"Fisking" "Peter"

I don't know what's up with my use of quotation marks in the title. I started this post over a week ago. Here it is ...

Dr. Dawg blogged about a week ago about how Obama was releasing the torture memos of the bush II regime which the American Civil Liberties Union had sued for, but he was insisting that no CIA or other institutional torturers would ever be charged for their crimes, saying they were just serving their country. "Only following orders" as the Nuremburg Defense goes.

A few authoritarian goons and torture apologists tried to take issue with this rather inarguable analogy and you can check out the debate there at the Dawg's site.

But commentator "Peter" and I got into a bit of a discussion and you can watch it build to the crescendo that I intend to "Fisk" (apparently a process of critiquing someone by inserting questions, comments and counter-arguments to their work between cut-and-pasted snippets of it -- the term originated in some lame-brain right-winger's attempt to discredit a piece by Mid-East journalist Robert Fisk) below. "Peter's" offering was such a titanic dropping of "War on Terror" bullshit and delusion that I felt it would be a good subject for a post.

The quote begins with "Peter" responding to my statement that his confused attempts to defend himself resemble a mouse dashing madly this way and that way, in a panic, trying to escape from its discoverer:

Reading you is like watching a frightened mouse...
Frightened of what? If all you are saying is that I am conflicted over this, shoot me or maybe waterboard me.

"Peter" resorted to this bizarre tactic a couple of times, ... alleging violent impulses among those people opposed to immunity from prosecution to torturers. Evidently it's the torture apologists like "Peter" who were feeling threatened in that discussion.

The countries of the Anglosphere (and in some ways the Americans above all) and certain others like the Scandinavians are marked by a firm cultural adherence to the rule of law and a strict accountability of leaders to it.

The very discussion in which "Peter" makes this ridiculous claim is one where US torturers are being granted immunity for actions that they knew were illegal at the time. And it is "Peter" and his ilk who are trying to deny this illegality in the face of overwhelming evidence.

There is little concept of higher morality or raison d'etat that plays except in extremis, but of course most of the world is not so fettered.

What meaningless crap. "Peter" is attempting to argue that US officials never perform morally dubious actions while justifying themselves with claims that they are obeying a greater good than the rule of law, that US officials have never used "reasons of state" to defend crimes against humanity. But who is not as "fettered" as "Peter's" imaginary law-abiding Anglo-Americans and Swedes?

France ...

Oh for god's sake! Pass the "freedom fries"! Heavens! The turd has insulted Eternal France!!! As a leftist I must fan myself and clutch my pearls in shock at this slight to the country je tous adore!!! "France! France! France!!" What a bunch of twisted morons these right-wingers are.

...has more of this kind of crap in its past than most others and let's not even begin to talk Russia and China.

No!! Not the glorious Russia and China!! One of 'em used to be "socialist" and the other one "still" is!! They can't be nasty! They just can't!! "Peter" might be surprised to know that critics of the USA's torture policies are quite capable of knowing about France's nasty imperialist actions, and that the totalitarian dictatorships of the Soviet Union, the People's Republic of China were awful both domestically and abroad. We're also aware that Putin's Russia is another blight. But it's quite rich hearing from an apologist for US torture about the behaviour of totalitarian dictatorships in an attempt to "school" critics of US torture. The reason that the USA has not descended into the wholesale, multiple holocausts of Nazi Germany or Stalin's USSR has more to do with the vocal criticisms of people like us (who decry torture) than with people like "Peter" who rationalize it. Right here you can see the utterly insane, intellectually bankrupt starting point for these monkeys.

Anyway, so the Americans find themselves in a war against a terrorist, irregular enemy that practices savagery against civilians, decapitates innocents on video and executes women for adultery in public.

Our enemies are bad people. Got it.

They [USA] bend/ stretch/break the rules about prisoner interrogation, not to cause death or injury, but to maximize fear, humiliation, degradation and psychological terror in murky and semi-public circumstances and under cover of putative legal authority.

"Putative" means "commonly accepted or supposed" or "assumed to exist or have existed" and "Peter" is stretching things to say that the Gonzales Justice Department's definitions of what constituted torture and what didn't were "commonly accepted" by the rest of humanity. These actions are all clearly illegal. Here's Geneva Convention III, Article 3, on the treatment of prisoners. Note what is banned:

(c) outrages upon personal dignity, in particular, humiliating and degrading treatment;

Let's also not forget that over 100 prisoners taken by the USA in its "War on Terror" have died mysteriously. I think even John Yoo would be hard-pressed to rationalize that.

This leads to an outcry and ultimately a reversal, generated from within rather than in response to pressures from Canadian bloggers.

Well, "Peter" you stupid fucking moron, Canadian bloggers haven't taken credit for any of this. But don't for a goddamned minute imagine that this reversal came all of its own as a result of the bush II regime or the Obama administration acting in a vacuum. Sustained outrage from people like the Canadian bloggers "Peter" so derides, especially from USian bloggers, helped to create this reversal.

So far, so good, arguably even healthy.

Not by a long shot buddy. Unless you can make any fool claim "arguably."

So, what happens or should happen to the guys who did it? You are, in your own words, "itching" to see these guys punished ...

"Peter" is stretching things again. Earlier in the discussion it seemed as if "Peter" was saying that my calling for the rule of law in what were clearly, inarguably, illegal actions made my whole case illegitimate. And, as others have argued, even if somebody is "itching" to see somebody else punished, that is no reason NOT to have an investigation and/or a trial.

But let's continue with our "Peter" ...

because presumably you have constructed yourself a nice litle morality play starring Good and Evil,

This is going to get good folks. First of all, the morality play is about the rule of law. It's about preventing our governments from having the legal power to torture ANYONE, whether they're Al Qaeda or some poor shlub turned in by an opportunistic Afghan warlord looking for a bounty or an anti-government protestor.

mainly by ignoring who and what they were fighting

Wow! Look whose got a "nice little morality play" going on. "Peter," you contemptible piece of shit, 500,000 Iraqi children died needlessly as a result of USA-UK enforced UN sanctions. (And, for the record, there's no cause to blame that on Saddam Hussein.) Millions have been made refugees. Hundreds of thousands have died violent deaths. Billions of dollars have gone missing or gone to Dick "fucking-puke-scumbag" Cheney's pals at Haliburton. "Peter," you're a pathetic moron.

and giving the words "international law" the unquestionable authority a toddler gives to "My Daddy says...".

Imbecile.

But I take my good friend sir francis's research seriously and note this quote from the trailer: "You had young soldiers with little training just as the rules were changing and they didn't know what the new rules were." Obama decides the old order will changeth but that the circumstances do not merit prosecutions. Not unlike the approach Mandela and the Truth and Reconciliation Commission took.

No firing squad at dawn to satisfy thwap's bloodlust. Bummer.

My bloodlust??? You fucking idiot!! You're the one slavering to defend torture!! People like "Peter" are unreal, are they not?

Meanwhile, sir francis knows this is all--and I do mean all--the result of American imperial ambitions that have turned peaceful agrarian reformers into murderous religious fanatics, and also the corruption of the ideals of Jefferson and Paine that he never had much time for anyway. Could be, I suppose, but then as sir francis predictably lays everything from genocide to road rage at the feet of the rapacious Yankee trader and his traitorous Canadian satraps, listening to him eventually comes to resemble being forced to listen to extremely loud rock music for hours before being interrogated by U.S. Special Forces. Inevitably sensory deprivation sets in.

That last bit of incoherent rambling was directed at another participant in the discussion, "Sir Francis" of "Dred Tory." As near as I can figure out, he's trying to say that holding the USA accountable for specific actions is akin to blaming the USA for "everything," which would be completely unfair, were it true. It makes as much sense if "Peter" responded to a complaint about his not flushing the toilet after he'd finished by screaming: "You always blame me for EVERYTHING that goes WRONG in the WORLD!!!! WAHHHHH!!!!!"