Ray McGovern: Are Americans Really ‘Better Than That?’

[babylonsister]

http://www.commondreams.org/archive/2007/12/12/5794/

Are Americans Really ‘Better Than That?’
by Ray McGovern


A boyish, inquisitive face with an innocent look peered out from the Washington Post’s lead story yesterday on torture. It was well groomed, pink-shirted John Kiriakou, a CIA interrogator who could just as easily pass for the local youth minister.

The report by the Post’s Joby Warrick and Dan Eggen, which describes Kiriakou’s experience in interrogating suspected terrorists, raises in an unusually direct way an abiding question: Should the United States of America be using forms of torture dating back to the Spanish Inquisition?

snip//

C.I.A.’s John Kiriakou says he is now convinced that waterboarding is torture and he is against it. He adds, “Americans are better than that.”

But Are We Better Than That?

Sadly, that remains to be seen. With virtually all religious institutions, politicians, and educators all squandering what moral authority they have left, the Jack Bauer culture threatens to win out in the end. We cannot let that happen.

The upcoming duel on the missing interrogation tapes will again bring the issue of torture front and center. And, strangely, waterboarding and other Jack Bauer tradecraft tools still enjoy a strong constituency.

Here’s where we come in; for we are the ones we’ve been waiting for. As one of my intelligence alumni colleagues noted recently, this is about our country losing its soul. Let’s rise to the occasion and stop unconscionable policies like torture. True patriotism goes well beyond a flag-on-the-lapel. As Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. noted, “Sometimes you have to put your body into it.” Besides, we need to keep the water hose from pumping up our bellies and those of our loved ones. I only wish that were as remote a possibility as it was before President Bush and his associates came up with their “alternative set of procedures.”


Ray McGovern works with Tell the Word, the publishing arm of the ecumenical Church of the Saviour in Washington, DC. He was an Army officer and then a C.I.A. analyst for 27 years, and now serves on the Steering Group of Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (VIPS).

[Hestia]

1. Yes, we are better than that and it is up to us to remind our leaders

and the rest of the world that are not living in a vacuum. If it is considered Old School to behave in a civilized manner, so be it. It is up to each and everyone of us not to allow thuggery, thievery, murder, mayhem to thrive. We need to lead by example. We all need to stand up and say, "Stop! Enough is Enough."

[Briar]

2. We will have to see

Perhaps when the polls and focus groups start telling Democrat candidates that the "centre" is against war, torture and all these other atrocities we will know. But so long as these candidates go on effectively supporting the evil deeds of the current administration then the answer is all too obvious: all too many Americans like Jack Bauer. He's their hero.

[flashl]

3. No, we are not better than that

U.S. Police Torture Settlements

[ixion]

4. We may kid ourselves and think that we're better, but we're really not

we have a long history of genocide, murder, aggression and hostility towards anyone or anything that gets in our way.

We use WW II as a benchmark, but really, it is the exception to the rule. And even then, it still allowed us to vent hostility. It just happened to be a productive channel in that instance. More often than not, though, we cause death, destruction and sorrow to fill our own coffers.

[reprobate]

5. Only one arguement with your statement. It is not "WE" who cause the death, destruction and sorrow

It is the 1% or less that control the political, economic and military activities we engage in. If left to the American people, war would be a thing of the past. Without, that is, the influence of the media, a wholly owned subsidiary of that same power structure.

[ixion]

6. perhaps, but because we're paying for it, we own it

whether we like it or not. You and I and anyone else who pays taxes has directly funded the carnage.

[reprobate]

7. Agreed. Poplus Culpabilis.