Prosecuting Torture: How the Words of WB Yeats Can Help
William Butler Yeats
www.webgenus.com
I finally realize the true reward of slogging through hundreds of poems for an MA in English Lit. Irish poet William Butler Yeats’ masterful poem “The Second Coming,” published in 1920 in post-war Europe, is being quoted often because it presciently captures what is happening today.
These lines in particular:
“The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst are full of passionate intensity.”
Listen to the arguments against prosecuting those responsible for the Bush administration’s illegal, immoral torture policy. The words “full of passionate intensity” of Cheney, Rove, Gingrich, Limbaugh, Hannity, Coulter, Malkin, Buchanan, Scarborough, O’Reilly and their ilk.
Listen to the more measured, equivocal arguments about prosecuting from this administration, our Congress, our media, which often seem to “lack all conviction.” The words of cable pundits on shows where, as others have put it, producers are so concerned about right and left, they forget about right and wrong.
It wasn’t always this way. Before the split-screen right /left world of cable, people argued in a different way. I even remember as a child watching the McCarthy Senate hearings in black and white. Right and wrong was not meted out in equal parcels. The hearings allowed us to see the hypocrisy and paranoia of his Communist witchhunt, and McCarthyism was defeated.
And I remember the Watergate Hearings, when the country faced another crisis, and a president stepped down in disgrace after the facts were carefully and inexorably presented before us over months.
The best of us must now show “all conviction” to hold hearings to prosecute those who authorized torture. Yes, it will be messy. It will be long, diverting and off-message from the many other problems that need solving. And it will involve the kind of rancor our president does not favor.
But what is happening right now is not about Obama's proclivities, or his presidency. It is about who we are as a nation from here on out. This is a pivotal, crucial time, when “the best of us” must speak out. Otherwise “the rough beast,” that Yeats writes about, “its time come at last” --the dark side, the side that condones torture, is indeed slouching toward Bethlelem.
***
I’ve written five points about torture, and I’ve memorized them. I’m able to back up my statements with reasonable facts, gleaned from interviews and articles. Use them to argue forcefully, with “all conviction” when others show their passionate intensity for the dark side:
Torture is immoral.
Torture does not work.
Torture is illegal.
Torture puts our people at risk.
Torture is not what the United States of America does.
***
The Second Coming
Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon can not hear the falconer.
Things fall apart; the center can not hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
are full of passionate intensity.
Surely some revelation is at hand;
Surely the Second Coming is at hand.
The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out
When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi
Troubles my sight: Somewhere in sands of the desert
A shape with lion body and the head of a man,
A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,
Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it
Reel shadows of the indignant desert birds.
The darkness drops again; but now I know
That twenty centuries of stormy sleep
Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,
And what rough beast, it's time come at last,
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?
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Comments
Fabflamingo, that seems to be the problem. We don't seem to.
Bart, what we will be watching is fascinating and maybe awful. It is watching a President having to do somthing that is right that goes against his grain. We shall see.
Harry, I agree. That split screen format where torture is debated as if you were talking about taxes is a real problem that has come about since cable. It has infected the media.
cartouche, if you're talking about the last eight years I think it will come out in dribs and drabs as people are less afraid and maybe facing the hereafter. I agree. Much evidence was destroyed but still I think we will find out things we can't imagine.
If you face the truth, our government has been ignoring "the law" with impunity most of the past century. Paul Levinson has a neglected post about this: The Deeper Issue in Investigating Bush Admin Torture Policy.
I do think that we have had a particularly awful 8 years and agree with cartouche that we don't know that half of it.
Bart, yes exactly. We are squirming under the potential scrutiny and what will happen in the next weeks will be fascinating one way or the other.
We should have stepped up this time and still can... no, Must. The whole lot of them should go on trial and to jail, not only for torture but for all the other damn crimes agains The State. Otherwise we'll never be free of their greedy, bloody, illegal legacy.
We need another Senator Sam and Archibald Cox.
"The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
are full of passionate intensity."
The ceremony of innocence is drowned is an apt description of what is happening in the collective consciousness of Americans.
I am going to repost something here that I just posted in my comments section to my essay "Tugging the Torture Thread."
I copied this from DJohns' post that someone alerted me to earlier today. (I was going to answer his challenge but by the time I visited he had closed all comments):
"You get a lead that there is a high level member of this organization that is in the United States who is attempting to leave this country. You have him picked up and detained when he gets to the airport. You now have him in custody. Your intelligence, from multiple reliable sources, tells you that the 'chatter' is increasing and the time of the attack is imminent. You don't know where it will happen or when but you are convinced that it will take place and soon."
One of the fallacies in DJ's scenario is that the "chatter" convinces you that there is an imminent attack. Any group that is planning an attack like the one he's positing would have provisions for what to do in case one of their people gets picked up.
Even if the person was being held in custody and incommunicado, the very fact that they are incommunicado for an extended period of time would be a contingency that such a terrorist group would anticipate: anyone of us who disappears for a few hours will be assumed to have been picked up and we cancel our plans and disperse to the winds.
So even if their "chatter" and their intelligence agents are convinced that something was up, the jig is now up and there is no attack imminently coming, making the need to hurry up and torture this person for information moot.
If, assuming his scenario again, they are convinced that something might in the future happen, then they would have someone in their custody who they could question and perhaps get info from.
How then should they proceed? The appropriate way would be to
a) torture this person until he tells you whatever he thinks you want to know so you'll stop torturing him?
or
b) try to win his confidence and apply the time tested methods that have shown themselves to have the best chance of getting reliable info?
And of course, anyone with any sense would understand, it is "B."
I'm glad BBE has commented, and I am sure that he will add a link to this post in his ever growing list of people on OS who are speaking out about this ugly part of the national life.
I really do want the President's program of big changes in the US: national health care, getting the economy back on track, etc. And I am aware that many are saying, including Mr. Obama, that doing something on this runs the risk of taking our eyes off that ball.
But my answer to that is two fold. First, If that is what it takes to get our national integrity back, then so be it. Second, if a Commission of Special Prosecutor is appointed and gets to work it will take months of quiet work to do it right, months in which little about their actual findings will come out, and more than enough time for the nation to focus on the other priorities. That seems to me to throw the "distraction" argument into the trash can.
Every now and then this country needs a good cleaning out. And there is no better time than now. It should be ethically demanded of anyone who calls him or her self American.
Wonderful post, Lea.
Monte
a couple more talking points to illuminate the inherent contradictions of the torture apologists:
1. they argue that these extreme techniques aren't torture any more than fraternity hazing is, but at the same time they argue that these extreme measures are necessary to extract information that can't be gotten any other way. Well, which one is it, because these two contentions are mutually exclusive
2. these interrogation techniques are based on those designed to elicit false confessions in captured POWs, which are obviously not the techniques anyone'd use to get reliable answers
but ultimately, even those discussions are beside the point -- torture is abhorrent, anyone who would engage in it has crossed a line that cuts them off from the rest of humanity, it can not and must not be tolerated for our own sakes as well as the sake of our victims
As to your first point Roy, yes cowardly people don't talk logically on this. They seem to talk loudly, passionately, as Yeats would say. But we can not be complacent just because they don't make as much sense as we do. There are too many people who don't think enough about the fact that it doesn't work. They are fearful and look to torturing as a way to be safe.
Yes, you added points are well-taken. The info gotten is unreliable at best and often misleading.
No, It wasn't you Dick-heads. It was wrong because it was WRONG. And no, Ms. Noonan, this doesn't need to remain mysterious; this needs to be exposed and those who did wrong need to be punshed. We can't undo the past, but our national soul is at risk if we don't punish those who are responsible. And by people, I mean those high placed power brokers who made it their policy to waterboard a man 183 times in a month. Do not let any of those powerful assholes off the hook!
"they forget right from wrong",anarchy,passionate,all powerful words.
I'm afraid that the investigation will not go ahead.
Too many personalities involved.
Will future history books have a chapter called "The Torture Debates of 2009,"
or like the strafing of civilians in Dresden or those hiding under a bridge in Korea, just be totally unmentioned, as WE, the "victors" DO indeed write the history.
(obviously rated)
Peter, it will be really close. That's why we have to put on the pressure over here. What do people think in OZ?
dustbowldiva, fellow poetry reader, so happy you are attuned.
lpsrocks, thank you. Always good to hear from you.
markinjapan, yes we shall soon see. It will be a defining moment in our history, for sure. I am worried.
Just found a link to a Joni Mitchell song version of the poem:
http://www.legalsounds.com/download-mp3/joni-mitchell/travelogue-(disc-1)/slouching-towards-bethlehem/song_889098
administration.
The people I've spoken to,without exception,want those responsible,brought to justice.
Australians would settle for nothing less.
In the course of our busy lives it is easy to tune things out that we would rather not hear/know about. Thank you for not letting me tune this one out. If I had not chosen to read your posts and comments I may have just listened to the news, shook my head, and remarked on how terrible it was - you have challenged and empowered me to do something. Thank you.
mamoore, it's indeed important to stay involved and make a difference in any way we can. Right now we can't let the apologists for torture get away with faulty reasoning and an immoral stand, just because they shout about it.
"Alas!
Our dried voices, when
We whisper together
Are quiet and meaningless
As wind in dry grass
Or rats' feet over broken glass
In our dry cellar"
More needs to be done. Where are the Lillian Hellmans who would say "I cannot and will not cut my conscience to fit this year's fashions" to Tailgunner Joe's inquisition? Or the Daniel Ellsburgs? Or the Woodwards and Bernsteins?
Sorry. Gone on too long. This is still a great piece....
"We are not afraid to entrust the American people with unpleasant facts, foreign ideas, alien philosophies, and competitive values. For a nation that is afraid to let its people judge the truth and falsehood in an open market is a nation that is afraid of its people."
John F. Kennedy
Wayne, this country has become way too soft. We need to face up and move ahead or we're toast as a conceptual idea for the world. This is more important than we realize. Facing our demons, accepting our mistakes, reafffirming our principles.
The Solace of Solstice
I understand that Obama and others are concerned that if we pursue the villainy of the previous administration, "the center cannot hold". But I say, if so, then the center be damned, it is not worth holding onto.
The truth of the matter is, the center seldom if ever moves the political pile. Was it the center that got slavery and the three-fifths rule written into the constitution? No, as with most things in our country, reasonable people compromised with unreasonable people on the right -- and the right never compromises because God and mammon (money) are on their side.
Thus our policies are most of the time right of center except for those extremely rare occasions when the left gets angry and says "Enough!" But that usually only happens after a tragedy like the Kennedy assassination. Do we have to wait for another such tragedy to do what is -- or at least ought to be inarguably the right thing?
Steve, the great ones offer clarity in the midst of all the hypocrisy.
Peter, you new PM is better, I'm told.
phm, we are expressing strong conviction. If you want to write about your feelings, you can also post.
I appreciate your thoughts. I loved the way used the poem. I've just posted early this morning an essay that hits upon some of these same points. What is troubling that with all the talk about torture and accountability for it that the media isn't really talking about the victim's. If people really knew for example the circumstances of the capture, detention, and torture of people like Binyam Mohammed, Dilawar, and many others...people who were just trying to make it in the world like so many of us are now days then perhaps they wouldn't get sucked into believing that investigations and prosecutions would be a distraction from more important matters as the pundits would like us to believe. Its really on us to resist continuing to live in a torture state. Here's my post http://www.opensalon.com/blog/jill_mclaughlin
http://opensalon.com/blog/lisa_solod_warren/2009/04/23/trickle_down_torture_1
rated
Rated
And nice Yeats tie-in.
Lisa, your trickle down abuse post is spot-on. Agree! The more of us who speak out with "all conviction," the louder the drumbeat.
Greg, you are a passionate voice here for holding the Bush team responsible for its actions. Keep at it. We can make a difference on these sites, as hundreds and thousands of people read our points to counter the passionate intensity of the apologists.
Beth, what we have done is not secret to the world. It has been seen for years. We need to come clean on this.
But seriously, you are so right. I can't believe people are even arguing in favor of torture. It doesn't work; the ticking time-bomb scenario is only on TV; any infor gathered is tainted; it's immoral, it cheapens our entire society. And yes, it is not what this country does.
I blogged about my years as an active volunteer for Amnesty International just this week:
http://open.salon.com/blog/faith_paulsen/2009/04/24/my_30-year_learning_curve_on_the_torture_issue