On longer memories

Naomi Klein points out that for all the well-deserved concern over Bushco's insistence on allowing torture, the biggest difference between it and prior regimes is the fact that torture has gone public:

Other cultures deal with a legacy of torture by declaring "Never again!" Why do so many Americans insist on dealing with the current torture crisis by crying "Never before"? I suspect it stems from a sincere desire to convey the seriousness of this administration's crimes. And its open embrace of torture is indeed unprecedented.

But let's be clear about what is unprecedented: not the torture, but the openness. Past administrations kept their "black ops" secret; the crimes were sanctioned but they were committed in the shadows, officially denied and condemned. The Bush administration has broken this deal: post-9/11, it demanded the right to torture without shame, legitimised by new definitions and new laws...

The terrible irony of the anti-historicism of the torture debate is that in the name of eradicating future abuses, past crimes are being erased from the record. Since the US has never had truth commissions, the memory of its complicity in far-away crimes has always been fragile. Now these memories are fading further, and the disappeared are disappearing again.

Not that any current openness is entirely by choice, as Bushco has tried to push the "few bad apples" defence even while trying to make sure that such apples have the chance to grow. But as impressive as Clinton or his predecessors may seem compared to Bushco's overall mismanagement, it's worth remembering that they too had blood on their hands. And the more that fact is suppressed, the more likely future administrations may be to successfully push torture back underground rather than facing due pressure to eradicate it.