The Dish

You want to see religious fundamentalism in one of its more extreme forms? Enjoy.

This is a fascinating exchange – a rare glimpse of a direct, public confrontation between Sec Def Rumsfeld and Joint Chiefs chairman General Pace on the question of moral responsibility to stop torture in wartime:

Q: And General Pace, what guidance do you have for your military commanders over there as to what to do if — like when General Horst found this Interior Ministry jail [where evidenceof toeture was widespread]?

GEN. PACE: It is absolutely the responsibility of every U.S. service member, if they see inhumane treatment being conducted, to intervene to stop it. As an example of how to do it if you don’t see it happening but you’re told about it is exactly what happened a couple weeks ago. There’s a report from an Iraqi to a U.S. commander that there was possibility of inhumane treatment in a particular facility. That U.S. commander got together with his Iraqi counterparts. They went together to the facility, found what they found, reported it to the Iraqi government, and the Iraqi government has taken ownership of that problem and is investigating it. So they did exactly what they should have done.

SEC. RUMSFELD: But I don’t think you mean they have an obligation to physically stop it; it’s to report it.

GEN. PACE: If they are physically present when inhumane treatment is taking place, sir, they have an obligation to try to stop it.

Rumsfeld sees looting under American authority and says “stuff happens.” He sees appalling torture, and merely believes it should be reported, not stopped. The fish rots from the head down. Thank God for decent soldiers like General Pace and Ian Fishback. I have to say I do not recognize the Don Rumsfeld I once knew in the callous, reckless, immoral stances he has taken these past three years. It is a matter of urgency that he be replaced, if this war is to regain its moral standing and military effectiveness.

I am relieved and impressed to see – finally! – a serious debate on the right about torture and abuse of military detainees. One thing I’ll notice. We have gone almost without a momentary pause from a debate on the right which consisted of “We do not torture!” to “Torture works!” The months of painstaking factual accumulation of evidence for widespread, legally sanctioned torture and abuse can indeed eventually get through to people, which gives one more faith in democratic discourse. Jonah deserves kudos for posting this email, which represents the vast majority of input I have received from professionals in the field, who find the process demeaning and ineffective. Ramesh has not abandoned his moral sense. Even Richard John Neuhaus, who has wobbled on this in the past, writes a stirring and clear condemnation of torture in all circumstances for all the right reasons. This does seem to me to be a moment of truth for the Christian right. If they refuse to give up the most basic Christian position on one of the most fundamental moral issues, even when their own administration is against them, they will deserve a new respect from their opponents.

NOW USURY?? Benedict XVI’s latest enthusiasm is, apparently, the “infamy of usury“. The original formal condemnation of usury – i.e. interest-bearing loans – emerged at roughly the time the Church also created the formal doctrines condemning Jews and “sodomites” in the early medieval era, so it is not surprising Benedict would seek to re-emphasize it. He recently honored the National Anti-Usury Consultancy, and described interest-bearing accounts as a “social plague,” and all financial interest as something that “annihilates the life of the poor.” If you are versed in the ancient anti-Semitic tropes of the medieval Church, you will be unsurprised by this language. Just so all you Catholics with 401ks and interest-bearing bank accounts: according to this pope, you are enmeshed in evil. Welcome to the club. By the way, does the Vatican earn interest?

McCAIN AND TORTURE: An emailer makes a point about the most recent Newsmax obscenity, noted previously here:

As I’m sure you noticed, the most interesting thing about that article was it actually demonstrates that torture doesn’t work: on the first occasion that McCain “broke”, he gave his interrogators information that “was of no real use to the Vietnamese, but the Code of Conduct for American Prisoners of War orders us to refrain from providing any information beyond our names, rank and serial number.” On the second occasion, the “breaking” consisted of signing a document in Vietnamese, “confessing to war crimes. “I signed it,” he recalled. “It was in their language, and spoke about black crimes, and other generalities.” Presumably, McCain did not believe that he had committed war crimes, so this story demonstrates only that, under torture, people will sign just about anything!
Great… so the right’s point is that if we torture suspects sufficiently, they’ll give up trivial information and sign documents in English confessing to war crimes they didn’t commit. Duh…

Ah, yes, But then you don’t get to launch another vicious personal attack on a war hero, do you? That’s what today’s GOP specializes in, and it’s partly how George W. Bush got the nomination in 2000 and won the election in 2004.

That’s the new pope’s verdict on the life and work of gay priest Mychal Judge, and the thousands of others who have served God so faithfully and so well since the beginning of the Church. Nothing this pope can do or say will ever take away from their service or their dignity as people and servants of God.

Well, it’s great that Will sees the radicalism of Benedict’s new rule with respect to homosexuality. In the past, the gay individual who remained chaste could attain Christian perfection, his orientation was not in itself sinful, gay men and women were worthy of respect and made in the image of God. Under Benedict, homosexuality itself is morally disordered; even chaste homosexuals are a threat to “priestly life”; homosexuals, whatever they do, are threats to society and the Church; the great gay priests of the past, including Mychal Judge or Henri Nouwen, have “no social value.” This is not about hating sin and loving the sinner any more; it’s about hating a segment of humankind, segregating them out for moral censure, and banishing them from moral discourse. It’s about taking the fundamental message of the Gospels and inverting it.

“It’s like a Jew wearing a Nazi uniform. I could no longer stay in that institution with any amount of integrity.” – the Rev. Leonard Walker, a Catholic priest in Arizona, who has just resigned after the latest wave of bigotry from Rome. Again, I’m frustrated at not being able to fully address the latest document and the astonishing accompanying piece in L’Osservatore Romano today. But my doc says I’m improving, and should be back in the saddle soon. In the OR piece, however, the echoes of the Vatican’s previous views on Jews are unmistakable: gays/Jews as a destabilizing force in society, a threat to the family, danger to children, and so on. The pain inflicted by this pope on so many good and faithful people still shocks even me; and the radicalism of the new doctrine – demonizing gay people for who they are, not for anything they might do – still amazes. The notion that my relationship destabilizes society, and threatens my own family is impossible not to take as a vicious personal attack on people the hierarchy has no desire to understand, let alone love. More soon.

“That McCain broke under torture doesn’t make him any less of an American hero. But it does prove he’s wrong to claim that harsh interrogation techniques simply don’t work.” – from an article titled, “John McCain: Torture Worked on Me,” on the right-wing website, Newsmax. Just when you think the pro-torture right cannot sink any lower, they do.

(Charles Krauthammer’s recent essay deserves a serious response. I’m not ignoring it, just waiting till I feel well enough to do it justice.)

If the guiding mantra of the last Pope was “Be Not Afraid!”, the lodestar of the current one is, arguably, the opposite. Everywhere, there are reasons to be afraid: the great work of celibate, faithful gay priests, the insights of independent lay women, inter-faith communication, theological debate, the new frontiers of science, and on and on. The spirit of a saint like St Francis – so open, so confident, so unafraid – is obviously one that Benedict needs to control and silence, as he must control and silence every other aspect of the Church that does not conform to his views. And so another window closes. Eventually, the darkness will be perfect.

It’s a pitiful interview, so clogged with internal contradiction and unpersuasive non-denial denials that you almost feel sorry for the guy. Kudos to ABC News for asking the following question, though:

You know what water-boarding is though, right?

GOSS: I know what a lot of things are, but I’m not going to comment.

GIBSON: Would that come under the heading? Would that come under the heading of torture?

GOSS: I don’t know. I have-

GIBSON: Well, under your definition that you just gave to me of inflicting pain?

GOSS: Let me put it this way, I’m not going to comment on any individual techniques that anybody has brought forward as an allegation, or dreamed up or anything like that. What we do, as I said many times, is professional, it’s lawful, it yields good results and it is not torture.

No aadministration official I have directly asked about waterboarding has denied it. At the same time, Goss insists that torture is ineffective as an interrogation tool. Go figure.

On the one hand, we have clear signs that progress is occurring, if slowly, especially in the training of the armed forces. On the other hand, we’d be nuts not to be deeply troubled by growing reports that the new army is infiltrated not just with Sunni sabotage-merchants but also with sectarian Shiite militias, committing atrocities against Sunni civilians. Allawi is not reassuring on the latter point. Of course, both could be true. Which argues for a far more careful and gradual disengagement than some are now arguing for.