The Torture Presidency

“Coercion has opened the dialogue.” Sen. Christopher Bond (R-MO)

Yeah. I bet if I kick you in the nuts a few times, Chris, you'd be more than willing to talk to me about anything.

The relevant article, in today's NY Times, had this quotation about the Burmese crackdown:

"At a House hearing on the crackdown on dissent in Myanmar, formerly known as Burma, where protest leaders have reportedly endured waterboarding, Jeremy Woodrum, a director of the United States Campaign for Burma, said American conduct was thrown back at him, testifying: “People say, ‘Why are you guys talking to us about this when you have the mess in your own backyard?’ ” "

Translation: We have lost the moral high ground. This is something that I have been saying would happen, and I have been saying this since word first broke of the reliance on torture by the Bush Administration. Our own bad conduct is being thrown back in our faces by the repressive regimes of the world.

"Lost" is too generous a word, for it implies that there was a struggle of some kind, as when you lose a hill or a battle in a war. No, we not only surrendered the moral high ground, we, as a nation, willingly strolled away from it.

We are now morally aligned with some of the more repellent governments on the planet, governments that, in the past, we condemned for the same conduct we have engaged in. That is the shameful legacy of the Bush Administration.