Whose Side Are We On?

I was heartened to see good and forthright and informative posts from David Bromwich at Huffington Post and Digby and dday at Hullabaloo, among others, but on the whole the reaction from the blogosphere to Obama’s torture memo speech has been disappointing.

Why are decent men and women still looking for excuses and exculpatory arguments when it comes down to core values and issues that used to define this country and its way of life in contradistinction to the rest of the world?

When we talk about moving forward and reconciliation, what Obama seems to be talking about is not something even remotely resembling the processes that took place, for example, in the aftermath in South America or South Africa. These were genuine attempts at healing and reconstruction within the polity itself, within the sovereign nation. They were based on the recognition of guilt and error.

No, this stuff is just empty rhetoric, as is so much of what passes as national dialogue these days. The reconciliation that our politicians speak of is simply an agreement among the political class to let bygones be bygones.

I don’t think enough of a point has been made of what really happened during the whole fiasco of the Bush torture years, and what is really being revealed in its aftermath. Not to put too fine a point on it, these memos were solicited by a group of practitioners within the CIA for the express purpose of obtaining a legal cover for actions of dubious legality.

Lots of people in the intelligence and law enforcement and military establishments opposed this stuff, most notably, in this context, the FBI operatives at Guantanamo, hardly a source one might expect to be staffed by softhearted liberals. So by giving these guys a pass, aren’t we simply completely the circle? We are not talking about innocent conscripts here. We’re talking about people whose primary concern was not the moral dilemma that besets everyone who wields power, but was rather to find a legal cover for illegal and immoral acts, a cover kindly provided by the tortuous reasoning of Bush’s legal team.

Putting aside the issue of prosecution, what no one has suggested is how ripe these organizations are for what amounts to a purge. Far from letting the past stay in the past, at a minimum, these people should be kicked out, separated from the service just like that. There is a culture within the CIA that is just so wrong it cannot be tolerated in a democratic state. I don’t want to be reconciled to that culture, and I suspect anyone who does.

There is a fundamental obscenity at the heart of the exercise of power. All the great literatures and all the great political thinkers have somehow had to grapple with its inherent contradictions. Those of us on the left in America need to start getting back to basics, to start thinking straight.

I read a speech recently by the Japanese novelist Haruki Mirukami. He basically said that he was always on the side of the weak and the powerless, on the side of the egg, no matter how flawed, against the system, against the wall. That’s how I feel now. Those of us who want real change should never give in. We should never be reconciled. We should never make excuses. We should avoid being practical. We should never give comfort or faith to those whose fingers are on the trigger. We should never feel comfortable behind the gun. And we should not permit those who hold the guns to ever feel complacent.