( 2112 )

“The poison that is war does not free us from the ethics of responsibility.”

– Chris Hedges

PART ONE: TREASON

There are one or two things ahead that your friend and humble narrator here simply avoids having to discuss, that are deflected plus joked about rather than detailed whenever they come up—but that nevertheless form the basis of  nightmares. What that means is that if you happen to have stumbled into 2112 tonight because you know the narrator in life, stop reading—now. You don’t hear about this stuff on purpose and you’d prefer to keep it that way.

Ok now that the rest of us are alone, there are a few thoughts about the WikiLeaks outbreak that just plain need to be shared. Why? Well because it’s time to talk about treason, casualties and war crimes and that third thing simply cannot be delved into sans context [as much as Glenn Greenwald might wish otherwise] and in this instance – much as your friend here would rather not – context necessitates personal observation.  You see, it seems that a certain segment of the anti-war left is about to try and leverage this whole WikiLeaks episode into a kind of “pull the fuck out of Afghanistan” oriented southern strategy. Which is to say employ facts [that are appalling but sadly common place in context’ out of context so as to – well – disproportionately horrify a public that’s been so criminally under-served by its news media before and during this latest wartime of ours—that it frankly may not know any better.

So anyway let’s start with treason and a) why we should all get used to calling the individual who gave the so-called “war diaries” to WikiLeaks a traitor [in that he or she could certainly be charged with a crime that translates into treason] and b) why we should be ok with that because we have a justice system equipped to deliver a proper verdict on the question of whether or not it was a necessary treason or one that should be  punished.

Now to illuminate my position here, we’ll need to take a trip back to darkest parts of 2003 – specifically – to the capture and subsequent torture by water boarding of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed in Rawalpindi, Pakistan and to the public arguments that swirled around the public revelation that KSM had in fact been tortured [regardless of what Bill Keller might have you believe, there is no such thing as “enhanced” interrogation by water boarding. Though I suppose the term might be fairly applied to interrogation with chemical assistance – if the Spanish Inquisition listed the technique in its “torture” manuals and your government has charged soldiers they later executed for torture with having done it, its torture … so anyway] But that’s not really what’s important tonight, what is import is to recall the ticking time bomb argument used to justify first the torture itself then a legislative carve out making it “legal” for intelligence officers to engage in it. We need to recall that because the argument is unicorn shit – complete unicorn shit – in that not only is it bullshit, it is bullshit flavored with a fantasy construct.

You might be surprised to read this next statement on an avowed and active activist progressive’s hobby blog, but the fantasy in this example is not and never was the ticking time bomb scenario. Such things do indeed happen, both literally and metaphorically. Take the case against Frankfurt police chief superintendent Wolfgang Daschner for example. You see, back in 2002, Daschner threatened to torture the kidnapper of an 11-year-old boy if he did not reveal where he had hidden the child. The threat worked, though as he later testified, Wolfgang Daschner was prepared to do more than threaten.

He was tried and found guiltily but Judge Baerbel Stock handed down the lightest possible sentence because the officer had an honorable motive. The kidnapper, Magnus Gaefgen, is currently serving life.

My point? That the fantasy construct in our torture debate was that additional laws were necessary to protect potential torturers from prosecution and conviction when one need look no further than the Oscar Grant verdict to note how willing citizens serving in trial juries are to offer the individuals tasked with protecting our collective security the benefit of every doubt. So no CIA officer guilty of torturing a terrorist for the location of a ticking bomb will ever see the insides of a prison cell and I’d submit that no officer or bureaucrat guilty of treason when treason is the lesser of two evils will see the inside of one either – at least not at the votes of an American Jury.  More importantly, anyone arguing that treason isn’t treason or that the courts can’t be trusted to determine in this instance, is tacitly agreeing with Darth Vader himself [Dick Cheney] and his all too similar assertion that torture wasn’t torture and the law—as it existed—couldn’t  be trusted.

So – you know – if that’s you – you might want to reconsider that shit.

TO BE CONTINUED

Tags: afghanistan, Andrew Sullivan, Arianna Huffington, casualties, civil war, enduring freedom, glenn greenwald, Julian Assange, justice system, news media, rachel maddow, soviets, taliban, torture, traitor, treason, war, war crimes, war diaries, wikileaks