"My Head Exploded When Obama Sanctimoniously Said, 'We Tortured Some Folks'" [View all]

[WilliamPitt]

My Head Exploded When Obama Sanctimoniously Said, "We Tortured Some Folks"
By Akira Watts
BuzzFlash | Commentary

Tuesday 05 August 2014

(snip)

It's not simply that "folks" manages to conflate the man who had a major role in planning the September 11th attacks with a guy unlucky enough to get scooped off a street. And it's not simply that "folks" builds on the foundation of vagueness laid by "some." I mean, "folks" just seems like a small number of people. You wouldn't think "look at all those folks" if you saw a stadium filled with people. Both of those points are troubling, but they don't quite get at the skin-crawling creepiness of the phrase.

It's the juxtaposition of the starkness of the first two words with this middle American jolliness that I find hard to stomach. It tries to soften the blow in an utterly tone-deaf fashion. It doesn't work. It doesn't sound like anything an actual human being would ever say, unless it was immediately followed by said human being unhinging its jaw and swallowing you whole.

But hey – at least that wasn't the whole speech, right? Surely that was just a minor glitch. Well, sort of. There was the acknowledgement that, what with torturing folks and all, a line was crossed. Not really the sort of statement that should be necessary; once torture is on the table, any lines there may be have pretty much been carpet bombed out of existence. Never mind that, Obama saying that a line had been crossed was a nice gesture.

So what are we going to do about it? Start with what's been done in the past. "[O]ne of the first things I did was to ban some of the extraordinary interrogation techniques that are the subject of that report." Hmm. "Some." Neat. But never mind the past, the past is dead. What about the future. I mean, torture, right? Prosecutions, jail terms, further investigations – all of those are surely in the works?

Crickets.

And then this: "And it's important for us not to feel too sanctimonious about the tough job that those folks had. And a lot of those folks were working hard under enormous pressure and were real patriots." This is the point where my exploded head bursts into flames of rage. Let me get this straight. We tortured. A line was crossed. But we shouldn't be all sanctimonious because the people that did it were patriots and under a lot of pressure. Really?

OK. I get that, given that the droolers in Congress would probably object to Obama declaring Ronald Reagan our national saint, even pushing for prosecutions would be a tricky political sell. Understood. And I'm sure that Obama would rather not blow his political capital on the fight that would ensue, since I just know he's saving all that capital up for something super special that will totally knock our socks off. But, after taking prosecutions or any other meaningful response off the table, was there really any need to make excuses for the people who carried out torture? Or, by extension, for those higher up who ordered and justified it?

Don't get sanctimonious? They were under pressure? They're all good patriots? Are you kidding me?

This is America. Go ahead, violate the Geneva Convention. You're under stress and you're all just wonderful, patriotic people. And after it's all over, we'll acknowledge what you did in a way that does its damndest to minimize the stark horror of what we have become.

We're America and we tortured some folks.

The rest: http://www.truth-out.org/buzzflash/commentary/obama-sancitmoniously-said-we-tortured-some-folks