It is hard to know which is worse: the nightmarish realities
of the just-released Senate report on some ten years of officially-sanctioned
American torture policies, or the wishy-washy response of the Obama
Administration to that horrendous report. Where is your outrage, Barack? Instead of your well-deserved outrage that
top officials of this nation could conceive, implement, and then desperately
try to hide our well-orchestrated torture of detainees -- many of whom were
innocent of any crime -- your insipid response has been to praise those same
torturers and torturer supervisors for their patriotism in attempting to keep
America safe. Shame on you, Barack!
It seems that you are not very familiar with the Nuremburg trials of top Nazi war criminals after World War II, when it was determined, once and for all, that being a "loyal soldier" was not the slightest excuse for committing atrocities, particularly atrocities against civilians and innocents. And in any nation under law, as our basic documents claim America to be, we are all innocent until proven guilty -- even possible terrorists. Nearly all of those tortured by the CIA and its private contractors were not proven guilty of anything, which is why they are called "detainees." And even those few who probably played a major role in the unspeakable September 11 2001 terror tragedy should not have been subjected to barbaric torture tactics, disguised with such sanitizing terms as "enhanced interrogation" and the like. The CIA would not have tried to hide the brutal truth from Congress and the American people had they not recognized they were using torture -- ranging from sensory deprivation to sexual abuse to waterboarding to bizarre tactics such as "rectal infusion", plus threats to rape detainees wives and children, and kill their families.
There is a legal term for similar cases where officials, and even individuals, look the other way at atrocities: that is called "depraved indifference." On a smaller, but still very important scale, it was depraved indifference when grand juries in Ferguson, Missouri and Staten Island, New York found no wrongdoing on the part of police officers who shot or strangled totally-innocent people who happened to be Black. It is depraved indifference when a police radio operator does not bother to tell Cleveland police that a twelve-year-old Black boy was reported as a kid probably brandishing a toy gun, resulting in the killing of that boy by a police officer who claimed he was 20 years old. If the Cleveland police escape responsibility for that fatal error, it will be shameful.
Still, there is hope for America, as the youth of this nation -- of all races, all nationalities, all backgrounds, and all political views -- have led protests in cities all over the country, aiming to reign in the improper and excessive use of force by police departments against our own citizens. And there is hope that the American Congress will use its remaining bipartisan abilities to put an end to torture tactics exercised by the CIA and any other agencies, and to hold those responsible for past abuses accountable as war criminals, since they were acting under the War on Terror. Perhaps there is even hope for the Obama Administration to cease its wishy-washy stance on the abuses perpetrated by the CIA and the contractors it hired, who functioned as torturers violating all standards of decency and common humanity by tactics which produce no useful data. Our "depraved indifference" must cease, once and for all, and torture must never, ever be repeated.
