CommonPrejudice

Just "Our Bastards?"

Yglesias and Atrios talk about US support for 'bad guys.'

Yglesias

...The question is, thus, whether or not this posture of creating a mostly arbitrary class of "bad guy" that we're going to take down with our awesome powers of snubbing accomplishes anything meaningful. Obama's contention is "no." Bush's contention is "yes" but he has absolutely nothing to show for it....

Atrios:

....The frustrating thing is that the media plays along, designating "bad guys" as whoever the US government is designating a bad guy that week, while perpetuating the notion that the "bad guy" designation is linked to some sort of human rights badness when in fact it's just because they're bastards, but not our bastards...

Is it simply a "mostly arbitrary class of "bad guy?"" I don't think so. Atrios notes how they are "their bastards." But there is more to it than that. Certainly the vast majority of dictatorial regimes the United States has supported over the last century, and nowhere more so than Latin American, have been fundamentally right wing, quite favourable to U.S. economic interests. In Latin America while there have been countless more right wing regimes in Latin America than left wing counterparts, many of them far more murderous than Castro, it is the Castros, and Chavezes, Ortegas popular narratives refer to as the greatest villains in the region. Why is it the names of Trujillo, Somoza, Vidella, Machado, Rios Montt, Stroessner are hardly known (to name just a few)? Even moderate leftists - Allende, Bosch for example - have been portrayed as extremists when U.S. economic interests have been challenged.

Of course geo-political concerns have played a role in who becomes a bad guy in the eyes of a U.S. administration. However, while it is certainly overly simplistic to state it in such terms, it is nevertheless not much of a stretch to claim the overriding determinant has always been ideological and if you're left, you are not one of "their bastards." Now of course the fact that the US, like all great superpowers acts virtually in its own self-interest, especially regarding economic concerns, isn't exactly an earth-shattering revelation. Nevertheless referring to the class of bad guys the US has supported as "mostly abritrary" or simply "our bastards" goes a way in demonstrating how even many progressive commentators within the United States fail to appreciate the degree to which American foreign policy - including amoung Democrats - is looked upon as very right wing.

How Time Flies

When I have finished my task here, I will retire and devote myself to other affairs.
- Fidel Castro, January 8, 1959

I neither will aspire to nor will I accept, the position of president of the council of state and commander in chief.
- Fidel Castro, February 19, 2008

That took awhile.

The Most Trusted Name in News ....

..... by government officials looking for an easy interview.

It is well-known that Fox News is a bastion of lunacy and lies. However there is a perception that CNN is somewhere in the middle, and - contrary to reality -  a reputable news organization. Someone the other day asked me to explain the difference between Fox and CNN and I had to talk about slants and narratives and built-in assumptions - more subtle instruments in the propaganda machines today's mainstream media organizations are. But really examples are where it's at. From Greenwald once again:

[CNN's John Roberts interviewing CIA chief Director of National Intelligence Mike McConnell, discussing the retroactive impunity for telecommunication companies who assisted the Bush administration in breaking the law after the Bush administration failed to get the required warrants before initiating a wiretapping program.]

[CNN] ROBERTS: Mr. McConnell, first of all, why the urgent need for retroactive immunity for these telecommunications companies?

MIKE MCCONNELL, DIRECTOR, NATIONAL INTELLIGENCE: Good morning, John. The primary reason for retroactive immunity or liability protection from the carriers is to obtain their assistance. Quite frankly we cannot do the job we have to do without the cooperation of the private sector. So the situation we're in now with private sector companies being subjected to huge suits, they're not inclined to give us assistance. So there is varying arguments about having the bill expire, extending it or continuing it in its current form. In either case, all three of those, we are losing and will continue to lose significant amounts of information because we can't do this mission without the cooperation and participation of the private sector.

ROBERTS: So you say it is important to protect these telecommunications companies from liability so that they continue to help in the program. But is it also important from your perspective to keep the prying eyes of attorneys who are launching these lawsuits away from uncovering information about the program as they go through the discovery process?

MCCONNELL: Well, certainly, John. That's a part of it. This is a classified program.....

[Greenwald]......Roberts' argument is self-evidently moronic. It would mean -- as many, many political and media elites have come to believe -- that nothing the President and his aides do in a classified setting can be or should be subjected to oversight or to judicial proceedings -- no matter how illegal -- because the imperative of keeping everything Secret vastly outweighs the imperative of living under the rule of law. But the fact that it's a "journalist" -- someone who ought to be intrinsically hostile to government secrecy and instincitively adversarial in his questions -- feeding such authoritarian reasoning to our government leaders speaks volumes about where we are as a country.

At least it's not a major news organization where millions get their basic information from. Then there'd be problems, like murderous wars and environmental catastrophes because of a government not held accountable by the fourth estate.

No Moral Authority Whatsoever

Why on earth would anyone respond to any U.S. government (specifically the Bush administration) appeal to respect human rights? Here (pdf) was US Attorney General Michael Mikasey in a letter to Senate Judiciary Chairman Pat Leahy on January 29, 2008:

During the course of my review I have been briefed on the CIA interrogation program. A limited set of methods is currently authorized for use in that program. I have been authorized to disclose publicly that waterboarding is not among those methods.

Notice the "currently." Today it is revealed (yeah like we didn't know already):

The CIA has for the first time publicly admitted using the controversial method of "waterboarding" on terror suspects.

CIA director Michael Hayden told Congress however that it had only been used on three people, and not at all for the past five years.

You hate to be a cynic but given that they had never admitted it before and that Mukasey had just gone on the record saying it wasn't a current technique (don't want to make him look bad) I'm kinda doubting that the practice has stopped. Of course, this isn't much of a defense anyways. Your honor, I don't kill anymore. I gave it up years ago. And then there is this.

Waterboarding is an interrogation technique in which the detainee is put in fear of drowning.

Some critics describe it as torture and Congress has been debating banning its use by the CIA.

President Bush has threatened to veto such a bill.

Of course the war criminal Bush has threated to veto the bill. That is what war criminals do. But notice the statement above. Very slowly now. It - is - fucking - torture! Smashing someone in the legs with an aluminum baseball bat can destroy their knees. Some critics say this hurts.

So let's be clear. If you support the use of waterboarding you support torture (and, frankly, you are a real S.O.B.)

Go here if you care to see what waterboarding is really like. Here's a taste:

...So, is it torture?

I'll put it this way. If I had the choice of being waterboarded by a third party or having my fingers smashed one at a time by a sledgehammer, I'd take the fingers, no question.

It's horrible, terrible, inhuman torture. I can hardly imagine worse. I'd prefer permanent damage and disability to experiencing it again. I'd give up anything, say anything, do anything.

It is truly remarkable and disgusting that this is even being debated. My god.

Oh and one more thing. As I've said Bush is clearly a war criminal and if there is a god he will be tried as such. Once more that old pic from Billmon that we all dream about.

Update: And you know just for the record, these observations in no way imply some support for terrorists of any stripe. Nations which strive to be democratic and just need to be working to eliminate inhumane tactics such as torture - not utilizing them for gods sake. It's sad that nowadays that you have to point out something that should be so obvious.

Narratives and Double Standards

Al Gore was a serial exaggerator who invented the internet. John Kerry was a constant flip-flopper who lied about his Vietnam service. John Edwards was a hypocrite who liked expensive haircuts. Hillary is ruthless, power hungry bitch. Yet..... Bush was a regular guy who you wanted to have a beer with. Rudy was America's mayor. McCain is a straight talking maverick.   

It is not at all a stretch to say that a half a million innocent Iraqis are dead because of the mindless, false and simplistic narratives big media regularly spin out. But that's ok, Wolf and the boys still have their health care and, despite their enormous salaries, still keep their fingers on the pulse of the average citizen. The excellant Jamison Foser from Media Matters:

....Over the past year, as journalists mocked John Edwards for getting an expensive haircut and having a big house, they constantly justified their behavior by claiming Edwards is a "hypocrite" for being rich while pursuing policies that would help those who aren't. This is total nonsense, of course. As an Altercation reader noted this week, asking how Edwards can care about the poor while being rich is like asking a doctor: "How can you care about sick people when you're so healthy?"

And yet, again and again, journalists justified their relentless focus on Edwards' wealth by pointing to his policy positions.

And they ignore -- absolutely ignore -- the personal wealth of conservative candidates who pursue policies that would line their own pockets.

For all the news reports you saw about Edwards' supposed hypocrisy, how many have you seen that tell you how big a tax cut Mitt Romney or John McCain or Rudy Giuliani -- wealthy men all -- would get if their policies became law? Probably somewhere around "none."

This is not merely an obvious double-standard; it's a completely backwards double-standard: one that rewards politicians who pursue policies that are consistent with their narrow self-interest at the expense of the greater good; one that penalizes politicians who act out of concern for the greater good rather than narrow self-interest.