Torture I discuss here

US-sponsored/approved torture is my beat



Elendil is the blogger who began signing up the Torture Awareness Month blogroll. This sad but appreciated effort is one in which I'm happy to participate. I carry the full roll below to the left.

On Sunday, Elendil posted asking the question, ``Who are we missing from the blogroll?'' It's a fair question. Opposition to torture on principle should cut across all political lines. Torture should be opposed, no matter who does it.

Elendil is concerned by criticism that some points of view against torture are not represented in the blogroll. The focus of many in the blogroll is torture under American auspices. The criticism generally runs along the lines that this is ``anti-American'' or that an anti-torture position is seen as a ``convenient way to attack America'', often supported with the accusation that ``human rights abuses elsewhere are being ignored''.

It's rare, but Deep Blade Journal occasionally catches feedback with some similarities, ``I agree that you have every right to your opinion, but I think loading your site with one-sided pathos arguments only makes people less-inclined to believe your remarks.''

My response to the notion that Deep Blade Journal is one-sided, anti-American is simple: Yes, the focus of this blog is on America, my own country. But it is completely wrong to assume that I am ``anti-American''. I love America every bit as much as any of my neighbors or other fellow citizens. There is nothing I want to see less than harm done to my country.

I abhor killing. I abhor torture. Where I choose to start with my opposition is torture and killing being done in my name by the leadership of my own country. Does this not make sense to be the very first place for me to work on stopping the killing and the torture? And I'm finding so much of it--cases of war-mongering and domination against other people around the planet by my own government--that full-time examination of the American world footprint is a plenty-big job.

My own country is my responsibility. Clearly, it is in America where an American citizen has the most influence. It is my responsibility as a citizen to say when the leadership of my county is wrong. And nearly every single policy of Bush's America is wrong. No good case can be made for these wars and systems of torture, even on their own merits. If the aim is to protect the country Bush is totally and completely wrong. The immediate moral and eventual financial bankruptcy of doing it through the Bush approach of war and torture has the main effect of ushering in a debilitating and potentially catastrophic ``long war''.

For many years, I have taken to heart the response of Noam Chomsky to similar needling about why his criticism chiefly is directed at US policy. In response to hostile questioning at a talk in 1991, Chomsky spoke of two perfectly valid ways to oppose atrocities and torture in the world. One is to take the in-principle even-handed institutional approach of Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch. Their mandate with respect to torture is to report it everywhere, without political deference. The other way to oppose torture and support human rights, according to Chomsky,

is to focus on your own responsibilities. So if you're in Russia, say, take like, say, [Andrei] Sakharov. Sakharov never said a word about US atrocities. That's fine. I wouldn't criticize him for a minute for that... What made sense for Sakharov was to discuss Soviet atrocities in Afghanistan, which he did. Now of course the party hacks continually denounced him. They said things like... ``What about Vietnam? What about Chile? Why're you concentrating on Afghanistan?" and so on...

Party hackery is understandable and you have party hacks everywhere. But if you're a particular human being, ...if you have some moral principles at least, you ask yourself, ``Well look, what am I responsible for? What can I affect?''

So I ask myself, what can I affect? The answer for me at this time is torture and killing of the US-sponsored variety.

Meanwhile, I will support others who wish to focus from a humanitarian perspective on other areas of the world, perhaps where there is no American involvement. I even believe American involvement sometimes (rarely, unfortunately) can be a plus. For example massive US-supported humanitarian aid to displaced populations in Darfur, and much greater security assistance than currently is being provided could be of great help in that particular tragedy.

It is a big world. In order for me as an American to help my country be a moral and effective humanitarian force, I insist that we set a better example than we have been setting and get our own house cleaned up after the awful excesses of our recent governments.