Washblog

Noemie, you write:

"Cantwell has placed many of us in an excruciating moral dilemma.  Her support for the Iraq war and the Patriot Act is incomprehensible.  Is she BLIND? Maria, if you ever read this, would please answer this plea for your attention: Are you blind to our democracy's troubles?

"I'm morally exhausted, as many people are,  having to vote for least-worst candidates in a time of profound moral outrages carried out in my name and with my tax contributions.  But I have two answers to this in relation to the Cantwell dilemma.

"First, I consider morality a practical matter.  Compassion for me means considering the real consequences of my actions -- not the theoretical or ideal. If someone is drowning in front of me, my priority is to attempt an immediate rescue -- not to contemplate theoreticals."

How do we know all the consequences of our actions? For example, how can we possibly divine, ahead of time, the unintended and unforeseen consequences of our actions? Who among us is so perspicacious as to be able to anticipate the chain of events that a particular set of actions engenders?

It seems to me that history provides plenty of examples of well-intentioned people who set out to do A and ended up doing B.

You seem to dismiss the theoretical in favor of the practical. But I'm wondering where, in a morally complex situation, the dividing line is. For example, to illustrate your point, you relied on the analogy of the drowning person, which is itself theoretical and far too simple for a morally difficult situation. You also mention particular consequences that would follow were Mike McGavick were elected; yet, since these consequences haven't happened yet, they are, by nature, theoretical.

I think we should think carefully about our choices in morally complex situations, and I'm not about to adopt an anti-intellectual rejection of presumed theoretical considerations. I hope you're not.

In my view, as long as the United States is at war, the American people will continue to move to the right. Perhaps I'm wrong, but I see the American people becoming evermore martial, reactionary, and intolerant in their outlook. My analogy is that we're all on a moving train. That train is moving into country that is increasingly violent, callous, and imperialistic. Neither party can control this train. While the Republicans can speed up the train, the Democrats can only slow it down. No one party can stop the train and turn it around, because the parties are not driving the train. Historical contingencies are driving the train, and the primary contigency right now is the Iraq war.

I don't think we'll be getting out of Iraq anytime soon because we've yet to have a serious national discussion about it. Any candidate who refuses to engage in a discussion about the war is perpetuating it. The need for discussion--not a particular candidate--is of transcendent importance, because if the United States continues on its imperialistic course--whether under Democrats or Republicans--then the question of ANWR or oil tankers will seem trivial by comparison.

And I reject the charge that I am single-issue focused. Anyone who knows me knows the range of my interests. I would be happy to discuss any number of issues with folks on this blog, but since this is a political blog, I'm attempting to limit my topics to the more-or-less political. I just happen to think that the issues with the most importance should get the most attention, and, in my opinion, the Iraq war is the supreme issue of our time. Reasonable people will disagree, but that's the way I see it, and I think I'm as entitled to my view as anyone else, even if most everyone disagrees with me.

by PCO3318 on Mon Mar 13, 2006 at 12:57:13 PM PST

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"She's right. She understood the essential issue that time: U.S.-sponsored torture is bad for the United States -- and for other living things."

From what I've read and from what I observed while I was detained in a Moroccan police station in 1984, the tortured is typically reduced to a pre-verbal state of helplessness. Henri Alleg was right to call his landmark book on the tortures of French Algeria "La Question." The torturer always presumes to force an answer to The Question through the use of agonizing physical and/or mental pain. Yet, the pain itself so destroys the world of the tortured that he or she is incapable of answering The Question. While I was detained, I listened to a young Moroccan lad being tortured for the better part of a day. He'd been caught red-handed with stolen money. They were ostensibly trying to get him to confess to other thefts. Yet, the most I ever heard him say was "Help!" Mostly he screamed. Between the beatings or whatever they were doing to him in the next room, he wept. Absurdly, they read to him his diary in order to humiliate him into confessing or ratting on a colleague. So far as I could tell, they got nothing out of him.

In effect, the torturer induces extreme mental and/or physical pain in the tortured in order to compel him or her to give an answer that isn't really an answer to a question that isn't really a question. The reason for this perverse charade is the fiction of legitimizing illegitimate power. From the dog handler to George W. Bush, the primary purpose of torture is to convince the torturer that his or her own power is real. It hardly matters what that power is supposed to be for, whether it's the Commander-in-Chief's constitutional power to fight a so-called War on Terror or whether it's the guard's power to assert who's actually in control. Torture amounts to the most extreme attempt imaginable to turn a lie into truth.

At the opposite rhetorical extreme from La Question is the Socratic dialogue, which assumes that each soul retains its native capacity to be guided to the truth through the free exchange of reasoned discourse. In such exchanges, we assume the complete freedom of the other to answer as he or she pleases, without the least shade of coercion. Any attempt to humiliate, to browbeat, to diminish, to ridicule or to bully is a form of coercion--indeed, it's a form of violence. An order or an ad hominem attack is a weak form of torture, because it attempts to force persuasion without respect for the dignity and freedom of the individual. If we are serious about addressing the root of war in our culture, we should consider how violence is structured into our everyday use of language--language we employ without a second's thought to its inherent violence. No one--including me--is exempt.

I am imagining a much more tentative, open-ended and receptive way we could be addressing each other on these blogs.

by PCO3318 on Mon Mar 13, 2006 at 08:12:09 PM PST

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It is important to remember that while McGavick's poll numbers may be way behind Cantwell right now, he has a lot of political muscle behind him that can and will produce the dollars needed to blanket the state in advertising as the election nears.

Democrats would be well served to not take for granted that Cantwell will easily defeat McGavick, even as many feel they can make their "harmless" protest vote for another candidate (yeah, right, we've been dealing with "harmless" votes since the fiasco in 2000 with Nadar helped elect Bush!).

If Cantwell loses in November, we all lose.

So, here is the point.  Not a big Cantwell fan?  Alright, but keep a focus on the final result.  You cannot make a move that places McGavick in the Senate instead.  So go after McGavick too, and this type of issue/news, is precisely the type of ammo we need to arm ourselves with.  Anyone unwilling to go after McGavick here, but always is going after Cantwell is merely supporting McGavick in the end - whether they want to believe that or not.

Just ask Al Gore how that works.

On The Road To 2008: Countdown to the next opportunity to change the direction of America

by Daniel K on Sun Mar 12, 2006 at 11:20:47 PM PST

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