Abuse and Confession
Lee on Jan 10 2009 | Filed under: Notes on the war
While I’m certainly not in disagreement that maintaining a ban on torture techniques in military interrogations should be an objective of the incoming Obama administration, Joe Klein’s pitch for it in his latest column takes us somewhere far beyond the overwrought. In it, Klein openly fantasizes about watching Donald Rumsfeld stripped naked and abused, as punishment for his part in incurring the permanent national stain of Abu Ghraib. How permanent is the stain according to Klein? He wants to erect a memorial monument to the victims of sleep deprivation on the National Mall. Yeah.
But this isn’t merely theatrical, it’s a confessional revenge fantasy. By his own admission, the mere mention in a newspaper of a prisoner standing in a stress position has Klein ready to torture former government officials as an act of retribution. It should be within his capacity to imagine that in a combat theater, inspiration for reciprocal abuses is even easier to obtain.
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