Too often the difference between good and bad guys is that the latter are caught. We don’t know that it’s an indisputable fact that Clinton was the first President to get a blow-job in the White House. Abu Ghraib, perhaps not as dramatically and sadistically, goes on in prisons of any kind repeatedly — its simply a matter of publicity. While John McCain naively assumed that torture was the unique expertise of North Vietnamese, the same, though arguably milder, went on in US interrogation South Vietnam war camps, pre-conditioned by CIA experts as far back as 1950, known as the “Phoenix” program. And since when are atrocities separated from clandestine torture? — remember the Navy Seals raid, commanded by Bob Kerry, let alone Calley’s My Lai?
Does anyone really believe that in the forty year reign of J. Edgar Hoover there were no methods of torture in the FBI, especially during the Cold War and McCarthyism? And what about the KKK, did it not consist of seemingly average southerners who proclaimed not to partake such sadism? Technically, I suppose, lynching is too final to be torture, but what of harassment, whippings and burning homes?
However, the myth “Torture is not US” immediately draws criticism when clandestine methods transpire in the public arena — and in some respects how can it not with the colossal advancement of today’s communications? Unfortunately, it implies that we are hypocrites — but, hey, what else is new? What differentiates torture in the past with the present is the brazenness of the current administration in justifying the perverse process by relying on the presumed fears and hysteria they implanted into the American psyche since 9/11 — at least, the administration cannot be charged with hypocrisy.
As for we Americans as a whole, we are generally righteous, just don’t expose us when we’re wrong.
Copyright © 2005 Richard R. Kennedy All rights reserved. Revised: December 19, 2005.
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