Professor Chomsky, writing for TomDispatch, takes apart the common notion among mainstream liberals that GW Bush took America “off course,” noting a history of torture and barbarous expansion that dating back to 1630. Throughout, he touches on the widely-held understanding that America sees itself as unique in the world:

The reigning doctrine of the country is sometimes called “American exceptionalism.” It is nothing of the sort. It is probably close to a universal habit among imperial powers. France was hailing its “civilizing mission” in its colonies, while the French Minister of War called for “exterminating the indigenous population” of Algeria. Britain’s nobility was a “novelty in the world,” John Stuart Mill declared, while urging that this angelic power delay no longer in completing its liberation of India.

Similarly, there is no reason to doubt the sincerity of Japanese militarists in the 1930s, who were bringing an “earthly paradise” to China under benign Japanese tutelage, as they carried out the rape of Nanking and their “burn all, loot all, kill all” campaigns in rural North China. History is replete with similar glorious episodes.

As long as such “exceptionalist” theses remain firmly implanted, however, the occasional revelations of the “abuse of history” often backfire, serving only to efface terrible crimes. The My Lai massacre was a mere footnote to the vastly greater atrocities of the post-Tet pacification programs, ignored while indignation in this country was largely focused on this single crime.

Watergate was doubtless criminal, but the furor over it displaced incomparably worse crimes at home and abroad, including the FBI-organized assassination of black organizer Fred Hampton as part of the infamous COINTELPRO repression, or the bombing of Cambodia, to mention just two egregious examples. Torture is hideous enough; the invasion of Iraq was a far worse crime. Quite commonly, selective atrocities have this function.

Historical amnesia is a dangerous phenomenon, not only because it undermines moral and intellectual integrity, but also because it lays the groundwork for crimes that still lie ahead.

Every time the American War Machine™ revs up, we are deluged by arguments appearing in the press about whether or not the pending military action qualifies as a “Just War.” Invariably, the answer is, Yes!

The next time someone tries to convince you that a war is “just” by some philosophical, religious, or moral principle, you can trot out this quote, from a discussion of traffic in human slaves:

Papal blessing was given to this traffic in a bull^* of 1442, which proclaimed that enslaving Africans fell within the limits of a ‘just war’.

That’s from Slavery and the British Empire, a scholarly work by Kenneth Morgan, published by Oxford University Press.

So, the New York Times isn’t willing to commit to using the word “torture.” The Times’s Public Editor, Clark Hoyt, wrote a column on April 25 to explain the paper’s editorial policy:

A linguistic shift took place in this newspaper as it reported the details of how the Central Intelligence Agency was allowed to strip Al Qaeda prisoners naked, bash them against walls, keep them awake for up to 11 straight days, sometimes with their arms chained to the ceiling, confine them in dark boxes and make them feel as if they were drowning.

Until this month, what the Bush administration called “enhanced” interrogation techniques were “harsh” techniques in the news pages of The Times. Increasingly, they are “brutal.”

So… the Times took a brave step forward, and moved from referring to these techniques as merely “harsh” to calling them “brutal!” Washington bureau editor Douglas Jehl explained:

I have resisted using torture without qualification or to describe all the techniques. Exactly what constitutes torture continues to be a matter of debate and hasn’t been resolved by a court. This president and this attorney general say waterboarding is torture, but the previous president and attorney general said it is not. On what basis should a newspaper render its own verdict, short of charges being filed or a legal judgment rendered?

Apparently, though, that editorial reluctance to use the word “torture” isn’t uniform. Today, the Times published an obituary for a U. S. pilot who was held captive by the Chinese military during the Korean War. Here’s the headline:

Harold E. Fischer Jr., an American Flier Tortured in a Chinese Prison, Dies at 83

But before we rush to judgment and condemn the New York Times for shameless promoting U. S. government propaganda, we should examine the behavior that merits the description “torture” in the Times’s news pages:

From April 1953 through May 1955, Colonel Fischer — then an Air Force captain — was held at a prison outside Mukden, Manchuria. For most of that time, he was kept in a dark, damp cell with no bed and no opening except a slot in the door through which a bowl of food could be pushed. Much of the time he was handcuffed. Hour after hour, a high-frequency whistle pierced the air.

So, let’s review: when “we” do it, it’s “harsh;” when “they” do it, it’s torture.

Can it be any clearer?

Finally, a note to all the 24 fantasists out there who insist that sometimes we have to torture, because, dammit, it works:

After a short mock trial in Beijing on May 24, 1955, Captain Fischer and the other pilots — Lt. Col. Edwin L. Heller, First Lt. Lyle W. Cameron and First Lt. Roland W. Parks — were found guilty of violating Chinese territory by flying across the border while on missions over North Korea. Under duress, Captain Fischer had falsely confessed to participating in germ warfare.

[…]

[Fischer’s interrogator, Chong] “wanted me to admit that I had been ordered to cross the Manchurian border,” Captain Fischer told Life magazine. “I was grilled day and night, over and over, week in and week out, and in the end, to get Chong and his gang off my back, I confessed to both charges. The charges, of course, were ridiculous. I never participated in germ warfare and neither did anyone else. I was never ordered to cross the Yalu. We had strict Air Force orders not to cross the border.”

“I will regret what I did in that cell the rest of my life,” the captain continued. “But let me say this: it was not really me — not Harold E. Fischer Jr. — who signed that paper. It was a mentality reduced to putty.”

That’s what torture produces: a “mentality reduced to putty” that will confess to absolutely anything, just to make the pain stop.

(h/t: Andrew Sullivan)

This report from Al Jazeera news channel shows documentary evidence of U. S. soldiers at Bagram Air Base reviewing their plans to distribute copies of the New Testament of the Christian Bible in Pashto and Dari, the two main languages spoken in Afghanistan:

Lt. Col. Gary Hensley, the chief of the US military chaplains in Afghanistan, preaches to soldiers during services at the chapel at Bagram that their job as Christian is to “hunt people for Jesus.” A U. S. military spokesperson told the Huffington Post that the Bibles were confiscated so that they could not be distributed to the population.

(h/t: Think Progress)

I don’t normally do verbatim reposts, but you have to read this from blogger IOZ in Pittsburgh:

Listen. As a nation, we arrogate to ourselves the right to send flying robots over any country in the world and murder people, to topple governments, to impose economic blockades on entire nations of millions of people, and the great moral flap is slapping around some prisoners? Now I am not saying that torture is anything but abhorrent, wholly morally repulsive, but fuck you, America. The so-called debate over torture has preempted the already under-argued, under-reported actuality: that as we bicker about “enhanced interrogation techniques” and whether or not Barack Obama is a good guy for releasing them or a bad guy for not sending a bunch of spook hacks to jail, we are all over the world, killing the fuck out of people and blowing that shit up. The idea that our interrogations are a unique moral stain is cracked and insane. Waterboarding is not the disease, merely one observable symptom of a deeper and more pernicious pathology.

More excellent news from the Pentagon: their new robot helicopter sniper is working and almost ready for field deployment!

ARSS is literally point-and-shoot for the operator on the ground, using a videogame-type controller. The software makes all the necessary corrections, and the system should ensure first-round kills at several hundred yards. The secret is in the control system and stabilized turret (on the right in the picture above), which is currently fitted with a powerful RND Manufacturing Edge 2000 rifle specifically designed for sniping work, using the heavyweight .338 Lapua Magnum cartridge.

I find it indescribably awesome that our government is building and deploying robot snipers so that teenagers playing video games can kill poor people in cities anywhere in the world!

HOORAY AMERICA!!!!

According to Andrew Clark in the Guardian,

The rump of the bankrupt bank Lehman Brothers is sitting on a stockpile of 450,000 lb of uranium “yellowcake” which could be used to power a nuclear reactor or, theoretically, to make a bomb.

Those are some seriously toxic assets!

Remember when yellowcake was such a big deal that the U.S. government used it as justification to invade and destroy Iraq? Here are those famous sixteen words again, in case you’ve forgotten Bush’s fabulous 2003 State of the Union speech:

The British government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa.

So, maybe the U.S. will be invading Lehman Brothers next…?

“TROOPS is filmed on location with the men of the Imperial Forces!” An old VHS hand-to-hand classic is, of course, now coursing through the Tubes:

That still is taken from the Mirror, Mirror episode of Star Trek, when a transporter accident causes Kirk, McCoy, Scotty, and Uhura to trade places with their evil twins on the Imperial Star Ship Enterprise. The episode contains this classic exchange between (evil) Spock and (“good”) Kirk:

(Spock): Terror must be maintained, or the empire is doomed. It is the logic of history.

(Kirk): Conquest is easy. Control is not. We may have bitten off more than we can chew!

I watched this episode at the CBS Television website last night after reading this article on Common Dreams by William Astore, in which he highlights the defining traits of life on the “evil” Enterprise:

Let’s recap: Alien cultures shocked, awed, and bludgeoned into submission in order to gain control over scarce energy resources; torture used liberally to extract information; precision weapons capable of decapitating the enemy and controlled from a distance via the push of a button.

George W. Bush, September 20, 2001:

Our war on terror will not end until every terrorist group of global reach has been found, stopped and defeated.

E-mail from the Department of Defense’s Office of Security Review to Pentagon Staff, March 2009:

This administration prefers to avoid using the term ‘Long War’ or ‘Global War on Terror’ [GWOT.] Please use ‘Overseas Contingency Operation.’

The Washington Post gives the story:

The memo said the direction came from the Office of Management and Budget, the executive-branch agency that reviews the public testimony of administration officials before it is delivered.

Not so, said Kenneth Baer, an OMB spokesman.

“There was no memo, no guidance,” Baer said yesterday…

Coincidentally or not, senior administration officials had been publicly using the phrase “overseas contingency operations” in a war context for roughly a month before the e-mail was sent.

I know it’s cliche, but I can’t resist including the words of that rascal Eric Blair, which he penned some 60 years ago:

Oceania was at war with Eastasia: Oceania had always been at war with Eastasia. A large part of the political literature of five years was now completely obsolete. Reports and records of all kinds, newspapers, books, pamphlets, films, sound-tracks, photographs—all had to be rectified at lightning speed. Although no directive was ever issued, it was known that the chiefs of the Department intended that within one week no reference to the war with Eurasia, or the alliance with Eastasia, should remain in existence anywhere.