The tired narrative that liberals don't know how to keep America safe should be discounted simply by comparing the Bush 43 and Obama Administrations. Who ignored warnings? Who incorrectly attacked a nation who had nothing to do with 9/11? This is old news, and our nation, while in the hands of a feckless leader and cowardly, megalomaniac Cheney, reacted in a severely detrimental way. Not only did we wrongfully destroy a nation (Iraq) and create thousands of wounded and dead American soldiers, but we set ourselves up for financial collapse and a recession we are still experiencing for years to come. Worst of all, we tortured people, we conducted ourselves in a manner no better than the dreaded terrorists.
This morning, Bush White House Communications Chief and current View host, Nicolle Wallace, vehemently defended the deplorable conduct of her bosses in the Bush Administration. We are a nation of laws, they all love to proclaim, especially when defending the conduct of some of our own racist law enforcement officers. So this nation of laws suspended all logic when falling for Condi Rice's mushroom-cloud, melodramatic garbage and used "enhanced interrogation techniques" to gain actionable intelligence. The information obtained in a way that professional interrogators denounce, for damned good reason, is incredibly unreliable.
These Republicans, like Wallace, are also the ones who proclaim their deep religiosity and deference to their lord and savior, Jesus Christ. If you tell yourself you'll be forgiven for the hideous things you are about to do, it deviates little from the whole accept-me-as-your-lord-and-savior-and-you'll-be-eternally-blissful-mindset. We can rationalize and explain away unethical conduct with our 'enemies' just like we can rationalize granting favor to the obscenely wealthy at the expense of America's poor children. Why not torture? Republicans are on the wrong side of anything involving morality.
It seems like a tired argument, but I can't help think about how much evil they gleefully support. The Republican party has completely gone off the rails and oppose any and every issue there is. Republicans are fond of (and this is a list far from complete): disparaging the poor, destroying the environment, profiting off illness while insurance executives live high on the hog, guns and their limitless proliferation, racism, religious judgment, vilifying education, extreme nationalism and xenophobia, promoting animal cruelty, dishonesty in broadcasting, disparaging healthy eating, homophobia, misogyny, denying science and climate change, etc, etc, etc....and TORTURE. Why not torture?
Wallace believes that because ISIS or Al Qaeda haven't a shred of ethics when it comes to torture and murder, it's acceptable for America to mimic their disgusting behavior. Of course, she has to get in a dig that liberals are spineless. Meanwhile, her good buddy Sean Hannity backed out of a promise that he would be personally waterboarded and donate the proceeds to charity. That's the mindset of a pusillanimous, hypocritical coward commonly referred to as an American patriot.
Earlier in the show, Wallace asked Senator Angus King (I-ME) if he thought the report of the torture techniques employed by the agency during the Bush administration could get people killed in acts of retribution by terrorist organizations. King replied,
"It’s not the report that’s putting people’s lives at risk, it’s what we did that’s putting people’s lives at risk."
She was adamant that the larger problem is not the fact we tortured, but that people are going to know about it now. If you think a democratic society would want an informed populace, you would be assuming the opposite objectives of Republican America.
In the first clip, Wallace tried to ramrod Howard Dean, a competent and respected progressive, with her pernicious and ignominious worldview.
“I think months after 9/11 there were three people who we thought knew about imminent attacks, and we did whatever we had to do, and I pray to God that until the end of time we do whatever we have to do to find out what’s happening. And the notion that this somehow makes America less great is asinine and dangerous...
Dean eloquently attempted to explain the hypocrisy and ethical bankruptcy of her premise. She responded with an ad hominem attack on all things liberal.
“That’s what this is about… The notion that what we do affects the behavior of terrorists is a lie. It’s a lie perpetrated by political correctness and by liberals and it’s dangerous.”
Having ethics, morals and empathy for other human beings is dangerous? So they believe that torturing, mass carpet bombing of a country and violating the Geneva Comvention is not hazardous? There is just so much wrong here, the only justification for supporting enhanced interrogation (a disgraceful euphemism) is the absence of a conscience.
Perhaps it may sound dramatic, but this mindset is dangerously approaching the depraved conscience of a sociopath. There isn't an ally of the United States out there that supports torture, and there shouldn't be.
