How to Atone for Torture

by: Matt Stoller

Sun Dec 09, 2007 at 12:10


The country went insane from 2001-2003.

In September 2002, four members of Congress met in secret for a first look at a unique CIA program designed to wring vital information from reticent terrorism suspects in U.S. custody. For more than an hour, the bipartisan group, which included current House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), was given a virtual tour of the CIA's overseas detention sites and the harsh techniques interrogators had devised to try to make their prisoners talk.

Among the techniques described, said two officials present, was waterboarding, a practice that years later would be condemned as torture by Democrats and some Republicans on Capitol Hill. But on that day, no objections were raised. Instead, at least two lawmakers in the room asked the CIA to push harder, two U.S. officials said.

I don't buy that this stuff is new or restricted to our political leadership.  In all honesty, I don't know that if I were in Pelosi's position at that time that I would have objected.  Fear is powerful and I don't assume that I would have done well in that environment, though I like to think that most of us have learned enough to change our relationship to human rights and authority in the last few years.

Nevertheless, our collective failures, and Nancy Pelosi's specific moral albatross, is to address this country's use of torture.  We keep 2 million people in prison, in violent conditions where many of them are tortured, and we do it because it makes a certain fear-based lifestyle easier to manage.  Atoning for our moment of overt lunacy in 2002 means acknowledging where it came from, and working to build a different society.

UPDATE:  It's easy enough to blame Pelosi for this, and yes, what she did reveals a breathtaking lack of moral clarity and responsibility.  My point is simply that state-sanctioned torture was not new in 2002, and the public failed to deal with it.

In 2002, I was 24 years old, and it will always be seared into my memory how full of fear the whole country was and how willing to tolerate anything we were.  It's what made me a liberal.  In other words, I can understand and sympathize with why Pelosi did nothing in 2002, though it was obviously wrong.  Today, there is no excuse and atonement is necessary.
Matt Stoller :: How to Atone for Torture

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How to Atone for Torture | 7 comments
Rober Altemeyer Writes About This (4.00 / 4)
In The Authoritarian Specter Altemeyer writes about how situational factors are more powerful than inherint attitudes, such as rightwing authoritarianism.  You set off a bomb, and suddenly everyone shifts dramatically in an authoritarian direction.

Among other things, Altemeyer cites Milgram's famous experiments on obedience, in which participants were asked shock subjects who failed to properly answer questions--and did so up to the point of (faked) unsciousness.  He also discussed those that are less well-known, in which it was shown that altering the circumstances--most dramatically by having someone speak up--could significantly affect the outcomes.

It seems quite clear that this sort of situational manipulation was part of the Bush plan from the very beginning.  By letting a few people in who might otherwise object, but isolating them and subjecting them to orchestrated presentation based on false premises, they made it psychologically very hard for them to object.

This reflected a wider strategy of suppressing knowledge and debate that still has a tremendous stranglehold on our political culture.  Not so much online, but in Versailles, well, it's like the last 5 years had never happened for most of them. 

"You know what they say -- those of us who fail history... doomed to repeat it in summer school." -- Buffy The Vampire Slayer, Season 6, Episode 3

Is there ever an upside to doing the wrong thing? (4.00 / 3)
  DLC-nexus thinking is based upon the idea that the Democrats must forever be compromising the party's traditional values in order to "win elections later", and no doubt Nancy Pelosi's silence in 2002 was influenced by that mindset. I seriously doubt that Nancy Pelosi, at a personal level, actually approved of such practices -- if she did, our country's probably unsalvageable anyway.

  But look at the results of that mindset -- now we've lost the moral authority to condemn Republicans for being beasts. I mean, Republicans are beasts, but Democrats quietly sat by and enabled them. And thus torture's potential as a damaging issue for Republicans is thereby defused.

  There are many examples of DLC-esque bad policy begetting bad politics. This is simply one of the most striking and dramatic ones.

  When the Democrats begin taking public stands because they're right, not because their consultants think they're politically expedient, they'll be in a position to win elections on their own merits (as opposed to waiting for the opposition to implode). Not a moment before.

  But that process isn't going to happen until we undertake some across-the-board leadership cleansing. Our current leaders are too far lost.

"We judge ourselves by our ideals; others by their actions. It is a great convenience." -- Howard Zinn

In Short (0.00 / 0)
The political equivalent of justifiable homicide is mighty rare indeed.

"You know what they say -- those of us who fail history... doomed to repeat it in summer school." -- Buffy The Vampire Slayer, Season 6, Episode 3
[ Parent ]
ANOTHEER failure of leadership from Pelosi (0.00 / 0)
The list keeps growing, quite pathetic, I must say!
Have you lost your mind? (4.00 / 2)
I am astonished beyond measure that you could write such an ignorant post.

First, is not everyone aware that the recent NIE scandal over Iran is pushing a big cloud of darkness towards Bush and Cheney?  Is not everyone aware that Bush and Cheney resort to one strategy only when their crimes are being revealed?

Yes, they attack the attackers.  So now we are reading about a 2002 briefing -- before Pelosi was Speaker of the House, by the way.  Now we know that this meeting was held under the ridiculous and criminal level of secrecy and abuse of power this Administration has always been known for.

No one could take notes.  No one could even talk about it.  Two representatives wrote letters of protest no one could read.

And for some reason, this story from 2002 is now being given a rather large portion of attention from the Washington Post.  Oh.  What a surprise.

And your response, Matt?  That if YOU had been in that situation you may have not objected?  All that statement does is make me very glad you are not a US representative in Congress.

Pelosi was afraid.  Right.  And I am Marie, Queen of Rumania.

This was a political act by an out of control Executive Branch, whose abuse of power was continually being rubberstamped by a Republican majority Congress and weakly opposed by an ineffectual Democratic minority, of which Nancy Pelosi was a member (and which ineffectualness, by the way, was one of the major reasons the left blogosphere came into being, to call out these Republican tactics the Dems were too clueless to name).

I am not fond right now of Nancy Pelosi.  I think the Democratic majority in Congress is suffering from lack of unity and poor leadership.

But fear?  No, I don't think Nancy Pelosi was afraid and I reject any nonsensical psychological explanation of the terror we felt after 9/11.

To me there are two things to focus on here.  One is that the Repubs are scared over this new NIE scandal and are flinging mud through the traditional media as they always do in hopes of distracting us.  With this post of yours, Matt, unfortunately they have succeded.

Two - the Democratic caucus now in the majority has done a piss poor job of changing anything - from the rhetoric (framing) to being a real opposition.

All the rest is noise and whistles.

Torture (0.00 / 0)
Matt:
Although I don't agree with Nightprowlkitty's characterization of your post as "ignorant", her statements are generally correct. Fear mongering is all this administration does when breaking the law and covering up illegal actions. Every US Senator and Representative has Constitutional protection while in session so Pelosi, Harmon,
Rockefeller, Graham et al. could have exposed these unlawful actions. Although it would mean taking a political and legal risk, inaction by any individual with knowledge of these activities means that they are co-conspirators and need to be held accountable.
Protection? (0.00 / 0)
Do they?

Ask Cynthia McKinney?  Her right to get into the chambers of the House was certainly protected but the Republicans running the House and the media protected the Capitol Cop rather than the Member of Congress.  Despite a very progressive voting record, ahe was persona non grata on many blogs.  Fortunately, Jank Johnson turned out fine but he could have been another Harold Ford asnd the chorus still would have been in his corner in trying to avoid the embarassment of McKinney.  Yes, there were other problems but look what took her down.

Ask the Democrats like Congressman Fortney Pete Stark who have had to apologize for making statement s less inflamatory than say Mitch McConnell's.

Ask MoveOn.org.

In this asmionistration, the "rights" of Democratic members of Congrss were certainly not clear and guaranteed.
Yet anopther black mark on the scum in power.

How to Atone for Torture | 7 comments
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