20
May
Prairie Home Torture Companion
Garrison Keillor claims to be a liberal. He – and we — should know better. Keillor has just joined the already large and ever-growing list of allegedly ‘liberal’ media figures who either advocate or apologize for torture.
In a recent column, (syndicated by the New York Times,) the National Public Radio mainstay (and author, storyteller, humorist, and musician,) allowed that “widespread waterboarding and other acts of torture carried out in secret CIA prisons are no small matter.” He added, “The free play of sadism on the helpless in the name of national service is not to be ignored.” He called for “a fair and thorough congressional investigation.” He said we should “subpoena witnesses and lay the whole wretched business out on the public record. Look into the heart of darkness and meditate on it.”
But when it comes to “criminal prosecution,” and “holding the Bush administration responsible for torture,” the Man from Lake Wobegon says we be going too far, that something is rotten in America: “I smell the sour righteousness of the victorious lording it over the vanquished.”
That’s right: the self-described “old museum-quality northern liberal” says that holding high officials responsible for the murderous torture they carried out in his — and our –name would only yield “high political drama that would feed the media goat” and “sap the body politic.” As a result, Keillor claims, “The health-care system would go unfixed, schools would crumble, basic public services would deteriorate, all so that the left could have at the right.” (Wasn’t it the right that let the health-care system go unfixed, schools crumble, and basic public services deteriorate in the first place? Oh, never mind…)
Instead of squaring off “in a bloody battle over war crimes,” Keillor proposes a new focus on infrastructure, music and foreign languages: “Let’s return decent train service to the Midwest and test out the German maglev (magnetic levitation) system — the 360 mph trains — and connect Chicago and St. Paul-Minneapolis, Cleveland, Detroit, Omaha, Kansas City. Let’s restore education to the public schools so that our kids get a chance to hear Mozart and learn French.”
And instead of prosecution, Keillor’s solution is that old bromide: “Let’s move on.”
After all, he says, there were extenuating circumstances that turned us into torturers:
“Remember that the country was in high post-9/11 jitters when the dreadful memoranda were written by the lawyers whom some Democrats want to haul into court. Apocalyptic visions were afloat of subway bombings, germ warfare, nuclear devices wiping out a major city — I remember walking around Manhattan and thinking much too vividly about such things — and in that atmosphere of painful vulnerability, the great bustling city practically indefensible, zealous men might consider desperate measures in the name of security. As Orwell said, ‘We sleep safe in our beds because rough men stand ready in the night to visit violence on those who would do us harm.’”
So if those rough and ready torturer-men shouldn’t be blamed, whom then to hold accountable? That’s simple — the rest of us!
“I think the American electorate knew who they re-elected in 2004,” Keillor helpfully points out. “ Mr. Bush and Mr. Cheney did not run on a human-rights platform, they ran as rough men who would guard our sleep. So go talk to the voters of Ohio about war crimes.”
Mistaking retribution for prosecution, Keillor says what is needed “is not punishment, but truth,” since “retribution makes poor politics.” But so too does historical amnesia, ignoring reality, normalizing the unspeakable – and “moving on” before ever determining the truth underlying what it is we’re supposedly moving on from.
It’s true that what we need now “is not punishment, but truth.” It’s also true, as Keillor wrote, that “The guy they really want to put on trial is the old brush-cutter of Crawford, or else the old grouse hunter of Wyoming. They’re the guys who signed off on those memos authorizing torture. The buck stopped at their desks.”
That’s where the prosecution should stop as well – even if it means we’ll have to wait a little longer for the maglev and decent train service to the Midwest!
So now Keillor thinks people who break the law by torturing and murdering should not be prosecuted.
I wonder how he feels about those same rough men being involved in the planning and execution of the 9/11 attacks. Should they walk on that as well?
May 21st, 2009 at 7:55 am“Retribution makes poor politics?”
May 21st, 2009 at 8:47 amShit.
I’m disappointed in Garrison Keillor. Like many in the right wing, he suggests we have to skip this silly old “rule of law” business and instead work on health care reform, schools and public services. I consider that bait for the rabble. Settle for what’s really important and don’t be getting notions of prosecuting your elected leaders for their war crimes. Nothing else matters if we don’t face what we’ve done and assess what we are and what we stand for. We might as well all die on a pile of shit if we don’t face the past, deal with it, and begin healing.
May 21st, 2009 at 8:57 amThis is not to condone torture, but the man has a point.
What’s more important: universal health-care or going after the bastards–were they contractors?–who waterboarded? Look at the hay the Republicans have made of Pelosi’s obfuscations to the point of closing Guitmo.
There is alot to account for here–torture, rendition and the privatizing of the military and security apparatuses. But we have a minimal amount of time and the Democrats are running scared already over what a prominent Democrat knew and when.
May 21st, 2009 at 9:26 amSo? Can’t this government walk and chew gum at the same time?
May 21st, 2009 at 10:42 amThank you, Rory O’Connor for exposing Keillor. All the celebs who are serving as apologists for torturers should be exposed, and even prosecuted, just as propagandists were tried for war crimes in the Nuremberg Tribunals. Besides the Fox “News” propagandists, the ever-expanding list includes Elisabeth Hasselbeck Bill Maher, and everyone else who treats torture as an option to be discussed rather than illegal actions that must be prosecuted. Does Mr. Keillor think that prosecuting murderers is revengeful? Torture that results in death is a capital crime. The man is an oversized dimwit. Has his brain not thawed out yet?
May 21st, 2009 at 7:16 pmI take the Minnesota Mayberry at his word.
Let’s forget about the past. Let’s just look forward. Let bygones be bygones and immediately release ALL of the Guantanamo prisoners. Prosecuting would be revengeful. After all, all that stuff is over. Think of the school textbooks that could be bought for those above average boys and girls with the money we save from giving out free Alkorans.
Don’t stop there, immediately withdraw from Afghanistan and build a Minneapolis Maglev with the proceeds from the drones. After all, 911 is so in the past.
May 21st, 2009 at 10:18 pmi just wrote a longer comment on alternet and decided to check out the comments here.
how i remember garrison keillor, and i didn’t come to enjoy him until years after i ignored him thinking he was corny, is that he is very funny and witty and imaginative, and i wouldn’t have guessed he was right wing. no, the opposite.
in any case, i thought his article might be satire.
does anyone else think so?
May 22nd, 2009 at 2:03 pmI have grown to appreciate Garrison Keillor’s creative storytelling even as I sometimes heard him say things that seemed too establishment for my comfort. Now I am saddened to hear his stance on torture. Torture was taught in my school as a horrible archaic practice prevalent in Europe during the middle ages and in our own country in early New England and among Southern slavers, but something that we had progressed as a culture above following WWII and the civil rights movement of the sixties. That we would allow high officials to get away with torture today means that our great experiment in living by the law has failed. We need to hold every person who did not resist, who pushed for torture, or participated in torture accountable for their actions including the Office of Legal Council lawyers, Bush, Cheney, George Tenet, and Condi Rice and many more. I believe in our Constitution and we need to affirm it by holding those in high office accountable when they violate it. And those who actually tortured others also crossed the line. They should have known we all have a responsiblity to refuse an illegal order. Shame on Garrison Keillor.
May 23rd, 2009 at 11:34 am