The (In)Decency of George W. Bush
Posted by Brad at 12:14pm Friday, November 7, 2008
Michael Gerson, former speechwriter and policy advisor to President Bush, writes a fantastical — as in “imaginary or groundless in not being based on reality; foolish or irrational” — puff piece about his former boss and that boss’ legacy. He lauds the “great,” yet under-appreciated, achievements of the outgoing president that demonstrate his humanity.
These achievements, it is true, have limited constituencies to praise them. Many conservatives view Medicare, education reform and foreign assistance as heresies. Many liberals refuse to concede Bush’s humanity, much less his achievements.
But that humanity is precisely what I will remember. I have seen President Bush show more loyalty than he has been given, more generosity than he has received. I have seen his buoyancy under the weight of malice and his forgiveness of faithless friends. Again and again, I have seen the natural tug of his pride swiftly overcome by a deeper decency — a decency that is privately engaging and publicly consequential.
Perhaps this “humanity” and “decency” is lost on those who more clearly remember his administration’s more glaring inhumane and indecent policies, as Andrew Sullivan rightly points out.
Michael Gerson manages to write a column about George W. Bush’s humane side without noting that this president subjected, by lawless fiat, countless individuals to torture and cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment, tortured at least two dozen individuals to death, and launched a war where hundreds of thousands of innocents died because of his negligence and hubris. Yes, PEPFAR is an achievement. But set against the legacy of the first American president to authorize torture against mere suspects, to adopt the techniques of the Khmer Rouge and the Gestapo for the US, PEPFAR is sadly overwhelmed.
No president’s record - in its treatment of helpless prisoners under his total control - has ever been as indecent as this president’s. Gerson was an integral part of the administration that brought torture into the American system of government. He has yet to address this - and the challenge it presents for Christians in particular.
What I also find indecent is Bush’s legions of blindly loyal disciples continuing to whitewash the record of what this administration has done and what it has done to this nation’s fundamental principles of humanity and decency.
On Nov 7, 2008, moe said:
This is what Schumer said durin a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing on Terror Policy in 2004:
“And I’d like to interject a note of balance here. There are times when we all get in high dudgeon. We ought to be reasonable about this. I think there are probably very few people in this room or in America who would say that torture should never, ever be used, particularly if thousands of lives are at stake.
Take the hypothetical: If we knew that there was a nuclear bomb hidden in an American city and we believed that some kind of torture, fairly severe maybe, would give us a chance of finding that bomb before it went off, my guess is most Americans and most senators, maybe all, would say, “Do what you have to do.”
So it’s easy to sit back in the armchair and say that torture can never be used. But when you’re in the foxhole, it’s a very different deal.
And I respect — I think we all respect the fact that the president’s in the foxhole every day. So he can hardly be blamed for asking you or his White House counsel or the Department of Defense to figure out when it comes to torture, what the law allows and when the law allows it and what there is permission to do.”
On Nov 7, 2008, moe said:
It’s time to put your hate-tinted glasses aside and realize how the core Left has taken you for a ride for the last 8 years.
On Nov 7, 2008, Brad said:
There’s no hate. Only disgust. And shame that I voted for him in 2000.
And the only ride I’ve been on for the last eight years has been the nightmare of an out-of-control administration.
On Nov 7, 2008, moe said:
Do you agree with Schumer’s Statement? where is the disgust?
Schumer: “I think there are probably very few people in this room or in America who would say that torture should never, ever be used, particularly if thousands of lives are at stake.”
On Nov 7, 2008, Brad said:
No, I do not agree with Schumer’s statement at all. Most credible experts have argued that torture is an ineffectual method to gaining useful information, even in the oft-alluded to “ticking time bomb” scenario. The extremely unlikely exception becomes the rule and a nation finds itself on a very slippery slope of inhumanity.
While I strongly oppose Schumer’s position, my disgust lies primarily with those who are responsible for creating and implementing such a policy, first denying that such “techniques” were being used and then whitewashing its practice once it could no longer be plausibly hidden.
On Nov 7, 2008, Brian said:
Perhaps I am one of the few. While I agree with the underlying premise that there are times in life where one must ‘do what you have to do’, this is entirely different than trying to create ‘acceptable’ standards of torture or a torture operating procedure.
This is what I find ironic about the right — they applaud John McCain for saying Obama was naïve by announcing that he would launch strikes against another country with actionable intelligence if that country was unable or unwilling to take action against Osama Bin Laden. According to Senator McCain, we would ‘of course’ do what we had to do but you do not announce it. I happen to have agreed with Senator McCain on this issue and believe it was largely Senator Obama attempting to show he was tough on foreign policy issues.
The hypothetical example is certainly anything but common (outside of the show 24). Torture, by contrast is not uncommon in world history and unfortunately has become a ‘tool’ used by the United States under this administration. I am sure it is somewhat likely that torture has been used by our country in extreme circumstances in the past as well – I am not naïve in that regard. What we cannot do as a nation is set aside a larger principle that we will not use torture. The United States is better than that even if our enemies are not.
There is no evidence that this grand experiment with torture has made us safer but it absolutely guarantees that our principled standing in the past will be laughed at by our foes in the future. The North Vietnamese were in a difficult PR battle with the rest of the world as the US (and others) claimed torture was being used. Given the same set of circumstances in the future, why would one of our foes even try to hide it – on what grounds would we claim they are outside the bounds of human decency?
I am disgusted by the scorched earth approach that so many from the right want to take to our ‘enemies’ (who are not well defined anymore). The notion that if they do it, we should do it only escalates the issue. The idea that we should lower ourselves to consider torture as an acceptable tool to obtain information is consciously throwing away the concept that America is different, that it is exceptional or that we exist as a demonstration of what can be.
I do disagree with the conclusion drawn by your Schumer quote. Here is why I disagree with the White House or DOD trying to figure out what acceptable torture is:
Offering my own hypothetical: A man comes up to me as I am leaving work and informs me that some acquaintances of his have my wife and children and they will be killed if I do not do…[whatever]. He also informs me that if they do not hear from him in the next hour, all will be killed. What would I do? I would do whatever twisted and inhumane thing I could conjure up to break the hope of that individual that he will want to live past that moment. I would do whatever I thought I had to do to ensure my family’s safety.
Would I be surprised if I was taken to court over my actions since there is really no legal provision where I can take the law into my own hands? Absolutely not and I would say bring it on because I have little doubt that a jury of my peers would understand that I did what I had to do. I will take it one step further though, would I change my actions if I knew that my actions would send me to prison? Absolutely not! I would do they exact same thing to ensure my family was safe.
I would not ask the government to come up with acceptable sets of criteria where I am legally able to do twisted and inhumane things to other people. Why? Because it will be misused 1000 times more than it will ever be applied correctly and we would be a less principled people for even considering such a Wild West mentality.
Would the American people hold an administration accountable if they found out that administration had saved a major US city from a nuclear attack by use of torture? I seriously doubt it. Should the American people hold an administration accountable for using torture without such an extreme threat especially when it has been learned that the use of torture led to bad intelligence which was neither useful nor accurate? Absolutely!
They should be charged and punished – which is precisely what they are trying to avoid by trying to figure out when it comes to torture, what the law allows and when the law allows it and what there is permission to do.