It's SO Bad, It's Charitable!

In a courageous demonstration of moral clarity, a Rhode Island Democratic state legislator has promised to donate $100 to charity for each second George W. Bush and Dick Cheney (et al) endure waterboarding.

Hurray for speaking "truth to power"!

Recall what was written here not too long ago regarding Barack Obama's infatuation with America's "ideals":

Remember, waterboarding is so torturous, so utterly evil, those who oppose its use waterboard themselves in protest. It is also so horrific, so damaging, that journalists get paid to endure it so they can report about its dreadfulness. Clearly you can see how such a thing compromises America's loftiest ideals.

It seems evident that the Rhode Island Democrat behind this charitable charade is guilty of a logical fallacy:

If p then q.
q.
Therefore p.

It is never a bad thing to always mind one's p's and q's, unless, of course, one happens to be a morally upright Democrat. Then, well, "To Cheney's bunker!" No one really cares about the fallacy of affirming the consequent:

A. If waterboarding is truly torture, George W. Bush will not submit to it for charity.
B. George W. Bush will not submit to it for charity.
_______________
Therefore, waterboarding is truly torture.

Yes, yes. We're playing games here. Anyone paying attention can see it is all about games.

It might not be a mad world, but it sure is a stupid one. Of course one mustn't be too critical of a stupidity that will so generously benefit "charity."

Here's hoping that Messrs. Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld and Rove can handle a little water for about 120 seconds each. The New York Times could sure use their gifts.

PEACE.

©2009/Contratimes. All Rights Reserved.

Shifting Sands; Obama's Idealism; The Court; The Water Board

Perhaps the next party defection Americans will hear about is George McGovern, the once-upon-a-time "'most liberal' nominee for president in American history." Admittedly, this writer has over-stated the case. But Mr. McGovern sure sounds like a true free-marketeer in this comment:

My perspective on the so-called Employee Free Choice Act is informed by life experience. After leaving the Senate in 1981, I spent some time running a hotel. It was an eye-opening introduction to something most business operators are all-too familiar with -- the difficulty of controlling costs and setting prices in a weak economy. Despite my trust in government, I would have been alarmed by an outsider taking control of basic management decisions that determine success or failure in a business where I had invested my life savings.

Sounds like Michael Steele needs to make a phone call.

___________________

Mr. Obama is happy to talk about false choices, particularly those choices around America's ideals and national security. As already noted in this place, Mr. Obama is rather guilty of making his own false choices: national security is one of America's ideals. But excuse the digression.

What peeves about Mr. Obama's comment that ideals trump everything is the disembodied-ness of his philosophy. He speaks in terms that are rather neo-Platonic, where what is best, pure and (most) real exists outside the corporeality of life, of the stuff of the world. Mr. Obama has intimated in his discussions regarding the alleged "torture memos" that America's ideals would be compromised, sullied and damaged if the very corporeal and bodily act of slapping was ever committed against a known terrorist or enemy combatant. What is more important is not the flesh-and-blood reality of living and breathing Americans. What is important is a transcendent, intangible, theoria: a realm of perfect Ideas.

Another way to look at it is to simply think of pacifism. A pacifist -- really -- is a person interested in self-preservation, in moral self-preservation. The pacifist says that he would rather die -- or let someone else die -- than suffer a moral stain on his ideals. Turning the other cheek, then, becomes a practical act of self-congratulation, where the pacifist receives glory when measured against a reified abstraction: his moral code. To hell with the flesh-and-blood empiricism of life, the heart-beating apparatus of human existence. What matters is idealism, the realm of the disembodied spirit rapturously contemplating glorious principles. To the idealist, Smith must never compromise his values in protecting Jones, for if he does, he will lose his "moral standing" in the world.

Sadly, Jones beheaded by a terrorist using a jack-knife before a TV camera is a "thought" too mundane, too tactile, for the idealists among us. "Harsh" interrogation methods are an affront to America's disembodied self-congratulation. Americans must feel good about themselves; they must preserve their self-righteousness by never defending themselves in ways unbecoming.

Ultimately, it's not the actual people that make America great, that embody American exceptionalism. America's greatness is found in its cold, lifeless abstractions.

__________________

Some folks have suggested that U.S. Supreme Justice David Souter has been a disappointment. Perhaps he has been. But it's interesting how his legacy (so far) has been perceived. The common reprise by conservatives is that Mr. Souter was either a conservative who shifted radically to the left or he never was a conservative in the first place. Of course this sort of assessment is to be set against the apparent values of the president who nominated him. In this case, or so it goes, Mr. Souter did not meet the expectations of George H. W. Bush. Souter shifted his position or, even worse, he concealed his position from the light of day.

But something is missing from this assessment, and it is that George H. W. Bush himself shifted his position during the Reagan years on key political issues. In 1979-80, as G. H. W. Bush began his first campaign for president, Mr. Bush was deemed by many conservatives too liberal for the position. Interestingly, Mr. Bush shifted right, ever so slowly, on things like abortion. Cynics felt he did this solely for political expedience, and they may be correct. But if they are correct, then it follows that Mr. Souter is not at all a disappointment, since he, like his sponsor, actually believed something other than represented. Perhaps Mr. Souter behaved exactly the way a George H. W. Bush appointment should have behaved. Perhaps his jurisprudential legacy is not an embarrassment at all.

___________________

Remember, waterboarding is so torturous, so utterly evil, those who oppose its use water-board themselves in protest. It is also so horrific, so damaging, that journalists get paid to endure it so they can report about its dreadfulness. Clearly you can see how such a thing compromises America's loftiest ideals.

Peace.

BG

©2009. All Rights Reserved.

It's So Bad, It's Really Quite Good!

The Concord (NH) Monitor editorializes today about the horrors of water-boarding as proven by the willful and self-promoted water-boarding of that notorious belletrist, Christopher Hitchens. Mr. Hitchens writes about his "ordeal" in the August 2008 edition of Vanity Fair.

In the Monitor's somewhat embarrassing essay, "This should quell the debate over use of water-boarding," we find the paper in agreement with Hitchens' dubious verdict that water-boarding is, indeed, torture. The paper also adds that torture is "un-American."

But just a modicum of circumspection here might lead us to conclusions antithetical to the Monitor's deep moral sensibilities. Permit me to make a few simple points; I promise I can prove that there is something not only vapid in both Mr. Hitchens' and the Monitor's conclusions, there is something risible and absurd.

________________________

A SMALL POINT WORTH MAKING

First, let it be noted that Mr. Hitchens has largely been vilified by liberals and Democrats everywhere for his unapologetic support of the invasion of Iraq and the US's deposing of Saddam Hussein. Mr. Hitchens firmly believes in "Islamofascism"; he defends the West at every turn not only from Islamic insanity but also liberal pusillanimity. He is not a friend of the Left, at least when it comes to the "War on Terror." At least he's not been a friend until today.

Second, let me ask a couple of simple questions.

If I clearly warn you that, should you drive on any American highway in an intoxicated condition you will be -- if apprehended -- heavily fined, do you not voluntarily submit to that consequence if you do indeed drive drunk on I-90?

And if I clearly warn you that you will be sentenced to death should you be arrested for kidnapping a child and traveling over state lines with that abducted child (where you rape and murder that child), do you not voluntarily submit to those consequences should you choose such risky and abhorrent behavior?

No doubt I could ask many other questions like these, but I do not want to belabor the point. And the point is this: If we as Americans clearly forewarn our enemies that they will be subjected to water-boarding should they be apprehended, isn't it the case that our enemies voluntarily submit to that risk when they step onto the battlefield to do us harm? Alas, I believe that there is nothing to argue regarding this point: they DO volunteer to be submitted to such consequences.

Hence, let us conclude that Christopher Hitchens has done nothing really interesting here other than to participate in some form of masochism. He volunteered to submit to something considered by folks at the Concord Monitor (and elsewhere) to be nothing short of torture. Alas, he freely chose a set of consequences; as such, he is in every way culpable for his own suffering.

But it is not the case that either Mr. Hitchens or any enemy combatant was unaware of the consequences: what is known beforehand cannot lead to a surprise afterwards. Enemy combatants are not thrown into chaos, into a maelstrom of caprice and deceit; nor was Mr. Hitchens. Enemy combatants KNOW what they are getting into, and yet do not flinch from their paths.

Hence, the Concord Monitor cannot justify supporting Mr. Hitchens self-abuse by arguing that he submitted to water-boarding voluntarily. Mr. Hitchens, just like enemy combatants, knew beforehand what he was getting himself into. (Let it be added that Mr. Hitchens goes to great lengths to inform us about the Americans who have trained to ENDURE water-boarding, proving that at least American soldiers, who become "enemy combatants" when captured by our enemies, surely knew beforehand what they might face should they enter the fray. But it strains credulity to think our enemies are unaware of what they face if captured.)

________________________

MY MAIN POINT, REALLY


In all of this, from the Monitor's editorial to Hitchens' actions, there is a stultifying irony. Late last year, war protesters actually water-boarded a volunteer during a protest in Washington, D.C. as a demonstration of how torturous water-boarding can be. In other words, water-boarding is not so reprehensible and torturous that protesters are unwilling to torture one of their willing friends. No, water-boarding is just torturous enough to give protesters the information they want: that water-boarding is torture.

No doubt liberals, such as the editors at the Concord Monitor, believed quite sincerely that Mr. Hitchens was withholding much needed information, information he quickly and freely handed-over to editorial boards everywhere once he was subjected to torture. But again, water-boarding is not SO bad that any Concord Monitor editor has condemned the water-boarding of Mr. Hitchens. No, no, no. That sort of torture is just fine. Forsooth, Mr. Hitchens has finally received what he no doubt deserved (at least in the minds of his critics) all for the sake of a few empty and hypocritical political points scored by those who had already, a priori, condemned what is at least a very controversial method of interrogation. If water-boarding is too awful to use to extract necessary intelligence from enemy combatants, it is too awful to use to extract moral clarity from "volunteers."

Lastly if -- as the Monitor avers -- torture is undeniably "un-American," it strikes this writer as patently absurd that water-boarding for protest or propaganda IS apparently (at least to the Monitor) consistent with all things American.

Really, it is hard to believe that this is all not a joke.

Peace.

©Bill Gnade 2008