The Best Kept Secret in Washington: Conservatives Against Torture

Photo: Two men on springboards with saw felling tree 1900. John Fletcher Ford photographs

In my previous post I talked about how I think the establishment media has deliberately tried to characterize the torture issue as a left vs. right, conservative vs. liberal and Republican vs. Democrat issue.  

...I've noticed for a long time that our establishment media has tried to sell the public on the false idea that the torture issue is all about liberals vs. conservatives, left vs. right  or Republicans vs. Democrats. They are doing this so that citizens of all political persuasions, who are horrified about what our government has done in our names, will not band together to force our government to hold these war criminals accountable.  Our media and political elite want us to continue squabbling with each other, just like the guests do on the "crossfire" type shows, in order to divide us so that our power to demand accountability will be diluted. That's why they don't want us to know that there are conservatives who favor accountability (more on that in my next post) or liberals who don't advocate  prosecutions of Bush administration officials just because they hate Republicans. That's also why they don't want us to know that there are more people who favor accountability for torture than those who don't. 

Our establishment media and political elites know that if we know the truth about all of these things that there will be no way for them to stop us from forcing our government to hold our leaders accountable. They also know that once we stop viewing each other as the "enemy" that we will all discover who our "real" enemies have been all of these years. And once that happens then the chummy club of insiders, who have had a stranglehold on our country for decades, will no longer be running the show and calling the shots. And the thought of having a true democracy positively scares them to death.

Back in March of this year, Glenn Greenwald wrote a blog post about an Evan Thomas cover story in Newsweek that sheds even more light on the attitude of our establishment media.

In his just-released cover story on Paul Krugman's status as Obama critic, Newsweek's Evan Thomas includes these observations: 

By definition, establishments believe in propping up the existing order. Members of the ruling class have a vested interest in keeping things pretty much the way they are.  Safeguarding the status quo, protecting traditional institutions, can be healthy and useful, stabilizing and reassuring.

Thomas then acknowledges what is glaringly obvious not only about himself but also most of his media-star colleagues:  "If you are of the establishment persuasion (and I am) . . ."

That's right, our establishment media is all about protecting the status quo. They don't want anyone (including the American people) rocking the boat which is why I think they've gone to such outrageous lengths to keep us divided on the issue of torture.

So in order to begin challenging the inside-the-beltway establishment mentality on this issue I think we must first tackle their use of stereotypes about the views of conservatives and liberals on torture.

Despite what the media would have us believe all conservatives do not favor torture and all liberals are not "liberal score-settlers."  These claims are just false.

Yesterday I ran across a piece by Michael van der Galien called Christian Conservatives Against Torture that appeared on the PoliGazette website. 

We have all heard a lot about Christian conservatives in recent years. We know the standard talking points by now. They are radically right, in favor of a total war on Islam, intolerant even hateful towards those with unorthodox sexual preferences (hey, is that the political correct expression of the day or what?), and support torture.

Or not

In Mr. van der Galien's piece he links to an excellent piece by David P. Gushee at the Christianity Today website where Gushee authored a piece called 5 Reasons That Torture is Always Wrong. 

Say what? Conservatives against torture? But I thought according to the media all conservatives favor torture? Don't they?

I also ran across several pieces by conservative Rod Dreher where he talked about Bush lying to us about torture and about how those who tortured should be held accountable.  

One thing that nobody should ever be permitted to say again, after reading these memos: "The United States didn't torture." When President Bush said it, he was a liar. The only question is whether or not he was lying to himself, so that he could sleep at night, or consciously lying to the public for reasons of political expediency.

[Snip]

I disagree. Those who approved of torture should be made to defend what they did. The public should be forced to confront these things, and to learn what our government is capable of, so that we might prevent it in the future. I'm inclined to former Reagan Justice official Bruce Fein's view.

[Snip]

How is it that even after the CIA station chief on the ground told his superiors that the terrorist being tortured had said all he knew that the CIA kept on torturing the guy? What does that tell us about what we were really up to? Was it really a "necessary evil"?

That can't be undone, obviously, but if we don't try to understand how and why that happened, what will our refusal to look at our deeds, and what was done in our name, say about the American soul? "Yes, but they are terrorists," is not much of a defense.

What a conservative calling for accountability on torture? But that can't be or I would have heard about it on TV, wouldn't I?

Mr. Dreher also alerted his readers to another gentleman by the name of Mark Shea, a social conservative, who has been regularly posting critical commentary about torture on his blog. I visited his website last night and found a piece called That's the thing about committing war crimes and this one The Awesome Human Capacity for Rationalization of Evil where he says this:

[Snip}

So, according to the Rubber Hose Right it's *not* torture *because* it was done 183 times. Now, I recall back in the day, when torture apologists were explaining that it was not torture because it was so brutal and effective that KSM cracked instantly. "A couple of dunking and it was all over. What's the big deal?" Now we are told that he didn't crack instantly by the same apologists for torture--and that this proves it's not a big deal too. 

And this:

[Snip]

But yeah. Sure. Waterboarding somebody 183 times. That's not torture. 

Enjoy the bubble.

Today I went back to visit his blog again to see what other pieces he wrote and I found one called:

The Red Cross Torture Report 

Now and then, there has been talk of prosecuting the Bushies who ordered the creation of our torture regime and the commission of war crimes. I'd be completely in favor of that since I'm one of those people who thinks the US remains a nation of laws under God even when it is inconvenient to the fortunes of Movement Conservatives.

However, as some of the Left are now discovering, the big problem facing those who would like to pursue this course is not primarily GOP opposition (though it, of course, exists) but rather fellow lefties (including their very own President) who, having now seized the One Ring as suddenly reluctant to just give up all that reckless unilateral power.

I haven't gone through his entire archives but I'd be willing to bet that there are other pieces on torture that I've missed. But the point is that he's a social conservative and his view is not represented in the media just like Dreher, van der Galien and Gushee's views are not represented in the establishment media.

Quite some time ago I also ran across a piece by Becky Akers, a member of the John Birch Society, entitled Mainstream's Media Moral Meltdown where Ms. Akers advocated for accountability for Bush administration war crimes. I even sent several members of our media a link to her piece but because it also criticized the media I guess they weren't interested in it for multiple reasons.

We've also seen quite a few pieces  by conservative Bruce Fein, who eloquently argues for accountability for both the Bush administration and the Obama administration.

With the exception of Bruce Fein, who appeared on TV a couple of times and had a few op-ed's published,  we don't see these other  conservative voices represented in the establishment media.  All we see are the conservatives who represent, as Mark Shea calls them, the Rubber hose Republicans - people like David Rivkin, Andy Card, Dick Cheney and a whole host of other low level professional politicos (the usual suspects) who appear on cable talk shows. 

Recently we saw two pieces in the WSJ where you had Mukasey and Hayden team up and Rivkin and Casey team up to argue for torture. 

Just like in the photo above, where it takes two men to fell this tree, maybe anti-torture conservatives and liberals need to start teaming up in order to take down the media barriers that prevent all of our voices from being represented on the issue of torture? Maybe it's time for anti-torture conservatives and liberals to team up and start demanding accountability from our Department of Justice and inclusion in the national conversation on torture.

Update:  Gene Healy at the Cato Institute is clearly not buying David Rivkin's claim that we didn't torture. Check out his latest piece: Of Course It Was Torture

Update 2: QuietObserver posted an interesting post at Daily Kos about Shepherd Smith. The post includes this video that shows Shepherd Smith and former Judge Napolitano on Fox News appearing to be challenging the "Rubber Hose Republicans" and hopefully in the coming days they will do even more of it.

torture

Hiding the Truth From the Public

Photo: The super massive black hole at the center of our Galaxy

Glenn Greenwald wrote an excellent blog post yesterday about how the views about torture of a large portion of Americans are not represented in the establishment media.  Glenn sites various recent polls that show large numbers of Americans favor investigations into the Bush torture program even though our beltway establishment does not. He then uses an example of what is typically shown on TV whenever the issue is discussed. 

The example Greenwald used was the panel discussion on this past Sunday's Meet the Press that supposedly "debated' the torture memos. As Glenn rightfully points out it really wasn't a debate because all of the people on the panel held the same "beltway insiders" view that there should be no investigation or prosecution for torture even though that view is completely at odds with the views of a majority of Americans.

Consider yesterday's Meet the Press panel discussion of this issue involving David Gregory and five exceedingly typical Beltway insiders -- The Washington Post's Steven Pearlstein, Fortune's Nina Easton, Time's Rick Stengel, former GOP House Majority Leader Dick Armey, and former "moderate" Democratic Rep. Harold Ford Jr.  That's three ostensibly non-partisan journalists, a right-wing fanatic, and a New Republic/DLC Democrat from Tennessee whose career was built on proving how much he embraces GOP policies -- that's called "diversity of views" in Establishment Media World.  

Exactly as one would expect, they were all in full and complete agreement that there must be no investigations or prosecutions.  There was not a syllable uttered that political officials should be treated the same as ordinary Americans when they got caught breaking the law.  As always, only the suffocatingly narrow Beltway consensus is heard in our political debates, even when huge percentages of Americans reject it

In addition to the media panels, where everyone agrees that there should be no investigation or prosecution, that Glenn correctly documented yesterday, there is also a second type of establishment media discussion about this issue, that while appearing to give voice to alternative views on this issue, actually promotes the same inside-the-beltway conclusion that there should be no accountability for torture.

This alternative, media approved discussion about torture uses a "crossfire" type setting. The typical "discussion"  always has a "conservative" pitted against a "liberal." The conservative always argues for using torture and the liberal always argues against it. Usually there will be either a third person added to this mix or the "moderator" will themselves act as the third person that supposedly represents the "centrist" viewpoint, when in reality they represent the "inside-the-beltway" viewpoint.  The "centrist" is always portrayed as the "reasonable" member of the trio. They usually argue against using torture (not always) and they always argue that there should be no legal accountability for torture.

In these discussions the use of factual information is not only not required but the more extreme and factually ignorant your rhetoric the better our media seems to like it. In fact, having a guest with an extreme view on torture, like CNN did recently when they used convicted felon, G. Gordon Liddy, they guarantee that the rhetoric will be so extreme and factually false that the guest on the left (in the CNN example Joan Walsh from Salon.com) will usually end up having to abandon their own argument in order to take time out to counter the crazy off-the-wall comments coming from the radical torture apologist guest on the right.  

By having both the guests going at it tooth and nail arguing over red herrings the viewer frequently loses sight of the real argument (this CNN example is actually quite mild compared to what we normally see). This, of course,  is what the media wants to achieve all along because then their "centrist" can look oh, so reasonable compared to the squabbling guests.  So what does the establishment media hope to achieve by setting up these crossfire type exchanges?

They want the viewers to believe: 

1. All conservatives favor using torture and are not for politically "vindictive"  prosecutions  

2. All liberals are against using torture but they are for politically "vindictive" prosecutions

3. Centrists are against using torture but are also against politically "vindictive" prosecutions

4. All conservatives are crazy torturers

5. All liberals are petty, unreasonable, smug and "vindictive" scolds

6. Centrists are rational adults who are reasonable and not "vindictive"

These shows aren't real debates about the issues any more than the panel discussions, where everyone agrees with each other are real discussions. These are nothing more than a cynical marketing ploy used by our media in an effort to protect the status quo by selling the American people on the idea that while torture may be bad we shouldn't hold any officials legally accountable for it because that's nothing but political payback - "liberal score-settling" or as President Obama and his people claim - Retribution. 

All of this brings me to what I'd originally planned on writing this blog post about. I've noticed for a long time that our establishment media has tried to sell the public on the false idea that the torture issue is all about liberals vs. conservatives, left vs. right  or Republicans vs. Democrats. They are doing this so that citizens of all political persuasions, who are horrified about what our government has done in our names, will not band together to force our government to hold these war criminals accountable.  Our media and political elite want us to continue squabbling with each other, just like the guests do on the "crossfire" type shows, in order to divide us so that our power to demand accountability will be diluted. That's why they don't want us to know that there are conservatives who favor accountability (more on that in my next post) or liberals who don't advocate  prosecutions of Bush administration officials just because they hate Republicans. That's also why they don't want us to know that there are more people who favor accountability for torture than those who don't. 

Our establishment media and political elites know that if we know the truth about all of these things that there will be no way for them to stop us from forcing our government to hold our leaders accountable. They also know that once we stop viewing each other as the "enemy" that we will all discover who our "real" enemies have been all of these years. And once that happens then the chummy club of insiders, who have had a stranglehold on our country for decades, will no longer be running the show and calling the shots. And the thought of having a true democracy positively scares them to death.

Rank & File Republican Stands Up for Principle on Torture - Is Brutally Denounced by Bully-Boy Limbaugh

Looks like another rank and file Republican is pushing back on torture.  People like veteran, Charles, who spoke on the Rush Limbaugh show in the tape below,  are no longer willing to let people like Rush Limbaugh pretend to speak for them on this issue.  I'm not surprised by this. I've thought for a long time that the majority of conservatives were against torture and it was just self-important blowhards like Limbaugh, who talked the loudest, that were publicly promoting the thuggish  "torture is good" narrative. 

I hope this veteran and others like him continue to stand up for their principles by pushing back against the Rush Limbaugh/Sean Hannity version of what it means to be a Republican. I also hope they will join with rank and file Democrats & Independents, who share the same view that torture is wrong, no matter who does it. 

If we all join together, across party lines, then maybe we can finally force our supposed  "leaders" in government, on both sides of the aisle,  to stop playing political games and start following the rule of law by holding Bush administration officials accountable for their crimes.

Good for you Charles, whoever you are. The majority of Americans agree with you and not Rush Limbaugh. To paraphrase an old Cary Grant movie - if Limbaugh stood on top of a ladder he still wouldn't be able to touch the bottom of your shoe because he's a little man in both spirit and in intellect.