Login HereRuth Marcus seems to view Washington DC as a giant slumber party, and obsesses on who should be invited (Caroline Kennedy, by all means!) and what games should be played.
She obviously got a lot of negative letters for saying that it's just more important to make sure bad things don't happen again than it is to have trials n'stuff that people at the party might find embarrassing and uncomfortable, so she's at it again -- this time on the icky subject of whether it's prudent to prosecute people for torture:
[P]unishment is not the only way to prevent wrongdoing. If someone is caught breaking into your house, by all means, press charges. But you might also want to consider installing an alarm system or buying stronger locks.
It would also be expensive, we won't be able to do a lot of other fun things if that's how we spend our time, and Obama really isn't interested so let's not bother.
No, it isn't from The Onion.
I happened to read Jane Mayer's book when I was on vacation, so probably a bit touchy on the subject. But if there's one thing to be thankful for amidst the death rattle of print journalism, it's the prospect of no more Washington Post and this kind of clubby, banal DC prating.
Update: Glenzilla writes that torture prosecutions have begun in the US -- against Liberia.
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Press Charges? What? No shooting the intruder?
Every time Ruth Marcus writes a column, she gets more irrelevant.
Maybe she should become the next WaPo0 Omsbud.
Jane, you are amazing!
Thank you for watching and listening. Your insight and instincts are a National Treasure!
You’re right, she could take Debbie’s place almost seamlessly.
Come, come, let us be po-lite, for these are our ‘betters’ whom we so unfairly malign (as I am quite certain we shall be reminded).
Obviously ‘we’ are among the ‘expendable’ whilst ‘they’ are indespensible to all that is ‘proper’, ‘righteous’, and ‘just’ (friggin’ absurd, not to mention odious, destructive, inhuman and vain, … as in the vanity of the bon-bons).
Please, people like this will just go on TV. It’s not the forum that matters.
Yes, I realize it is impolite to shoot Them, especially when Them is your friends.
Better to just press charges, if you must, and maybe they won’t stick. It is a matter of form.
There is a different set of rules for the unwashed. The other. Us.
Icky is as Icky does.
Meanwhile, the Los Angeles Times finds me MORE FABULOUS THAN EVAH!
The column is bizarre. Mark Felt, the Weather Underground and the FBI of the 60’s have nothing to do with the criminality of torture. An apt comparison might be to World War 2 and the Japanese, but Marcus can’t go there, can she?
Ahh, but as Glenn points out this morning, there is no irony involved in our prosecuting Chuckie Taylor for torture but not the Bushies. At least, not if you are Marcus or Stuart Taylor or Cass Sunstein.
Apply the Bush Doctrine: we can shoot people we think might be thinking about breaking in!
Seriously, letting the whole past 8 years of criminal behavior and constitutional contempt just slide is BS.
ZOMG, US is prosecuting torture…but only if it was committed by LIBERIANS.
http://www.salon.com/opinion/greenwald/
In this same absurd analogy, aren’t laws, treaties, constitution, etc. the locks and security devices? So, when hard core criminal types break the locks and disable or ignore the security devices, then what?
Wonder if Marcus will take her own advice and install bigger locks after someone breaks into HER house. :-)
It might also help to have a functioning police force which, in this case, would be the House led by Pelosi. Pretty much a Keystone Kops bunch when it comes to protecting us instead of their own sorry, complicit asses.
Happy New Year all!
We’s just using them using “aggressive interrogation techniques” is all.
By the by and OT, Gonzales is to write a “tell-all” book about the Bu$h administration.
Does he actually remember anything, or did some publisher get the ‘word’?
(Literary lites … however ‘made-over’, ‘polished’ or fluffed-up, are, invariably, a bane both on conscience and thought, yuck.)
It’s mediocre Flatbacking Access Journalists like Marcus that are propelling America to Firedoglake for its News and Reality-Based Analysis!
No More No More - Aerosmith
And what of the Constitution? What function was it intended to have?
Oh right, “quaintness”.
Silly me.
And Michael Mukasey quoting from Robert Jackson’s address to the Nuremberg Trials just takes the goddamned cake. I’ll retire to Bedlam.
Just what does she think WOULD prevent these abuses in the future? We already have the laws, have the clearly written Bill of Rights, and none of that meant jack shite to Bush.
Just a thought, Jane - in the new year, maybe take some lighter reading on vacation. It only makes reading these nitwits more painful. I recommend some murder mysteries, where the bad guys are actually caught and punished. You know, fiction.
the approved “liberal” response to torture via this npr oped (direct real player link):
if you haven’t heard this one, i recommend it (it’s very short).
I replied on wapo :
Ruth,
Have you ever seen a torture video? Do you think you could watch it? The screaming in agony? The stonefaced tortures, the sometimes enjoyment of the torturers? Can you imagine sleepless nights in your cold cell anticipating what agonies tomorrow will bring. Can you imagine all this happening when you are innocent?
You really want to just let it go?
Commentator Matt Miller says U.S. officials should do all they can to get information from suspected terror leader Abu Zubaydah, who is now in U.S. military custody. He just doesn’t want to know how they get it.
Such a Good German he is!
selise @ 21: that is stunning …
… ”things {shit} occur {happens} …
… Pretending in public {!} …
… not violating these ideals … {even tho’ we are}
… helps everyone {not me …} save face … {no harm, no foul}
… preserves a committment {oh, just how does lying preserve committment …} to our values …
… tell the kids … it’s wrong … like adultery … {Clinton did it too!}
… time {for the adults} to explain when they’re older …
… that {shit happens} in an imperfect and … tragic {romantic much?} world.”
fucking stunning.
If ’tis is the vein of what you have quoted, selise, then, prolly, I should not … npr no longer gets (nor deserves) my ear or my $upport.
;~(
not just miller. :(
that was about when i stopped supporting my local npr station (regretfully after a couple of decades of support)
selise @ 21: I don’t see how that’s ANYTHING different from what Cheney has been saying for years! How can people miss the comparison/equivalence? If that get’s accepted as the accepted liberal response we are in real trouble. As if we weren’t already. What total nonsense.
What does “Good German” mean. Does everyone of German descendancy have some original sin because of the lunacy of AH et al. Maybe somewhere in the future someone will say Such a good American he is because of GWB.
480 hrs & 52 min
Only traitors torture, war crimes done by war criminals.
Wait till these goons that do this come back to your hometown.
Yeah it didn’t turn out to be the best choice for holiday reading.
like torture is just a social issue, like adultery. yeah, right. that’s it.
”good German” refers to believing the propaganda and going along without being even willing to question social/government crimes.
understand why you better not listen. still, i’m grateful to those who can do it…. i’ve carried that one around with me since i heard it live. thought it was sick - but the worst part was the email i got from a beloved family member (the liberal wing of the family) that night - with a link to the oped and note about how that captured his feelings on the issue of torture.
when npr (or the wapo) publishes that kind of depravity it does not do good things for our society.
Ruth Marcus = stunningly superficial.
Gotta calls ‘em as we sees ‘em.
Yes, and it also means turning away your attention from horrible atrocities that are obviously happening, because they are so icky.
If
it is from 2002 - and it’s already happened. see jane’s post. see cass sunstein.
but we can fight it.
transcends false equivalency…into madness.
Can’t one say good fascist. To label a nationality that way is unjustified. I have hosted foreign exchange students from Germany who were not at all proud of that era. I am of Italian descendency. My mother worked in Nazi headquarters as a spy. Was she a “good Italian”
480 hrs & 37 min
A Policy of Torture is way beyond the pale of ‘things happen.’
‘Things Happen’ to people in specific circumstances, that usually include some element of cloudy judgment - the Courts were made to sort out just that.
However, to soberly craft a Policy of Torture and then Direct the build-out of an Infrastructure and Physical Facilities in order to implement it - that is Enough, by itself, to Create Confusion in the Chain-of-Command, inside of which those ‘institutionally confused’ judgments operated.
So, imvho, there’s room for compassionate understanding for the individuals who were indirectly supporting Bush’s Torture Program. However, the direct line of Authority from Bush to the Waterboards and Shackles was a pre-meditated, cloaked-in-the-Authority-of-Policy, intentional application of inhumane treatment to other Human Beings.
So, that’s a different deal - the Policy Makers carry a Consciousness of Guilt because they built-out a system that avoided third-party validation of either legality or humane treatment.
They should be directly liable, accountable, to those who claim to have been Tortured, in a Court of Law - the same Court Bush did Everything he could to avoid on the front end of his Torture Program, should now call him and his Yes-Men-for-Torture to Account.
The way Bush had it constructed was simple: Bush pointed his finger at someone and declared them an Enemy of the State, and then that person disappeared into the apparatus of Torture.
Without legal redress, one day that finger of accusation - the one with the power to disappear a person into Torture - may point at US.
Heard one of our Goons talk about sleep depravation. 16 hours of loud music on,4 hours off, making you shift to a twenty hour day without proper rest. Who sits around and thinks this shit up? How long could the creators stand this crap. It’s all about delegitimizing their humanity.
Growing up, watching too many WW2 movies, the standard was Name, rank and serial number. Of course that’s when we possessed a moral compass.
Unfuckingbelievable!
“Fifth, focusing governmental energy on uncovering and punishing the actions of the past will inevitably drain energy and political capital from the new administration. It would be a better use of the administration’s time to figure out how to close Guantanamo and deal with the remaining prisoners.”
This is just a variation on the “we shouldn’t look back, we should look forward” meme. Lyndie England served her time, right? We need to move on.
I am appalled by the moral ambivalence the villagers spout. But sadly, Marcus is right. It would take extraordinary political and moral courage for Obama to say, “Never again will the US torture, and my government will prosecute to the fullest extent of the law those who are responsible for the actions of the last eight years.”
But nobody expects that kind of courage. Instead, he’ll bravely close Gitmo… “something we can all agree on.”
As I was writing this comment I happened to be listening to Bruce Cockburn’s “The Trouble with Normal”
“Suddenly it’s repression, moratorium on rights
What did they think the politics of panic would invite?
Person in the street shrugs — “Security comes first”
But the trouble with normal is it always gets worse”
I am of German descent (Texan Freethinker Deutsch) and have no problem with this historically accurate term, but will put quotation marks around it should I use it again.
The reason why the Establishment doesn’t want prosecutions for torture is because it doesn’t want to defend its own silence and complicity in it.
Have to say, I too look forward to the WaPo’s demise. I have always wondered why neither the NYT or the WaPo ever considered real journalism as the basis of their business model. Instead both seem committed to publishing crap to the bitter end and maintaining that it is somehow our fault if we don’t like it and don’t buy their papers.
Absolutely, additionally the US was paying money to a destitute people to turn in “terrorists” The guilt of the people apprehended in this fashion should have been suspect from the gitgo.
480 hrs & 27 min
I’ve been cheering the NYT’s demise since Miller and the FISA secrets. It’s only what they deserve. I will miss the arts etc. coverage, tho. And I find the WaPo’s writing style so obtuse I don’t even bother the try reading it anymore. My brain just tunes out.
can’t say i’d be sad to see it all go…
anthony shadid
barton gellman
dafna linzer
dana priest
walter pincus
I’ll miss Dana Priest and writers of her ilk. Where will they go? Do you think they will do well on the internet?
What? No Billy Kristol?
He was great in “The Princess Bride.”
here’s what I’ve been struggling with. how can they defy the laws and institutions that the whole consensus of American history is built on and still EXPECT to be supported by that American consensus? it defies all logic. Ok, they say, you are all ”good Americans” so now that we agree on that (good AND American), we can break any of the precepts we ”need” to and you will all still be ”good Americans.” Or you are terrorists.
this moral breakdown is beginning to affect me deeply. I no longer believe in any institution. and it can’t just be me, I have learned from past experience. it’s got to be affecting all of American society at deep and unconcious levels. even because if one goes along with Cheney on these things, what happens when Cheney is gone? the new foundation of belief is gone too.
it’s insidious and much wider than torture, if that’s possible. the financial breakdown also acts as a repeater for this effect, I think. a parrallel breakdown that reinforces the dynamic.
this is deep shit. and maybe it’s a good thing that Obama picked up the belief thread too. or maybe it’s part of some huge yin and yang swing. maybe.
All of these major media outlets have one or two reporters who do good work. I think they keep them around for laughs and to point to when people like us criticize them. The internet is already the default place to find real news. The MSM has become nothing but large corporations dedicated to bread and circuses, to propaganda and infotainment.
way epu-ed I’m sure, but Hugh@44 nails it:
Too often when I look at the denizens of DeeCee I see one of those period Regency films with the fops and their perfumed hankies pressed against the stench of their own filth.
Cowards. And complicit.
foothillsmike - In Conrad’s “Heart of Darkness,” Kurtz is “the Company’s” most productive Ivory-harvester, deep down in the Congo of Africa.
In the beginning, Kurtz had no concerns for the indigenous people who got in his way. In fact, he wrote in the margins of his Business Plan “exterminate the Brutes,” as if that was his guidance from the Principals of the Company regarding ‘local opposition’ to the production of Ivory.
So, Kurtz sets-up his operation and starts working further and further down the Congo in the quest for more Ivory. As he crosses from one tribal area into the next, he meets opposition and starts killing the resistors with his loyalists, thinking his loyalists are ‘with him’ on the side of ‘right.’
In order to incent his loyalists to aggressively clear his path, he offers up to them a bounty opportunity: for each left ear of an ‘opponent,’ Kurtz will give them a monetary reward.
So, while the vanquished tribes were collecting together to organize a unified resistance of the invader, Kurtz was doing a booming business in paying out the bounties - his loyalists were steadily turning-in ears. The combination of it all apparently had Kurtz thinking that his plan was working - they were ‘winning.’
In the climax of the short novella, the narrator of the story - a man sent to ‘find out what Kurtz’ secret is for such great production’ - finally arrives at Kurtz’ remote outpost on the Congo. The narrator’s paddle-wheeler had to fight through an attack by the resistance, which was organized and right on top of Kurtz’ outpost.
The narrator leaves the boat and goes in search of Kurtz. It’s chaotic in the area, and when the narrator eventually locates Kurtz - the ‘great man’ was layed out, dying, and mumbling, ‘the horror, the horror.’
It turns out that Kurtz - who thought the success of his ‘Ear Bounty’ meant his opposition was crumbling - was instead surprise attacked and wounded by the unified tribes. When he goes to rally his loyalists, he’s shocked to see that the children of village are all missing their left ears, and collapses into the profound despair of a wild-eyed Martyr who had discovered he was really a Monster.
Bush’s bounty seems to have turned out the same - they turned-in their own for money - and Bush thought he was winning.
Here’s my response to Ruthie: Hey Ruthie, why is Bernie Madoff under house arrest in his million dollar apartment and the guy who robbed the corner store is getting it up the a** at Rikers Island? For the same reason Bernie kept two sets of books: one for the rubes and another for the elites. Same with our Constitution. Two sets of laws, one for the poor and one for the likes of you and your friends.
I hope you and your children get to experience the “other” Constitution some time.
You are an effete, morally bankrupt hack.
It must be that Ruth Marcus has been either 1) Been living on a different planet than the rest of us (world population) for the last few years, OR 2) she really works for Rupert Murdoch who is trying like crazy to re-write his propaganda machine’s complicity in the ‘bush years”.
The column Marcus put forth in the WaPo today is beyond what most folks in the REAL world would consider a call to GroupThink…EVERYONE with more than 14 brain cells working should read her stuff…makes you wonder what new flavor the KoolAide is today…
The Washington Post opinion pages are increasingly creepy and decadent. Aside from the columns, the letters are also more and more right wing: somehow, the crushing of Republicans in metro-DC, and Obama’s enormous popularity, we’re to believe that readers have moved to the right?
P
Tell me again why we have so many people in prisons?
Oh, well, THAT is something else entirely.
Prison (shudder) should nevah be mentioned in the same paragraph as any of our ‘betters’ … they are, intrinsically, above such crass, lower-class realities.
Why else should one seek wealth and power?
Hardly worth it, if one is to be treated like common, ordinary riff-raff (sniff!).
So, how is that “alarm system” and “locks” going to do anything when the people breaking in with impunity, and using taxpayer $$$$$ for state of the art equipment (and hotel massages after torture flights) ARE THE POLICE?
More like, those are the only readers they still have left.