Apart from the moral aspects of the thing, I am convinced that these Gestapo methods do not pay in the long run." Liddell said that "Scotland turned up this morning with a syringe containing some drug or other, which it was thought would induce the prisoner [Tate] to speak." ^[33][34][35] Schmidt subsequently became a double agent against the Germans as part of the Double Cross System of double agents operated by MI5.^[35]

When the head of MI5 is demanding the disciplining of Scotland, and insisting that torture doesn't work, we are in a very different situation than one in which the president himself has approved of torture in classified memos and the CIA director is insisting that the methods did in fact work and should remain as part of an official program of interrogation.

(Photo: Alexander Scotland.)

An insight into a world of gloom:

In retrospect, the answer is clear and simple. In the summer of 2009, the president had to make the most courageous decision of his life: to prevent Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons. Granted, opting for confrontation would have been incompatible with the DNA of the liberal Democrat from Chicago. Ironically, however, only such a decision could have saved his legacy and advanced the noble values he believed in. Only that decision could have led to a comprehensive peace in the Middle East. If Obama had decided three years ago to impose a political-economic siege on Tehran, he would have changed the course of history. The Roosevelt of the 21st century would have prevented regional chaos, a worldwide nuclear arms race and an American decline.

Tweets that need to be untweeted.

“The nationalist not only does not disapprove of atrocities committed by his own side, but he has a remarkable capacity for not even hearing about them,” – George Orwell.

“We sleep safe in our beds because rough men stand ready in the night to visit violence on those who would do us harm,” – George Orwell.

Finding the right path between those two insights is our challenge. Always.

Maybe you've seen this. Made me chuckle:

It's Fish, methinks, as Hamlet's dead father would say: