Since When Do Liberals Oppose Torture?
By Isaiah Z. Sterrett (05/14/04)
IF THERE’S ONE positive aspect of the Abu Ghraib atrocities, it’s that liberals have finally found torture that they don’t support.
In 1936, Josef Stalin launched a series of ''show trials'' in which his former political opponents were tortured until they confessed to criminal activities. Throughout the 1930s, 10 million Russians were arrested. Many were executed outright, and others died in Siberian detention camps. Stalin destroyed the officer corps of the ''Old Bolsheviks,'' those who had joined the party before 1917, and in 1940 Stalin ordered the assassination of his former political opponent, Leon Trotsky.
Stalin and his Communist empire were prospering, and American liberals couldn’t have been more pleased. President Franklin D. Roosevelt, a god among Democrats, gleefully referred to the murderous dictator as ''Uncle Joe,'' as did the man who would soon replace him, Harry Truman.
Around the same time, France’s defeatist General Philippe Pétain decided it would be best if France pulled out of the Second World War and instituted a more authoritarian government. His Vichy regime brought an end to the Third Republic, and proceeded immediately thereafter to assist Nazi Germany in the mass slaughter of Jews, gypsies, homosexuals, communists, and other ''undesirables.''
Today, half a century later, Democrats are insistent on the necessity of France as an ally.
Based on these facts—and there are more where these came from—it’s quite ironic that liberals are now so outraged over the (truly overblown) abuses at Iraq’s Abu Ghraib prison. Like neo-Nazis, socialists, and communists, liberals are in no position to lecture anyone on the evils of torture, especially Americans.
Just this week, Frank Rich argued in The New York Times that the United States has ''restored Saddam Hussein’s hellhole to its original use….'' But Rich also spent the eighteen months prior to the war trying to keep Saddam Hussein’s hellhole open for business.
Teddy Kennedy, Washington’s most outspoken drunkard, argued that same point earlier this week. ''Shamefully,'' he said, ''we now learn that Saddam’s torture chambers reopened under new management—U.S. management.''
Time magazine’s cover this week boasts a ''Special Report'' ominously entitled ''Iraq: How Did It Come to This?'' Individual stories on the subject of Abu Ghraib are called ''Inside the Scandal,'' ''Brute Behavior,'' and, ''The Stress Matrix.''
In a smaller section labeled ''A Pattern of Abuse?'' the magazine purports that America’s perfectly reasonable treatment of al-Qaeda and Iraqi captives—at places other than Abu Ghraib—actually ''encouraged the crimes at Abu Ghraib.'' The author cites our use of ''sensory deprivation,'' ''sleep deprivation,'' and ''mind games'' as evidence that the disgusting abuses at Abu Ghraib are actually our fault.
Torture under Saddam was okay, liberals say, but when frightened Americans take snapshots of naked prisoners, then we’ve got a problem! Eighteen months of endless, pre-war liberal propaganda supports Saddam, and now, according to the creators of the propaganda, Bush is the one who favors torture.
As The New York Times editorialized, ''[t]he most enduring image of the occupation may be those pictures of grinning American soldiers torturing Iraqi prisoners. This is the kind of outcome no one wanted, although one that the Bush administration should have worried about long ago, and taken far more care to avert.''
Firstly, some people (liberals) did hope for this outcome. They’ve known for some time that when things go wrong for America they enjoy greater success, so tragedy in Iraq was just what they were hoping for. The problem with their argument, of course, is that they themselves have an untarnished record of openly supporting some of the most dastardly, torturous regimes in history.
Even today, as Democrats clamor for the resignation of Don Rumsfeld, they ignore the horrifically brutal murder of Nick Berg. He was beheaded, on videotape, by five hooded terrorists. Then the image of his vicious slaying was broadcast, over and over, on the Internet.
Democrats, supporters of ''Uncle Joe'' Stalin and Vichy France, have no comment.
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