American Deceptionalism

[Daveparts]

American Deceptionalism
By David Glenn Cox
http://theservantsofpilate.com


Time to add “Change we can believe in” to the famous lines, "this won’t hurt, the check is in the mail, and I won’t cum in your mouth."

“The Obama administration will not prosecute CIA officers who participated in harsh interrogations that critics say crossed the line into torture," CIA Director-nominee Leon Panetta said Friday.

Asked by the Associated Press if that was official policy, Panetta said, "That is the case. It was my opinion we just can't operate if people feel even if they are following the legal opinions of the Justice Department they could be in danger of prosecution.”

Sure, why not? Why not, in the name of cost-cutting, do away with the Justice Department altogether? After all, they only ape the President’s policy; they are beholden to him for their jobs or future promotions. So hypothetically if the President proposed a policy of interring dissidents in camps with odd-looking smokestacks at one end, the Justice Department would approve. Then a General Services Employee who questioned why the number of prisoners incarcerated went up but the number of meals served went down would be overstepping their bounds.

That G.S.E. employee would then be fired for interfering in a legitimate, legal program. The effect is twofold. Number one, not to question; number two, not to even look. It is a slippery slope. Panetta, by taking the job at the CIA, must first wear a burning tire necklace left over from the Bush administration. Instead Panetta fawned and cringed for the Republicans in Congress.

“Panetta formally retracted a statement he made Thursday that the Bush administration transferred prisoners for the purpose of torture. 'I am not aware of the validity of those claims,' he said.

“Sen. Kit Bond, R-Mo., chastised Panetta for careless words. 'You cannot be making statements or making judgments based on rumors and news stories,' he said.”

Obama has cleared Bush and Cheney and other upper-echelon criminals, and Panetta has just cleared the rest. Meanwhile, Lynndie England sat in federal prison for a year and a half for “just following orders.” She is a convicted felon with a dishonorable discharge, but those who gave her the orders, who water boarded and murdered, they must be protected. If Panetta had had any intestinal fortitude he would have said to Congress, I intend to follow justice wherever justice leads me; there are those who were following policy and then there are those who were enthusiastically following the policies.

When justice is sacrificed in the name of politics, both ladies lose their virtue and become whores. The Dred Scott decision by the Supreme Court in 1857 was a loss to Scott personally, but it also hardened the positions on both sides of the argument. It was obviously the wrong decision on moral grounds, but on legal grounds it subverted the sovereignty of the states, which was of paramount importance to the slave-holding states. It said to them, you win this case but you lose the argument of states' rights. To those in the North the court was seen as partisan and corrupt; with that failure of the court the people turned to elect Abraham Lincoln.

It was a blessing to the judges at Nuremberg that the Fuehrer did not survive the war. Under the German constitution he had not violated any laws. The Fuehrer was very shrewd to shield himself from any direct connection to the final solution. The deportation of the Jews was legitimized by the Reichstag’s revoking of their citizenship. No longer being lawful citizens, the SS was assigned the task of removing these aliens from the Reich. Any abuses of this policy legally fall on Heinrich Himmler, not on Hitler. Likewise the actions of death squads on the Eastern Front; they again fall at the doorstep of the SS and the Nuremberg defense team could have argued that they had "misunderstood the orders."

This is the moral relativism that Panetta is buying into, anything goes if it comes from the top. The President is the ultimate authority for what is legal, and the President then becomes the Fuerher. And we don’t question the Fuerher, do we?

Their simple argument is that it sets a dangerous precedent for the new administration to prosecute the previous administration. But by ignoring the criminality of the previous administration, they undercut the whole principle of lawful government. They are merely covering their own asses; they don’t want their underlings questioning their decisions at every turn. This is the exact purpose of the Justice Department, and in a larger sense, the Constitution itself.

Panetta’s position on change is now you see it and now you don’t. In two days of hearings, Panetta promised a clean break with Bush administration policies, even while preserving the CIA's latitude to resume certain aggressive tactics. By his refusal to prosecute violators in the previous administration, Panetta’s promises ring hollow and meaningless. There is no halfway with justice or torture or allowing it on Tuesdays and Thursdays only.

“The agency will no longer send prisoners to its own secret detention sites, which are being closed,” Panetta said.

But "there is a second kind of rendition, where individuals are turned over to a country for purposes of questioning," he said. "There were efforts by the CIA to seek and to receive assurances that those individuals would not be mistreated."

Panetta made it clear that those renditions could continue, largely unchanged from Bush-era policies. We are expected to accept the kind assurances of governments far beyond the reach of American justice and the promises of the new head of the CIA who won’t prosecute those within the reach of American justice for the same behavior because they were just following orders. What is the purpose of these renditions in the first place if not to slip the bounds of decent treatment? This is the worst kind of dissembling, this is car salesman shtick.

Oh no, we will close Guantanamo because we are nice people and then we will outsource our torture to countries like Syria. Rest assured now, because we are nice people, that we promise to call at least once a week and ask if anyone has been mistreated.

It is much the same way the Bush administration answered their critics, “Mistreated? What are you talking about? Why, we gave them Korans and prayer rugs!” while we held them without charges for years on end. Panetta promises to seek the moral high ground on the backs of the criminals, the tortured and the incarserated innocent.

“Change we can believe in” now takes its place alongside "compassionate conservatism" in the Orwellian lexicon. Add “Change we can believe in” to the famous lines "this won’t hurt, the check is in the mail, and I won’t cum in your mouth," but now with the Panetta caveat, but someone else might!

[anonymous171]

1. lol nt

[earcandle]

2. Not funny to me. It makes my spirit sink.