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THE INSIDE HISTORY OF THE ISRAEL
LOBBY
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"Accentuate the positive,
Eliminate the negative,
Latch on to the affirmative,
And don't mess with Mister In-between."
Harold Arlen lyrics,
Johnny Mercer song, crooned by Bing Crosby
"The Negation is the Spectre,
the Reasoning Power in Man"
William Blake
"The US does not torture," President
Bush has repeated often-in the face of terrible pictures from
Abu Ghraib and vicious stories from around the world. What is
the President saying? Is it a lie or wishful denial, or positive
thinking, or casuist ry, or political pandering?
Richard Pryor had a comedy
routine where he advised husbands caught in flagranto
to counter with "are you going to believe me or your lying
eyes?" Sometimes we deny by closing our eyes. But sometimes
we deny by rationalizing; by attacking the facts with negation
and reasoning. President Bush can say the US doesn't torture
because he redefines US and torture. To wit: The US is good and
wouldn't do anything bad. A few bad apple rogue torturers working
the night shift at Abu Ghraib aren't the US. And, aided by lawyers,
he torques senseless the meaning of torture, restricting it
by abstraction and redefinition, and by the Secretary of Defense
special-reduction to the absurd. Rumsfeld ruminates that he stands
hours a day at his desk so what's torture about forced standing
in prison? The dead body on ice, the man roasted above fire,
the excrement-smeared, hooded, naked, terrified, sexually brutalized,
and wounded figures available everywhere but the American media
are not addressed. They're flushed into collateral damage-like
the children burned, maimed, and brutalized by bombs, mistakes,
and deliberate revenge in Iraq and Afghanistan.
The assertive kind of denial
merits attention because it subverts our survival and coping
mechanisms of accentuating the positive into callousness.
William Blake, poet and painter,
man of words and images, was on to it. He saw it as the dark
side of reason. He called that negating move man's Spectre, and
he attributed it to our reasoning ability to abstract, to negate
the body, and subordinate it to an abstraction. It's a kind of
mental mania, like war which sacrifices humans for the sake of
protecting them. As Blake's "London" has it: "And
the hapless Soldier's sigh/ Runs in blood down Palace walls."
I think Blake would see President
Bush in his Spectre's power when he denies US torture. With chirpy
comfort he uses abstract reasoning to destroy and undermine dour
facts. If you assert that the US doesn't torture you take no
responsibility for all the documented US uniformed torturers
and, more importantly, you cloak all the US torturers who have
approved, affirmed, and used the tactics. The spectrous covert
agencies used to do US cloak and dagger dirty wet work. In movies,
the aide says 'Mr. President you don't want to know.' Not knowing,
he also accrues 'deniability.' Ronald Reagan said after the
Iranian arms for hostages deal was revealed that he still couldn't
in his heart of hearts believe we had traded arms for hostages.
The President specialized in the role of true believer in American
goodness and righteousness. But Bush doesn't say I can't believe
in my heart of hearts that the US tortures. He says the US doesn't
torture. He negates the language and facts and seems not a naif
but a stonehead. The US in fact has a thoroughly vicious history
of abetting torture in Latin America and fomenting assassination.
We haven't wanted to know. We have rationalized, negated, denied.
We mean well. We signed the protocols against torture.
Alan Dershowitz openly approves
torture for 'necessary' situations. He at least doesn't argue
that if we do it it isn't torture. He says we can and should
do it. Both positions, denying and urging, are immoral, but
the negative one is more dangerous. Dershowitz is the very recognizable
bully who rationalizes his violence. Even if we do terrorist
acts, we're off the hook because we're good and they're bad.
It's standard tribal blindness.
But the notion that we create the categories, that the commander-in-chief
makes and unmakes the rules and the language, that is a mania
of power-thinking you can force all to your will. It is Blake's
Spectre-an ungoverned reasoning power which deludes us that we
are not human and vulnerable and bodily and breakable, as are
those we torture.
The President opined that his
cowboy-warrior language was unsophisticated and that the country
has been hurt by Abu Ghraib. His hedging is like Reagan's, about
himself, and like Reagan's self-pity, the analysis is wrong.
"Bring 'em on, smoke 'em out, dead or alive" is plain,
all too intelligible-it's spoiling to fight. And Abu Ghraib is
about us hurting prisoners, often innocent prisoners. It's not
the hurt we suffer by being perceived as vicious evil-doers rather
than innocent good-doers. The problem is not erroneous perception,
it's the actual facts. We are torturers-like Saddam, like terrorists.
We were and are.
Let us say not what we don't
do but what we do do. And let us say it without abstraction.
Freedom and liberty and democracy are not force and torture and
coercion. Language will have its revenge. It belongs not to the
warrior who cries the time for talk is over, but to the human
being who hopes we can talk not kill. The Spectre is warlike.
It stalks us and is within us. In our deepest heart of hearts
we may wish good but we are also capable of evil. No projecting
it away.
Haditha or My Lai. Do we think
we can train people to kill and destroy and make the world kinder
and gentler thereby? The principle of contradiction is something
language can teach us. You cannot eliminate the negative.
Diane Christian is SUNY Distinguished Teaching Professor
at University at Buffalo and author of the new book Blood
Sacrifice. She can be reached at: engdc@acsu.buffalo.edu
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