Torture Fallout

Admiral Mike Mullen, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, is connecting the dots:

“To put it simply, we need to worry a lot less about how to communicate our actions and much more about what our actions communicate,” Admiral Mullen wrote in the critique, an essay to be published Friday by Joint Force Quarterly, an official military journal.

“I would argue that most strategic communication problems are not communication problems at all,” he wrote. “They are policy and execution problems. Each time we fail to live up to our values or don’t follow up on a promise, we look more and more like the arrogant Americans the enemy claims we are.”

Which is something that a lot of of people have been saying for years, with little effect, as the supra-legal arrogance of the Bush Administration was acted out. "Do as we say, not as we do" has never been a workable way to persuade people of the righteousness of one's cause. You may also want to read "A Long, Hard Fall from the Pedestal", though there is an undercurrent in the article of "most of us didn't want to do this, but `befehl ist befehl'."

The prison complex at Guantanamo Bay, the feeble attempts at any sort of legal process there, and the use of torture have done enormous damage to our national credibility, as has the entire Iraq War, which has been regarded as a war of choice (if not an outright act of aggression) by virtually everyone outside of the Loyal Defenders of All Things Chimpy.