A Tortured Defense

The United States today is not the country I grew up in, the country I grew to love.

The United States that I grew up in was not perfect by any means. Discrimination, for example, was practiced in the whole of the country, openly in the South, less openly but just as devastating, in the North. The United States I grew up in tended to treat as inferior, black people, Jews, Hispanics, homosexuals, women, the poor, the mentally retarded, the physically handicapped, homeless people, non-religious people, etc., etc.

But there was a sense in the United States I grew up in that we were changing for the better.

And indeed, as time went on, visible progress was achieved in terms of our relationships with one another. In 1954, the Supreme Court outlawed segregation in our public schools, which resulted in something of a societal revolution. A sense of community, of responsibility for one another, was growing, though we had to live through the riots and disruptions of the 1960s.

But it was the War in Vietnam that was the beginning, I think, of a rending of the fabric of the commonwealth that has never healed. Many of us perceived, for the first time, that we had been naive, and realized we could not trust our government because the people we elected to serve and protect us deceived us for their own devious reasons and their own twisted rationale. Fifty-eight thousand Americans gave up their lives in service of those most twisted and deviant politicos.

Still, the United States I grew up in, the country I grew to love, never descended to the depths of depravity that defines the United States today. And I'm not talking about the "depravity" that raises the hackles of the Religious Right. The Religious Right is part of the problem, not part of the solution!

I'm speaking now of the men and women who have brought this country to its knees over the past eight years through their lies, their amorality, their utter disregard for our constitution, their neglect of the welfare of everyone but the very wealthy; their selling of their souls to pander to their base to stay in power - these are the people who have destroyed much of what was good about our country in terms of its financial well-being, its reputation around the world, it's military prowess, its ability to care for its people, indeed its spiritual essence.

You see the United States I grew up in did not invade sovereign countries that posed no threat to its well-being. The United States I grew up in did not instigate a military action based on lies to obtain the oil wealth that belonged to another country. The United States I grew up in did not twist the truth into so many convoluted strands it quickly became unrecognizable.

But, most importantly, the United States I grew up in did not torture its enemies!


This morning, again, the media told yet another story describing the United States government defending its use of torture. As reported by The New York Times, the Justice Department, in a series of letters, provided Congress with a legal interpretation which said "that American intelligence operatives attempting to thwart terrorist attacks can legally use interrogation methods that might otherwise be prohibited under international law."

I'm sorry, but that's exactly the same goddamn excuse the Nazis used when they rid Germany of its constitution and its laws to establish a dictatorship.

Our own Justice Department is arguing that the ends justify the means, that if an interrogator thinks he might gain information about a terrorist attack, he can do pretty much whatever the hell he wants. And, it would be mighty easy to argue that every "terrorist" suspect is certain to have information he would not wish to divulge. So waterboard the sucker!


I, for one, am sick of the leaders of my country arguing that they have the right to torture other human beings for the good of the country. I am sick of it for several reasons but an important one is that it showcases our callous disregard for human life. A second, and more significant reason is that torture makes us no better or different than the people we accuse of being "terrorists"! We become the enemy!

This is not the United States I grew up in, the one I grew to love, the country I now mourn.