commentary by Michael L. Bromley
copyright 2005

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... of Politics

Oct 18/05: Obsessing on Torture

"...a work of straight-down- the line journalism, not advocacy, and both sides are heard."
- Los Angeles Times

Yeah, right:

Frontline: The Torture Question

I gotta say, I'm fairly impressed -- but only in this: they just won't give up. Abu Ghraib yet haunts the haters of U.S. policy in Iraq. Why doesn't it bother the rest of us?

The best I can say is that it serves as excuse and not cause of objection to the Iraq war. In this latest from Frontline, former Army interrogators confess. FBI agents complain. Congressmen moan. There are even hidden witnesses with shadowed faces and distorted voices who testify to the abuse at Gitmo, how dogs and chicks and urination and nudity oppressed the prisoners, and how awful it was to make super-secret inmate number 07 bark like a dog.

The best is a video from Abu Ghraib of M.P.s abusing a knapsack, punching it, knifing it -- a metaphor for abuse. No connection, of course, to actual events. But the image, tied to a  soundtrack of rap, lingers. Innuendo, suggestion, and no proof. And then the CBS photos. Naked. Masked. Human pyramids. Abuse. OMG.

. -- And how so little came of it all. An observer stated,

Part of it is to obtain information. And part of it is pure sadism

Frontline brings up all kinds of reasons for torture, September 11, the invasion, WMD, the insurgency, saving soldier's lives, confused lines of power, and on and on. None, of course, are acceptable. What they don't bother with is where it leads to. Was information uncovered? Were lives saved?

The deepest objection Frontline can conjure is that torture, or what of it they can find, was not effective. I can only wonder what they'd say if the torture was effective. I heard none of how many lives were saved by it, if any. They didn't bother to ask the question.

There are two fundamental objections to torture: one, that it is inhumane, and, two, that it is ineffective. Frontline obsessed on effectiveness, which can only mean that if it was ever effective it would be justified, even if inhumane. Not once did they present a situation in which torture produced life-saving, security-enhancing results. When they are willing to stand against "torture" that saved, or saves, lives, I'll listen, and see just how violently against torture they remain. Until they have the balls to say that torture is wrong in every instance, they can just shut up.

And this: not once through the whole film do we hear of the abuse of stories of the abuse.
 

Oct 19/05: Obsessing on Torture Update

Frontline blames the War in Iraq (is that the historical title?) for the torture. The torture, you see, was a desperate response to the failed war. Frontline was less insistent on the failure of Afghanistan, although this is implied. But it was Afghanistan and not Iraq that has been the primary feed for Gitmo prisoners, over whom Frontline frets most desperately. So what to do? In the absence of a working moral objection to the Afghanistan invasion, they attribute the Gitmo "abuse" to over-reaction to September 11.

As if that were possible.

Meanwhile, today a rather marvelous story hits the news:

Saddam Pleads Innocent, Gets Into Scuffle

Yes indeedy, the Saddam Circus is on.

Iraqis are not confused. Protests erupted demanding his execution, and no one has any realistic expectation of an outcome any different from those demands. Sure, his Sunni partisans were thrilled by his "scuffle," his insistence that he is the Iraqi president, his challenge of the judge's authority ("I didn't appoint you"). But you know what? So what. No manner of joy at the antics can change the fact that this boy is gonna fry. He's no longer big bad Saddam. He's a clown.

Calling Ramsey Clark? (If you must, Google news him here: the S.O.B. is all over Saddam's side of things.) Don't matter. And don't call Saddam's nephew:

Iraq arrests nephew of Saddam
Yasir Sabhawi Ibrahim allegedly served as top financier of insurgency

But isn't it marvelous: after all the mess, the Gulf War, the '90s and the "no flight zones" and the Weapons Inspectors, the WMD, the no WMD, the UN and Collin Powell and that terrific, history shattering invasion -- no army ever went so far so fast -- here we are two years later, and the man who couldn't be bombed away is on trial. Just amazing.

And, btw, that invasion was history. It's hard to see from today, from all the problems and the insurgency. But the invasion is unparalleled. Patton ran far and fast, and nobody says it was because his opponent was weak. He did it when no one else could. The 101st Airborne, the First Army, and the Marines and the air campaign of 2003 is subject of great study, if not in the editorial pages of Time Magazine or The New York Times, in such places as Beijing, Moscow, Tehran, and Pyongyang. If the Gulf War brought on the end of history, the Iraq War resurrected it. This, gentlemen, is power.

The insurgency is a little thing. We're all about it today. Into history ahead, it won't mean a thing. It was a "troubled" time, the books will say. They will never be able to capture the hysteria of the now, for it is just that, hysteria. History leavens the moment. We are today in little times. This, too, shall pass.

And now the bastard is on trial. Justice. I can only imagine that opponents of the war can look upon this with nothing but

If you saw the scene, you can only laugh at the oversized baby cribs... reminds of Back to the Future ... "get used to it.."

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