Samain Moving Moon
Torture. Dick Cheney. George Bush. Especially Cheney. The Torture Report from the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence–which I have not read–has not raised huge protests or expressions of outrage around the world. I heard this on NPR this morning while on the way to breakfast. Made sense to me. Why? It’s just not news.
That’s different from it being very important. The report is hugely significant for our democratic culture, significant in a way very similar to Edward Snowden’s revelations about the NSA. We allowed (and were prevented from allowing, too) erosion of our personal liberties, especially relative to personal privacy.
Torture and the Prism program connect at a critical point, the invasion of personal space. Obviously they are very different, one physical and the other cybernetic, but in the focus on an individual, on penetrating domains normally forbidden to others, except those who love us, they are remarkably similar.
In the name of fighting a War on Terror we followed Nietzsche’s keen insight. We fought the monster and while doing so became the monster ourselves. The abyss not only stared back at us, it flowed into our actions as a nation. I blame Cheney, more than any other.
And, I also believe, with a columnist for the New York Times that he should be pardoned. As should anyone else identified as creating this regime of terror and personal degradation. Seems strange to do, but I agree that it is probably the only way we will get acknowledgment that these things were terrible and that they were done. The hope is that such an action will inoculate us, at least for a while, against allowing these things to happen again. May it be so.
