A Bit More Context

In my last post, I looked at the immediate context of the "CIA Torture Memo’s”, but as was recently pointed out to me, there is an even wider context which should be included as well. That the conclusion that harsh interrogation methods needs to be resorted to, let alone torture, is an admission of your own widespread lack of intelligence, and an act of desperation.

If we were talking about a lone deranged individual, this could be forgiven, but we are not. We are talking about a group of fanatical, theocratic, fascist, thugs and murderers who prefer to use terrorist actions in order to impose their plans on others.

We knew they were out there.

We've known that they’ve been wanting to not just hurt us, but bring us down, for 50 years.

They were a known and gathering threat, strengthening and spreading out over the globe and publicly taking credit for attacking the west in general and America in particular, for over thirty years.

We not only did little or nothing to stop them, we did little or nothing to infiltrate them. We looked at their pitiful size and in classic hubristic mode, snickered, swore, swatted and looked away.

We unintelligently declined to put gathering intelligence on them as a low, or no, priority issue.

With that additional context in place, 9/11 happened, we were caught demonstrating our lack of intelligence (in several more ways than one) on a movement of people who had publicly declared hatred and who had repeatedly declared war upon us decades ago, and on 9/11 we suddenly realized to our own horror, that their pitiful non-aligned size, far from being an insurmountable weakness, it was in fact a huge weapon against us, and with it they could indeed hurt
Us, very, very badly.

We found ourselves in desperate circumstances, and we had no intelligent option but to resort to desperate measures to illuminate our self sustained blindness. Governments have in the past (al queda, Imperial Japan, etc), and will again, fail to realize or properly respond to real and growing threats, either out of hubris or for purely political reasons. Their failure may not only increase the danger to the nation from the original threat, but it may also put those who are governing, into a state of desperation (whether actually or politically doesn't matter, they do not distinguish between them), potentially making them into a threat to those they govern.

This is an extremely important context to keep in mind.

We should also keep in mind, at the risk of humoring the moonbats, that in the hands of Govt, what is considered extreme one day, can easily become routine after a number of days.

I am satisfied that our Govt did go to great lengths to minimize the possibility of such harsh measures from being irresponsibly used, and to prevent them from becoming routine, but there is one word that should be emphasized when saying that,

But.

Never forget that Govt is ruled by those with power, and it always tends towards desiring more power.

What we know was done in non-civil scenarios, in a time of war, and which we take as a vital and primary principle of that context... will be the fulcrum which those who habitually drop contexts, may someday seek to use to pry their way into civil scenarios, via spin, when they feel that their power is being threatened.

Here's a quote from George Washington that should always be kept first and foremost in mind, regarding government:

"Government is not reason, it is not eloquence, it is force. Like fire, it is a dangerous servant and a troublesome master. Never for a moment should it be left to irresponsible action."

The use and pursuit of power, impedes the operations of intelligent thought, for the most recent example, see the idiotic 'mission' of having Air Force One strafe downtown New York.



Look at the people on the ground, running in fear, thinking that 9/11 was occurring once again. This decision was made in order to get a photo-op… and their thinking and concern for possible unexpected results, for how it might affect an entire city to see a jetliner flying low towards the cityscape… well the best that can be said is that we hope the thought didn’t occur to them.

That decision is what passes for thinking by self satisfied bureaucrats, wanting to aggrandize themselves, and their superiors. Imagine what may pass for thinking when other bureaucrats, no better or worse than the ‘fool’ who signed off on that, become desperate.

And remember, the powerful will always feel that they find themselves in desperate circumstances.

That is a context that should always be of heightened concern.