George W Bush has high hopes that history will judge him to be one of the world’s greatest leaders. Well,you can stand on a pile of dung and declare it to be granite but eventually it will start to stink. The fact is that the United States of America has condoned, taught and practiced torture as part of its arsenal since the Viet Nam era. Many in Bush’s administration have been around long enough to be thoroughly desensitized to violence and torture as a state tool. They can’t accept the fact that it is still considered wrong. Bush has consciously made many torture techniques legal, so he thinks he’s safe when he says “We don’t torture”. Bush and his administration can manipulate what is legal, but they can’t seem to tell the difference between right and wrong.

But it still comes as a shock to discover that American leaders will open the way for the torture of prisoners, that lawyers will invent justifications for it, that the President of the United States will strenuously resist legislation prohibiting cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment of prisoners–and that much of the American public will be indifferent to what is being done in its name.

Is it any wonder why no one in their right mind believes Condi Rice’s explanations of extrordinary rendition done under the noses of the Europeans?

The “America is Good” fantasy that is so pervasive in this country has been a flagwaving whitewash for decades. Under Bush that layer has been stretched to a thin vaneer of lies that is so very easy to see through. What is on the other side isn’t pretty, or noble, or even necessary. If America follows the conservative lead on torture and allows it to become widely accepted, what will be the results? How many Americans would be willing to wave flags for a country that thinks it’s ok to indefinetely imprison and torture its citizens for shadowy reasons that never see the inside of a courtroom? Will Grandma someday be waterboarded for running a stopsign? Will every prison have a torture room? A rape room? Conservative thought is rife with harshness and violence against others… from their merciless economics to their twisted religious fears of anything or anyone different from them. I really don’t care why their world view is so selfish, violent, and extremely repulsive . I don’t want to understand conservatives, I want to get them the hell out of government.

Now that American torture is out in the open, this is the time to rid ourselves of it once and for all, not the time to embrace and expand such horror.
Bush’s policies, arrogant, steeped in violence, bereft of conscience, if allowed to continue, will signal the beginning of the end of our grand Democratic experiment. Only a national debate on our torture policies can save us. Not a parsing of words as to what’s legal, an honest discussion of who we are and what is right. We as a nation must decide if we are to be America the beautiful or America the great satan.

0 0 votes
Article Rating