"Why are there people like Frank? Why is there so much trouble in this world?"
-- Blue Velvet
It has been a strange time to come back to America for peace and quiet. It used to be that if you'd flip on the television, you knew what kind of mad lies you were in for.
But ever since those four Blackwater mercenaries took a wrong turn at Albuquerque and wound up on a spit in some Fallujah shawrma stand, America's compound psychological fractures and bizarre fantasies have exploded.
There are so many layers of lies and self-delusions going on here right now that it's difficult to keep track of it all. The most sickening of these is the collective flagellation and finger-pointing going on over the torture in the Abu Ghraib prison in Baghdad. President Bush and his circle have decided to try to diffuse this crisis by the Bernie Birnbaum method: "Let's just squirt a few, and they'll let us go."
Middle Americans, especially the more church-inclined, cream over a good blubbering. Just remember Jimmy Swaggert's confessions, or the Jim Bakker bawl-fests. I think, in some sick Texas-Christian way, Bush actually enjoys this. I think he enjoys sinnin' 'n squirtin' every once in a while--and so does his constituency.
But the Rumsfeld testimony was the most multi-layered event of collective madness I saw. Watching Rumsfeld force himself to not just say but even show, with a pained expression, how profoundly shocked and upset he was, actually made me laugh out loud and applaud his feeble attempt at acting. I assume he had a big laugh afterwards as well, and it must have been incredibly painful for him to hold that laughter in, like sucking in a three-day-burrito-binge shit.
What's frustrating is that Rumsfeld, as vile as he is, was merely carrying out the wishes of the American people. Are there really Americans out there who are surprised and horrified to learn that we torture Iraqi prisoners? Well, duh!
In the first place, torture is standard practice in American prisons.
But more importantly, Americans actually WANTED torture. They DEMANDED it!
In a poll taken by the Christian Science Monitor in mid-November, 2001, one-third of Americans admitted that they were in favor of torturing suspects. In a Fox News poll on the eve of the invasion of Iraq last year, 42 percent supported torture! And you have to remember, these poll numbers grossly understated the actual support, given an American's squeamishness to admit his or her torture fantasies over the phone to a stranger. It's like how far-right candidates always poll far lower than the votes they actually take in European elections.
And then there are the two-faced torture pundits who now are just as "shocked" and "horrified" as Bush and Rumsfeld. In the November 5, 2001 issue of Newsweek, allegedly "liberal" columnist Jonathan Alter wrote a column called "Time To Think About Torture." Yep, you read that headline right. The lead started insanely enough:
"In this autumn of anger, even a liberal can find his thoughts turning to ... torture. OK, not cattle prods or rubber hoses, at least not here in the United States, but something to jump-start the stalled investigation of the greatest crime in American history. Right now, four key hijacking suspects aren't talking at all."
The four suspects that Alter wanted to have tortured--Zacarias Moussaoui, Mohammed Jaweed Azmath, Ayub Ali Khan and Nabil Almarabh--were all later found to have nothing to do with the 9-11 terrorist attacks (well, they still haven't given up on Moussaoui, but the government has changed its tune so many times on his alleged role that whatever they eventually juice him for is irrelevant at this point). But that didn't stop Alter and a mob of other American commentators from calling for torture. I want to repeat that: Jonathan Alter and others, backed by at least a third, but I would bet two-thirds of the country, actually demanded that the FBI torture four innocent suspects. What would Alter think if they'd been tortured to death...and later found out to be innocent? He wouldn't have given a flying fuck. At least not until America lost the Battle of Fallujah--ever since then Americans have become grotesquely compassionate and squeamish about everything. It's pathetic and embarrassing, to say the least. One unsettling photograph and there's a rush on the entire American stock of Kleenex.
I remember on the morning of the 9-11 attacks, even on liberal-elitist NPR radio, the very FIRST reaction of Americans was to call for a suspension of our civil rights and for torture of suspects. It was strange--every value we'd lectured everyone else in the world to uphold, no matter what their circumstances, went poof! the first time we got attacked. The torture-cheering went mainstream in the months afterwards. Check out these examples from the months following 9/11:
Moreover, no one complained about how America suspended the Geneva Conventions and constitutional rights for foreign and American suspects previously - such as the Guantanamo suspects, or Jose Padilla. The nation cheered on a war against a country that had never attacked us, and gave a collective shrug when its one excuse--WMDs--turned out to be a lie. Americans only started getting upset about the non-existent WMDs when the war went bad--not because the WMDs weren't found.
The bottom line is this: the American people, whose supposed humanitarian hearts were horrified by the torture photos, actually DEMANDED that their leaders torture their prisoners. It makes you almost feel some empathy for Rumsfeld, who must have been going, "Wait a minute. I'm the bad guy? You've got to be kidding me. We were in this together, man. You people need Thorazine and Lithium, not ballots!"
This is a democracy, and Rumsfeld forgot that not only does he serve a barbaric, torture-happy population, but also that this same population is incredibly craven, sentimental and self-deluded. They wanted Rummie to torture the Iraqis and at the same time have the Iraqis be grateful...and mean it.
What has happened since the defeat at Fallujah is the shattering of illusions. The Iraqis don't want to write us "thank you" greeting cards. That hurts. What's worse is that we're losing the war Ð in fact we've pretty much lost, which is a bummer that Americans cannot process. (The Marines' defeat and retreat in Fallujah is called here a "repositioning" or some bullshit like that.) And now it turns out that not only are we Americans not loved, but that we're actually the bad guys. We're stupid and evil, and the pictures prove it.
This explains the nation's bizarre and shameful displays of self-flagellation and hand-wringing. It has nothing to do with making Arabs happy. We could give a shit about them. It has to do with self-help therapy for Americans.
To see how crazy and deluded we are, just look at the Jonathan Alter's post-Fallujah transformation. The former torture-booster is now a tortured humanist. In his column in the May 17th issue of Newsweek, an article titled "The Picture the World Sees" he squirts:
"But imagine if these images had been of, say, Al Qaeda terrorists in captivity in Afghanistan in late 2001. There would have been no uproar at all. In fact, at that time, too many people (including me) were complacent about the use of psychological interrogation techniques that end up loosening the bonds of civilized behavior and making Americans look like hypocrites."
Complacent?! Is he joking?! Alter is on record advocating the torture of four men who turned out to be innocent, and now, in spite of readily-available archives, he describes his own aggressive pro-torture stance as being "complacent about the use of psychological interrogation techniques that end up loosening the bonds of civilized behavior." Either Alter's lawyer wrote that, or else he's preparing his defense now, imagining having to answer to a grand jury for his role in aiding and abetting torture. It's rare to see a mainstream journalist trying to cover his tracks with such bizarre language. He's trying to say, "Gosh, when there were people talking about torture, I wasn't paying enough attention, and I feel so bad now. I was complacent, all wrapped up in my work and family and all that." Which pretty much sums up how all those pro-torture Americans felt.
You can see why, given such an abject population as America's, Rumsfeld and Bush and the others have wasted so much time blubbering about the wonderful American humanitarian spirit and how torture is contrary to our values. The reason they're dishing out that bullshit is because Americans have had a change of heart about torture. Now, they demand that they be lied to about their previous pro-torture attitude, and they demand that their delusions about themselves be reinforced. It's a nation of Stuart Smileys looking in the mirror, with blood dripping from their Crest White Stripe-brightened mouths, saying, "We're a good people, with good values. And we love ourselves. And that's...okay."