On March 16th, I wrote Gina Haspels’s confirmation must be opposed. I’m encouraged to see today that 109 retired admirals and generals agree with me and that they’ve made a pretty much identical argument to the one I presented last month. In a letter they delivered to the U.S. Senate, the former high-ranking military officers echoed my concerns on moral, practical, and national security grounds about elevating Haspel to the directorate of Central Intelligence.
We understand that some well-respected former senior government intelligence officials have spoken highly of Ms. Haspel’s experience and long record of service to the Agency. However, we do not accept efforts to excuse her actions relating to torture and other unlawful abuse of detainees by offering that she was “just following orders,” or that shock from the 9/11 terrorist attacks should excuse illegal and unethical conduct. We did not accept the “just following orders” justification after World War II, and we should not accept it now. Waterboarding and other forms of torture or cruel and inhuman treatment are—and always have been—clearly unlawful. Individuals in the service of our country, even at the lowest levels, have a duty to refuse to carry out such actions. […]
We devoted our lives to the defense of our country. We know that fidelity to our most cherished ideals as a nation is the foundation of our security. The torture and cruel treatment of prisoners undermines our national security by increasing the risks to our troops, hindering cooperation with allies, alienating populations whose support the United States needs in the struggle against terrorism, and providing a propaganda tool for extremists who wish to do us harm. It would send a terrible signal to confirm as the next Director of the CIA someone who was so intimately involved in this dark chapter of our nation’s history.
What they didn’t mention is the likelihood that President Trump nominated Haspel precisely because of her involvement with torturing human beings that were in our custody and at our mercy. The CIA, which is violating protocol by lobbying for Haspel, surely isn’t taking this possibility into adequate account. As an institution, the CIA continues to feel that the people who were part of the torture program either did nothing wrong or that they should be given a pass and not have their careers negatively impacted. I think they’re wrong on both counts, but particularly on the latter point. We can argue about who should be held accountable and to what degree, but we definitely should not promote someone closely associated with torture and covering up torture to the top intelligence job in the country.
If nothing else, this sends a message to the world that we should not be taken seriously on issues of basic human rights. And that’s not a message we can afford to give.
Seems to me we have been giving that message since Nov. of 2017
Both this post and your last one highlight well the serious dangers that are posed to the well being of our nation and the world by this administration and those they are appointing, particularly in the world of foreign affairs and intelligence.
And the common thread which runs through both of these is that none of this would be possible without the overt and conscious permission and encouragement of the Republican Congress and the Republican Party. Nothing is going to change until the GOP is completely destroyed. No number of sternly worded letters from the intelligence community, no amount of gentle prodding and efforts by internal staff to guide the man-child President by the hand to keep him from blowing up the fucking world, no spoon feeding him information in an attempt to coach him to maybe consider just departing from the starting line of presidenting, nothing is going to change until the power is gone.
None of these people, either in Congress or in the administration, give two fucks about any of these concerns, because they are the concerns of the “insiders”. And the insiders are the ones these people rode into town to neuter and to destroy.
The world is just going to have to hold its collective breath until power can be wrested from these nihilistic conservative motherfuckers. If we don’t achieve that, then they will just have to find a way to work around their insanity, because they are not going to do the proper things of their own volition.
First, a third of the America electorate (including former and current Supreme Court Justices) think the TV show “24” was a documentary…
..and, like the boarder wall, it doesn’t matter if torturing “the enemy” actually works. For both, their presence are necessary simply as a physical and codified symbol of white supremacy.
Booman writes:
A question:
Precisely who comprises that ‘we,” Booman? The “we” that cannot afford to send such a message? It can’t be the Permanent Government of the U.S. as it has stood for well over 50 years, because during that time it has proven time and time again…despite whatever protestations of innocence its hired political puppets and media workers of both paties may have made…that it will kill, torture and main pretty much anybody who actively opposes its power, including civilians. Not only that, but those depredations have been been “the message.”
The real message is as follows:
The rest?
Just cover.
“[Be] taken seriously on issues of basic human rights?”
A nation that summarily jails the largest percentage of its population than any other country in the world?
A nation that has been permanently at war…overt and covert…all over the world since the end of WWII?
A nation that now spies on its citizens so effectively that it makes the past KGBs and Gestapos of this world look like schoolyard enforcers?
C’mon…
Please!!!
A message to the world that we should not be taken seriously on issues of basic human rights is precisely the message that our controllers want to send.
And they are doing so.
Again and again and again.
Know thine enemy.
Please.
AG
Look forward, not backward.
Or as I call it “the Obama Doctrine”.
Well said, Booman.