So What Are "We" Supposed To Be About, Anyway?

(Note: I try to forego posts where I more or less “crank off” and leave that in the hands of my “A list betters,” but after some reading on this topic, I feel that I have to say this.)

You know, after hearing about the decision from President Obama to withhold more detainee abuse photos, as noted here, I really have to ask the question in the title of this post.

And I’ll admit that I was only mildly peeved for awhile because, though I knew this was another capitulation in the name of some political calculation (since, as noted here, most of this country is still pretty somnambulant on this issue), I was focused on other issues at the time, rightly or wrongly, and didn’t pay attention to this matter as I should have.

But then I read this post today from Glenn Greenwald, which, as is his usual style (to his credit), provided the literary equivalent of a cold slap in the face to your humble narrator. It made me realize anew that, yes, the photos Obama is holding back should be released. It will be even more tragic if our brave men and women in the military are endangered as a result, but we truly are fools if we think that a bare minimum of self-censorship will somehow provide cover for the betrayal of our ideals over the last eight years in the eyes of the world.

And if it manages to awaken this country to the point where most of us realize that we must fully face the evil conceived and carried out by Bushco in the name of the “global war on terror,” then something positive could come from releasing these no-doubt-horrific pictures.

While I sat and pondered this, a bit sobered by it all, I managed to come across this Swampland post on the subject by Joe Klein.

And as I read it, I felt my own sense of loss and futility over this slowly turn to rage.

See, Joke Line believes that the pix shouldn’t be released because…

“Thousands of American troops will be pouring into southern Afghanistan this summer. They will have their hands full with the Taliban. As it is, they have to overcome the disastrous impact of civilian casualties caused by aerial bombing, a tactic one hopes will become far less common with the new, counterinsurgency-based military leadership in Afghanistan.”

So…we as a free people don’t have the right to view incendiary pictures because it would endanger those in our military and foreign service?

Here’s a crazy thought: perhaps those we ostensibly are trying to aid half a world away would think more of us (or, short of that, maybe not hate us quite as much) if we were honest and contrite over this matter instead of secretive and deceitful. Or am I just a filthy, unkempt liberal blogger for dreaming up such a silly notion?

Back to Klein…

I am sure the civil liberties absolutists will say that this impinges on the free flow of information. They have a point. But we've gotten the picture: we know what American torture looks like. And the distribution of these photos…constitutes something akin to shouting fire in a crowded theater.

I’ve asked this before of our punditocracy, and I’ll ask it again; exactly who the hell is this “we” you are referring to? “We” know what torture looks like? So “we” know there is nothing else that is worse than the Abu Ghraib pictures? Based on what, exactly? Your say-so?

Oh, but here comes more of Klein’s particularly foul rationalizations…

I oppose torture. I think Dick Cheney, the mastermind of this program, is pretty close to a criminal--and that his attempts to twist the U.S. Constitution to his purposes, based on, shall we say, an eccentric reading of one of the lesser Federalist Papers, is obscene.

But…

I also believe there were mitigating circumstances. This was right after 9/11. There were 3000 dead. There was anthrax in the air. I can understand Nancy Pelosi's impulse to look the other way--if I'd been in a position of authority, I might have acted the same way...and you might have, too.

I realize it’s probably hopeless for me to follow up the well-made point by Jonathan Landay of McClatchy on “Countdown” the other night, namely, that the whole question of what Pelosi supposedly is fudging about on this (not that I think she is, I wish to emphasize) is utterly irrelevant because everything she was told was classified so she couldn’t go public with any complaints even if she wanted to (her defense that a new Congress and president was needed to rectify this is completely accurate). This is nothing but a red herring to provide cover for the ruling cabal that perpetrated these foul acts (those which President Obama is wrongly trying to sweep under the proverbial rug).

And 9/11? 3000 dead? The Anthrax attack (conveniently remembered now)? All beside the point.

Klein (no doubt speaking on behalf of the Friedmans, Cohens and every other war cheerleading pundit) STILL claims that the foul excesses carried out under Number 43 are justified because “I might have acted the same way…and you might have too.”

If “I” were the leader of the free world and had carried out acts that abrogated any of the Geneva Conventions, then “I” would completely and utterly expect to be held accountable in a court of law, whether that body existed in this country or elsewhere.

And Klein finishes with this…

We don't need to see (the photos), especially now.

Again with the collective “we” (God, what a toxic piece of refuse this post is).

Here is what I hope to see at some point in the future. I fervently wish for President Obama to reverse his decision and allow these photos to be published, so the whole world knows what was perpetrated by the jackals who formerly ruled us.

And when they are made public, I hope the president decides to call a news conference attended by Klein and every other pundit affiliated with a corporation with initials for names, as well as the few newspapers that will be left.

And I hope that the president calls Klein to the podium, opens a folder full of the photos, takes them out and, his voice rising in rage, shakes them directly in front of Klein’s face.

Because if Klein truly opposes torture as he says, he will then become as angry as I am at this moment, as I do everything I can not to break this keyboard from typing too violently over notions such as the one that the disgust of a person over half a world away can, in part, be measured by their literacy.

Update 1 5/15/09: The fact that Obama is being cheered on here by Christine Flowers of the Philadelphia Daily News over this is the only proof he needs that he is definitely on the wrong track.

Update 2 5/18/09: A great point made here given the latest revelations of Bushco nutsiness...

Update 3 6/1/09: Thank you, Mr. President.