Dec. 26, 2008
BOOK REVIEW: 'The Dark Side': Searching for 'Monsters,' Losing Our Soul
By David M. Kinchen
Huntingtonnews.net Book Critic
But she [America] goes not abroad, in search of monsters to destroy. She is the well-wisher to the freedom and independence of all. She is the champion and vindicator only of her own. She will commend the general cause by the countenance of her voice, and the benignant sympathy of her example. She well knows that by once enlisting under other banners than her own, were they even the banners of foreign independence, she would involve herself beyond the power of extrication, in all the wars of interest and intrigue, of individual avarice, envy, and ambition, which assume the colors and usurp the standard of freedom. The fundamental maxims of her policy would insensibly change from liberty to force.... She might become the dictatress of the world. She would be no longer the ruler of her own spirit.... --John Quincy Adams, July 4, 1821
* * *
He who does battle with monsters needs to watch out lest he in the process becomes a monster himself. And if you stare too long into the abyss, the abyss will stare right back at you. -- Friedrich Nietzsche, "Beyond Good and Evil"
The Los Angeles Times ponders the Bush Administration's possible criminal liability for torture and other abuses committed in the name of the war on terror in a Christmas Eve editorial headlined:
"Is the Bush administration criminally liable for its lawlessness?" (Link: http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/la-ed-rumsfeld24-2008dec24,0,3624077.story)
The editorial leads off: "Whatever its other legacies, the Bush administration will be remembered for its contemptible disregard for the law in the post-9/11 war on terrorism. From the wiretapping of Americans without a court order to the waterboarding of suspected terrorists to the refusal to abide by the requirements of the Geneva Convention, many of the administration's policies can fairly be described as lawless.
"But were they also criminal? Should officials, including Vice President Dick Cheney and former Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld, be put on trial, either in a court of law or in a forum like South Africa's Truth and Reconciliation Commission? As the Bush administration nears its end, calls for such a reckoning are coming from civil libertarians and some supporters of President-elect Barack Obama. Some even argue that President Bush should be indicted."
The editorial calls for caution in such an approach:
"This editorial page has been uncompromising in its criticism of the Bush administration's flouting of international and domestic law. The administration was wrong to evade courts in seeking warrantless surveillance of Americans, wrong to establish the Guantanamo Bay detention center, heinous in its acceptance of torture. But we are wary of either the criminal prosecution of administration officials or some South-Africa-style process."
The whole sordid mess is examined brilliantly by Jane Mayer in "The Dark Side: The Inside Story of How The War on Terror Turned into a War on American Ideals" (Doubleday, 400 pages, $27.50). When I finished the book, I was reminded of a 1970 novel by Ross Thomas, "The Fools in Town Are On Our Side."
Not so much the plot of Thomas' novel, but the title: Fools and knaves and the guy controlling them is -- no surprise -- Vice President Dick Cheney, aided and abetted by his chief of staff David Addington. Addington, an ideological driven lawyer who had contempt for his colleagues's opinions -- and those of the Supreme Court -- and Cheney served as gatekeepers to President George W. Bush, Mayer writes.
Bush comes across in Mayer's book as an even emptier suit than his harshest critics have portrayed him. Cheney had served as Secretary of Defense in the administration of George H.W. Bush and he and Addington believed that whoever in the Bush Administration differed with them was a wimpy traitor.
Many of the characters in Mayer's book -- the good guys -- are conservative Republican lawyers like Jack Goldsmith and Dan Levin, two men who argued early on that torture of captured prisoners in Abu Ghraib, Guantanamo and "rendition" prisons in many countries didn't produce useful information, enraged the Arab and Muslim world and turned public opinion among our allies against the U.S.
Justice Department lawyer John Yoo sided with Cheney and Addington in their view in rejecting any constraints on the U.S. on the treatment of prisoners and limitations on Presidential power in the "war on terror." Mayer, a Washington correspondent for The New Yorker, put together "The Dark Side" from her coverage in the magazine, updated and augmented in a book that, in my opinion, seems to be as fair and balanced a look at the subject as I've seen.
As the years went on, even staunch Bush loyalists like Karen Hughes viewed waterboarding, stress positions, sleep deprivation, sexual humiliations and other forms of "enhanced interrogation" techniques with disgust. Hughes, who was running the State Department's Office of Public Liaison, had seen first hand the damage the renditions and torture and holding people for years without charging them in Guantanamo had done to our foreign relations. The State Department and its lawyers were sidelined by the all-powerful Cheney, Mayer asserts.
Mayer: "After reading one of several euphemisms that Bush's [Sept. 6, 2006] speech used to avoid calling the CIA interrogation techniques torture, she told a confidant, 'Yuck! Special procedures? It sounds scary!'"
Mayer's book is required reading for any one who is disgusted with the post-9/11 violations of the Geneva Conventions, international law and just plain decency that most people still believe is what makes the U.S. special.
By citing the views of conservatives like John McCain and lawyers like Goldsmith, Levin and many more, Mayer produces a much stronger book than if she had only cited "progressive" critics of the Bush Administration.
Read the L.A. Times editorial and -- by all means -- read "The Dark Side." Nietzsche wasn't kidding when he made that statement in 1886.
Publisher's web site: www.doubleday.com
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BOOK REVIEW: 'The Dark Side': Searching for 'Monsters,' Losing Our Soul
By David M. Kinchen
Huntingtonnews.net Book Critic
But she [America] goes not abroad, in search of monsters to destroy. She is the well-wisher to the freedom and independence of all. She is the champion and vindicator only of her own. She will commend the general cause by the countenance of her voice, and the benignant sympathy of her example. She well knows that by once enlisting under other banners than her own, were they even the banners of foreign independence, she would involve herself beyond the power of extrication, in all the wars of interest and intrigue, of individual avarice, envy, and ambition, which assume the colors and usurp the standard of freedom. The fundamental maxims of her policy would insensibly change from liberty to force.... She might become the dictatress of the world. She would be no longer the ruler of her own spirit.... --John Quincy Adams, July 4, 1821
* * *
He who does battle with monsters needs to watch out lest he in the process becomes a monster himself. And if you stare too long into the abyss, the abyss will stare right back at you. -- Friedrich Nietzsche, "Beyond Good and Evil"
The Los Angeles Times ponders the Bush Administration's possible criminal liability for torture and other abuses committed in the name of the war on terror in a Christmas Eve editorial headlined:
"Is the Bush administration criminally liable for its lawlessness?" (Link: http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/la-ed-rumsfeld24-2008dec24,0,3624077.story)
The editorial leads off: "Whatever its other legacies, the Bush administration will be remembered for its contemptible disregard for the law in the post-9/11 war on terrorism. From the wiretapping of Americans without a court order to the waterboarding of suspected terrorists to the refusal to abide by the requirements of the Geneva Convention, many of the administration's policies can fairly be described as lawless.
"But were they also criminal? Should officials, including Vice President Dick Cheney and former Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld, be put on trial, either in a court of law or in a forum like South Africa's Truth and Reconciliation Commission? As the Bush administration nears its end, calls for such a reckoning are coming from civil libertarians and some supporters of President-elect Barack Obama. Some even argue that President Bush should be indicted."
The editorial calls for caution in such an approach:
"This editorial page has been uncompromising in its criticism of the Bush administration's flouting of international and domestic law. The administration was wrong to evade courts in seeking warrantless surveillance of Americans, wrong to establish the Guantanamo Bay detention center, heinous in its acceptance of torture. But we are wary of either the criminal prosecution of administration officials or some South-Africa-style process."
The whole sordid mess is examined brilliantly by Jane Mayer in "The Dark Side: The Inside Story of How The War on Terror Turned into a War on American Ideals" (Doubleday, 400 pages, $27.50). When I finished the book, I was reminded of a 1970 novel by Ross Thomas, "The Fools in Town Are On Our Side."
Not so much the plot of Thomas' novel, but the title: Fools and knaves and the guy controlling them is -- no surprise -- Vice President Dick Cheney, aided and abetted by his chief of staff David Addington. Addington, an ideological driven lawyer who had contempt for his colleagues's opinions -- and those of the Supreme Court -- and Cheney served as gatekeepers to President George W. Bush, Mayer writes.
Bush comes across in Mayer's book as an even emptier suit than his harshest critics have portrayed him. Cheney had served as Secretary of Defense in the administration of George H.W. Bush and he and Addington believed that whoever in the Bush Administration differed with them was a wimpy traitor.
Many of the characters in Mayer's book -- the good guys -- are conservative Republican lawyers like Jack Goldsmith and Dan Levin, two men who argued early on that torture of captured prisoners in Abu Ghraib, Guantanamo and "rendition" prisons in many countries didn't produce useful information, enraged the Arab and Muslim world and turned public opinion among our allies against the U.S.
Justice Department lawyer John Yoo sided with Cheney and Addington in their view in rejecting any constraints on the U.S. on the treatment of prisoners and limitations on Presidential power in the "war on terror." Mayer, a Washington correspondent for The New Yorker, put together "The Dark Side" from her coverage in the magazine, updated and augmented in a book that, in my opinion, seems to be as fair and balanced a look at the subject as I've seen.
As the years went on, even staunch Bush loyalists like Karen Hughes viewed waterboarding, stress positions, sleep deprivation, sexual humiliations and other forms of "enhanced interrogation" techniques with disgust. Hughes, who was running the State Department's Office of Public Liaison, had seen first hand the damage the renditions and torture and holding people for years without charging them in Guantanamo had done to our foreign relations. The State Department and its lawyers were sidelined by the all-powerful Cheney, Mayer asserts.
Mayer: "After reading one of several euphemisms that Bush's [Sept. 6, 2006] speech used to avoid calling the CIA interrogation techniques torture, she told a confidant, 'Yuck! Special procedures? It sounds scary!'"
Mayer's book is required reading for any one who is disgusted with the post-9/11 violations of the Geneva Conventions, international law and just plain decency that most people still believe is what makes the U.S. special.
By citing the views of conservatives like John McCain and lawyers like Goldsmith, Levin and many more, Mayer produces a much stronger book than if she had only cited "progressive" critics of the Bush Administration.
Read the L.A. Times editorial and -- by all means -- read "The Dark Side." Nietzsche wasn't kidding when he made that statement in 1886.
Publisher's web site: www.doubleday.com
Share This Story:
Make HNN Your Homepage (IE Users Only)
