The Bush administration's approach to the War on Terrorism has bespoke a profound immaturity on the subject. While the intelligence community easily separates the current conflict from an episode of 24, there's precious little evidence that Bush is similarly adept. I'd guess that some tough-talking hero-type from the CIA has Bush's ear and trust and has convinced him that torture is a necessary element of America's strength in this conflict.One key data point would be this story, from Gary Trudeau:
Trudeau said he penned his very first cartoon to illustrate an article in the Yale Daily News on Bush and allegations that his fraternity, DKE, had hazed incoming pledges by branding them with an iron.... The article in the campus paper prompted The New York Times to interview Bush, who was a senior that year. Trudeau recalled that Bush told the Times “it was just a coat hanger, and ... it didn’t hurt any more than a cigarette burn.”So Bush is clearly a mental juvenile - not something we needed further evidence of. But he's also clearly a sadist - eager to inflict pain, equally eager (in a newtonian sense) to downplay any possibility that the pain is meaningful. He likes to hurt people, and have them hurt, but wants to deny any responsibility or consequence for having caused that pain. To that end, he a) claims with zero credibility that this sadism is necessary (we can be certain he said the same to his frat pledges) and b) says, as a matter of law, that if he is held to any standard of accountability - any standard at all - he will stop interrogating prisoners altogether. On balance, that might even be a net gain. Nevertheless, it speaks to a profound petulance and sociopathy in the President.
Or, as I said a while back, paraphrasing Galbraith the Elder:
The modern conservative is engaged in one of man's oldest exercises in moral philosophy; that is, the search for a superior moral justification for sadism.
2 comments:
I'd be more pragmatic than that...he is seeking, desparately, the post-hoc justification for actions his regime has already taken. He wan't retro-active forgiveness for his sins. if he doesn't, how can any future revalations of toroture and illegal, gulag-like detantion NOT be impeachable offences.
He is scared and needs cover.
The NYT Article, "Branding Rite Laid to Yale Fraternity", appeared on 8 November 1967 and the final paragraph reads:
"A former president of Delta [said] that the branding is done with a hot coathanger. But the former president, George Bush, a Yale senior, said that the resulting wound is 'only a cigarette burn'."
Sad and sadistic.
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