William Pfaff : hang the torturers ! - Democratic Underground

tocqueville

(1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore

Mon Apr-27-09 05:42 AM
Original message

William Pfaff : hang the torturers !

Edited on Mon Apr-27-09 06:17 AM by tocqueville

columns : American Fascism
on 2009/4/23 12:40:00 (750 reads)

Paris, April 21, 2009 – In 1935, Sinclair Lewis, author of “Babbit” and the first American writer to be awarded the Nobel Prize, published a novel entitled “It Can’t Happen Here.”
..............
When “It” did happen was in 2001-2008, in the Bush administration.
..............

There was a takeover of the government by a self-willed executive power, unprecedented in American history. The president and vice president acted on a novel and legally unsupported claim to unlimited “wartime” presidential and executive-branch power. The justification was an illegal, undeclared war.

International law and American treaty obligations were defied, as were established American law on the conduct of war and the treatment of prisoners, constitutional protections, and the surveillance of citizens.
All of this occurred without meeting serious, or at least successful, Congressional or judicial challenge, with little or no objection from the national press, and all but unanimous support from the national audiovisual media. One needn’t go through all that again.
................
Yet there is a limit. The latest case of the human moral vacuum created and encouraged during the Bush years is so outrageous, perverse, sadistic and nihilistic that it demands attention, for all that it tells us about the rest that has happened. I speak of the ordered, authorized, and conscientiously supervised water-boarding of two prisoners 266 times.
The men who authorized, ordered, and performed such acts should be hanged. It is as simple as that.

It then would be possible to face the future with a response to Can It Happen Here.

http://www.williampfaff.com/modules/news/article.php?storyid=393

William Pfaff (born in 1928) is an American author, op-ed columnist for the International Herald Tribune and frequent contributor to The New York Review of Books. He was born in Council Bluffs, Iowa, and is of German, English, and Irish origin. He currently resides in Paris.
________________________________________________________________________________________

my two cents

The Germans, the French, the Norwegians and others did it : they tried and condemned traitors, collaborators, war criminals. Some were executed, some got prison, some were acquitted. Those nations thus redeemed themselves. There should be no exception for the US, specially from a nation which has always presented herself as the beacon of liberty in the world.

edited comment :

This opinion piece leads to several questions :

1) were the US during the Bush years a fascist state ?
In my meaning no if you compare with the classical examples (Germany, Italy, Spain...). one of the main differences is that in the US the clamping down on dissidence was lenient, compared to the classical examples. But I would call the situation "quasi-fascism".

2) should the culprits be fully prosecuted, inclusive the former tops of the Bush administation ?
In my meaning yes. Or else the US will end up in a "Chilean situation" specially because of the torture. With the major difference that the US plays a special role in the world and thus need a "special" redemption.

3) Are the mechanisms of US citizens collaboration (active or passive) comparable to Vichy France ?
In my meaning basically yes. With the difference that the US weren't occupied by a foreign power and the internal repression limited. On the other hand this can be considered as an aggravating factor (lack of harsh repression) since it makes the cowardice even greater. By this, no blame is to fall on the ones (DU included) that did oppose openly the regime and took some risks.

tocqueville