More on the Torture Issue

Excellent issue from Jesse over at Pandangon on the torture issue:

http://www.pandagon.net/mtarchives/004380.html

Read the whole post, but here's a key excerpt:

It's disturbing to hear the axis of Kristol, Krauthammer and Hume ... talk about torture, because they really, really want to stick something scalding hot up someone's clenched something, and they're just trying to get all these morally facile "anti-torture" idiots to come to the conclusion that there is a situation in which torture might be okay...which, for some reason, will devolve downwards into the conclusion that torture is okay when used in other situations. It's an inane argument - I could, for instance, come up with an utterly contrived thriller-esque situation wherein I must expose myself to a room full of children in order to save lives, but if I'm seriously pushing it, the underlying argument isn't about saving lives. It's about wanting kids to see my naughty bits.

In much the same way, the perverse fascination with torture (and the Coulteresque arguments on the right that, well, of course they're against real torture, but that naked pile of men is barely even mistreatment) isn't about security, and it isn't about saving lives. It's about beating the shit out of some people in a way that makes them feel better about beating the shit out of some people.

Besides the part where torture doesn't work, and the U.S.A. is a country that ought not be doing torture, that's exactly right.

And when Right-Wing Conservatives get all pious about the need to torture and how adult they are for being able to realize that? Boy, does my bull-shit detector go off.

I've been reading an excellent book lately, Alice Miller's For Your Own Good. It explains a lot about the Wingers, but it's not making me feel any better, especially since she was looking at what shaped the Nazi Party. (Hint: the child-rearing techniques that formed the Nazis and those the form the Christian Fundamentalists are identical.)

I'm getting pretty nervous, boy.