A little bit pregnant?

Mayor of English town caught
on camera stealing women’s
underwear, performing sex acts.

No one believes it is possible to be “just a little pregnant,” so why are we being expected to believe there is such a thing as “a little bit of torture,” “a little bit of guilt,” and “a little bit of justice?” We apparently all have ringside seats to a performance of the theatre of the absurd. Eric Holder, our Attorney General, after some resistance, has now appointed an investigator to look into the Bush/Cheney torture program. However, he says he will only look into cases where the torturers went beyond the bounds of authorized torture. Does that make any sense? That is to say, we know that Bush/Cheney/Rumsfeld and others actively pursued a program of torture (enhanced interrogation techniques) which was in and of itself illegal, but Holder is not going to bother about that. Instead he is going to look into a few cases where the torturers went beyond the illegal methods of torture they were approved to perform. And he is, he says, not going to look into the lawyers and others who authorized the illegal torture, but only at individuals who may have gotten carried away with their torturing. In other words, he is going to look into a little bit of torture, a little bit of guilt, and a little bit of justice. But I submit, as in the case of pregnancy, there is no such thing as a little bit of all this.

Torture is an international war crime, as well as illegal in the United States. Torture, at the very least, includes waterboarding. Bush/Cheney have admitted to authorizing waterboarding (along with other illegal methods of extracting information). Is there such a thing as a little bit of waterboarding? Of course not, nor is there a little bit of the other terrible techniques that were employed. It is not surprising that some of the torturers went too far. Experiments have shown that when people are given power over others they will go to greater and greater lengths to inflict pain and suffering on others. The initial experiment to demonstrate this proved that individuals, given the power, authority, and encouragement to inflict pain on their subjects, had to be stopped even before the experiment ended, as there seemed to be no end to how far they might go. The idea there could be a little bit of torture is absurd. Either someone is tortured or they are not.

The idea there might be only a little bit of guilt is equally nonsensical. This would seem to imply that the only ones who were guilty of torturing were a few individuals who tortured beyond the authorized limits of torturing, but how about those who authorized the torture in the first place? Are they supposed to be free of guilt? Actually, it would seem to me that those who tortured, and also went over the authorized limits, should be doubly guilty, while perhaps those who authorized the torture were less guilty. But clearly no one involved was free of guilt. The degree of guilt may vary a bit, but people are either guilty or not guilty. They are not merely a little bit guilty.

As far as justice goes, if only those who actually went beyond the authorized limits of torture are held accountable for their acts, there would be no justice for those who authorized them in the first place. Could this be meaningfully considered a little bit of justice? If no one else is held accountable we might well conclude there is no justice. So, once again, there is either justice or there is not. There is no such thing as a little bit of justice.

This entire procedure, if carried out as it seems to be planned, is truly an Alice in Wonderland experience. Personally, I do not see how this can possible work in the manner described. It is going to be impossible to investigate a few hyper-torturers while ignoring so-called authorized torture. Further, it will be impossible to demonstrate anyone’s guilt or innocence without investigating the circumstances, including who authorized them to torture in the first place, who, if anyone, was supervising them, who was making the decisions as to what to do, and so on. I would like to think that Obama and Holder cleverly had this planned to do this in this way in the first place, appearing to be dragged or forced into doing something they could publicly profess to not want to do, and thereby avoiding the appearance of vengeance or retribution or whatever they will inevitably be accused of. But given Obama’s continuing use of renditions, his Bushian secrecy, and his apparent defense of Bush/Cheney I am not at all very sure about just what is going on.

One of the things I find the most puzzling (and somewhat amusing, although nothing about this is very amusing) is the seriousness with which the Media take Cheney’s claim that torture “worked.” Cheney’s main, and perhaps only argument about the usefulness of enhanced interrogation techniques (commonly known as torture), is that they worked. But there is no evidence whatsoever that this is true. But even if it were true, why would it matter? Torture is illegal and a war crime, the fact that it might have worked is totally irrelevant. It isn’t legal because it worked. For some reason no one seems to want to acknowledge this, certainly not the MSM. If I invented a sure-fire technique for robbing banks successfully would that make it okay, because it worked, of course not. This is an argument that is just plain silly, but no one seems willing to just say so. Cheney, in fact, has no viable argument for “taking the dark side,” other than perhaps it made him feel important and powerful. This would seem to be a case in which the old adage is true, perhaps even truer than true: “power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.”

LKBIQ:
Ultimately, the only power to which man should aspire is that which he exercises over himself.
Elie Wiesel

TILT:Hammocks were first introduced to Europe by Christopher Columbus who brought them from the Bahamas.