Collective guilt?

Two short comments that must rely on memory. I don't really bother distinguishing among pundits and editorialists in USAn media, so I can't name the guilty or cite specific sources.  

1. Torture is not something the Republicans and their enablers adopted reluctantly by force of circumstance. They lusted after it. The faux-worldly, pseudo-realist apologies were already in the top drawers of the more viscous  elements of the punditry just waiting for a change to ooze onto the editorial pages of the Washington Post and New York Times. I suspect that protection of a certain key "ally" featured in some of the writers motivation, but that's another story.

2. The mainstream respectable liberal opinionators, who come down four-square against torture as if it were some inexplicable (though understandable) aberration in America's history of cosmic goodness are no better. They write as if the Central and South American death squads of the 70s and 80s were not financed and supported by American government. As if their systematic use of torture was not condoned, nay encouraged. As if the torturers had not been trained American forces, and as if the School of the Americas had never existed. This stuff goes back at least to World War 2.

That's my Saturday rant.

We're all complicit

I wrote this exact sentence about the exact same subject some 6 months ago and was royally kicked from pillar to post. I wonder what certain people will say now ?

keep to the Fen Causeway

Something I wrote a while back to explain my choice of username.

A not very clever play on the term innocent bystander.  None of us can claim innocence, anymore, of the things done in our name. I freely confess my ignorance, and I've been a bystander for far too long.

As I sit festering on all the pent-up anger, frustration, and shame at the actions of my government, I also sit in bewilderment.  What am I to do as an individual citizen of a supposedly democratic nation, when those we elect to represent us, including in some cases those I voted for, do nothing?  What do we do when it is our government that fails us?

Now where are we going and what's with the handbasket?

I happened to be watching ABC news last Wednesday evening (just between the BBC and PBS) when this story was broken over the air - it seemed almost incredible but there was a national network saying that high officials had openly discussed and approved torture in the White House on several occasions.  (Here is a link).  Then they named names - and I turned to my partner who was watching along with me and said, "Well, I suppose that's to help the folks at The Hague when it comes to drawing up a complete list."  And then I thought "Well, I'd think twice about travelling much outside of the US now that you've been named as war criminals on a national news report - even if they don't catch you here (and I cross my fingers still, yes perhaps in vain, but hey...), they may catch up with you on the Riviera or when shooting in the Midlands or wherever."  So it was certainly a strange moment.

Of course criminal liability for torture has already been suggested by the English barrister Philippe Sands in an article which is in the current number of Vanity Fair (the one with the Madonna cover) on the treatment of prisoners at Guantanamo.

I believe that most Americans are deeply ashamed of what has happened in their name, but they are not emotionally equipped to criticize the country publicly - somehow, that still seems treasonous and disloyal, even though in private, people bemoan what has been done by Bush's thugs.  Remember, every time someone criticizes the Iraq disaster, a right-winger will jump up shouting about how you must hate the troops, etc.  The disloyalty issue is huge, and potent, and ill-defined.  Few Americans are prepared publicly to state that Iraq was a criminal enterprise, because Bush made it seem to so many like the right thing to do - and then got voted in for a second term on that basis. I think many Americans simply cannot admit they were had, and were wrong, and have been used by evil people. To believe that would be too upsetting to their preconceived notions of how America behaves (always the nice guy, in spite of, uh, unfortunate moments in Viet Nam, Nicaragua, Panama, Chile, Granada, Iran, Cambodia, Philippines and so forth.)

So, in the long run, I suspect that denial will work its usual wonders on everyone and eventually push these "unpleasant events" back into the American public's sub or unconscious, but of course, something unexpected, like Condoleeza Rice getting served papers in, uh, Madrid or somewhere, could change the whole plan. So, to some degree, I'd say it's up to the rest of the world to point out to the US that it is not totally free of a legal responsibility to behave in a civilized way, confirmed by treaties and other agreements, just because it's a superpower.

is one hell of an important post/discussion.

Bread and circus, I'm afraid. At what point do the sheep look up?

The US is polarized between a minority that screams for high-level prosecutions and a majority that favors, at most, a change of administration and policy.

I think we can be confident that the high-level prosecutions will never happen, and I think that most here would agree that it isn't enough to quietly change people and policies (for an election cycle or two).

Neither attempting to prosecute nor ignoring the crimes and moving on can heal the US -- no more than prosecutions or denial could have healed South Africa.

I advocate what has succeeded in similar cases: a Truth and Reconciliation Commission. (According to this Wikipedia article, Josh Marshall has already called for this).

From the page linked above:

A truth commission or truth and reconciliation commission is a commission tasked with discovering and revealing past wrongdoing by a government, in the hope of resolving conflict left over from the past. They are, under various names, occasionally set up by states emerging from periods of internal unrest, civil war, or dictatorship.

This seems to fit the case better than any alternative I know.

Words and ideas I offer here may be used freely and without attribution.

I've written before about the Finnish prison system, which has undergone a radical change over the last 17 years.

The Sentences Enforcement Act set these requirements on the Prison Service.

http://www.vankeinhoito.fi/14994.htm

• Punishment is a mere loss of liberty: The enforcement of sentence must be organised so that the sentence is only loss of liberty. Other restrictions can be used to the extent that the security of custody and the prison order require.

• Prevention of harm, promoting of placement into society: Punishment shall be enforced so that it does not unnecessarily impede but, if possible, promotes a prisoner's placement in society. Harms caused by imprisonment must be prevented, if possible.

• Normality: The circumstances in a penal institution must be organised so that they correspond to those prevailing in the rest of society.

• Justness, respect for human dignity, prohibition of discrimination: Prisoners must be treated justly and respecting their human dignity. Prisoners may not be placed without grounds in an unequal position because of their race, nationality or ethnic origin, skin colour, language, gender, age, family status, sexual orientation or state of health or religion, social opinion, political or labour activities or other such similar thing.

• Special needs of juvenile prisoners: When implementing a sanction sentenced to a juvenile offender, special attention must be paid to the special needs caused by the prisoner's age and stage of development.

• Hearing of prisoner: A prisoner must be heard when a decision is being made concerning his/her placing in dwelling, work or other activity and some other important matter connected to his/her treatment.

Finland is lowest in the EU for emprisoned per capita. The US has over 15 times more per capita, than Finland. The Finnish system appears to be highly successful, both in terms of recidivism and social cost benefit.

The whole point is rehabilitation - modifying behaviour, both in prison and, by extended contact after release, in after care. The problem is therefore 'modifying' to what?

The aims of the Finnish system are quite simple: the restoration of dignity, or the removal of anti-social behaviour without the dilution of freedom. That is, it is far more concerned with the removal of Learned Behaviour Disorders, than their replacement with other Behavioural restrictions. It is an important distinction imo.

There is, though, a small conundrum. The security of these gateless prisons is made possible by advanced surveillance systems. Thus the prisoner perception of freedom remains only a perception. They are not really free. But isn't that a metaphor for any of us in society; that our behaviour is also modified by the 'invisible' surveillance of the network we live in?

You can't be me, I'm taken

Much has been made, in this and in other threads elsewhere, of the passivity of the American public in the face of so many outrages committed by the Bush administration and its collaborators (such as various supposedly independent courts).  To take one famous example of an aroused public, the March of the Women on Versailles in October 1789, the ostensible cause was the high price of bread.  Or, in other words, a pocket-book issue that would be experienced by many.  In the USA today, without a draft taking away some young people and making the others sweat, with no special tax raised for the meaningless "War on Terror", with no "average" Americans being "disappeared" so far, with gasoline and food and entertainment available although becoming more expensive, there is little to trigger a reaction from most Americans towards what the Bush people have been doing in faraway, virtually invisible places such as Bagram or Guantanamo.  And it is clear that this is just what the current administration has aimed for.  Americans do not want to think they are criminals and as long as there is little or no "hard" (ie, visual, as in the case of the Abu Ghraib photographs) evidence that Americans have been committing crimes against humanity, the majority of the population will simply ignore the occasional written reports as fanciful exaggerations of the infamous "liberal" media.  Until something occurs that disrupts the surface calm of American society - a serious spike in gas prices, for instance, or the revelation of an American concentration camp somewhere with lots of gruesome photos, or someone in the administration leaking some devastating information, I cannot see that there will be much of a public response to what Bush has done.  Most people want it simply to go away, and they're hoping they can brush all the mess under the carpet and forget it about it.  Most Americans, it is my opinion, do not honestly want a close and uncomfortable examination of the crimes of this administration, because they instinctively know that it would reveal many dubious arrangements on which America's affluence has been based.  Much less distressing to wave the flag and say "God bless America!" than to look too closely at how Wall Street (to take just one sector) has been subsidized by uncontrolled Defense Department contracts.  The American public is nervous, guilty, greedy and afraid the "free" ride may be about to stop.  That's what they care about much more than some anti-American "ragheads" being tortured in places they can't pronounce anyway.

This diary reminds me very much of the case of Kurt Gerstein. I have translated the last paragraphs from the Italian translation of the French book Kurt Gerstein ou l'ambiguïté du bien. It therefore is not the same as the English version of which I have no copy. All italics are mine.