{"id":167,"date":"2007-10-14T05:45:01","date_gmt":"2007-10-14T05:45:01","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/astraea.net\/blog\/?p=167"},"modified":"2007-10-24T12:31:24","modified_gmt":"2007-10-24T12:31:24","slug":"lying-to-ourselves","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.astraea.net\/blog\/lying-to-ourselves\/","title":{"rendered":"Lying to ourselves"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The delusion of our own integrity has worn thin.  <a href=\"http:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2007\/10\/14\/opinion\/14rich2.html?th&amp;emc=th\">Linked here is an NYT editorial, The Good Germans Among Us,  detailing the quilt of lies and deception<\/a> that we have sewn to keep ourselves in &#8220;the right&#8221; while portraying others (Iraqis, Burmese, Chinese, Afghan &#8230;) as brutal, terrorists and wrong.  While the tale is focussed on the US and the self-serving policies in Iraq, we are all benefiting from the charade.  The first lines, which outline the dirty picture, are here:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>\u201cBUSH lies\u201d doesn\u2019t cut it anymore. It\u2019s time to confront the darker reality  that we are lying to ourselves.<\/p>\n<p>Ten days ago The Times unearthed yet another round of <a href=\"http:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2007\/10\/04\/washington\/04interrogate.html\">secret Department of Justice memos<\/a> countenancing  torture. President Bush gave his <a href=\"http:\/\/www.whitehouse.gov\/news\/releases\/2007\/10\/20071005-2.html\">standard response<\/a>: \u201cThis government does not torture  people.\u201d Of course, it all depends on what the meaning of \u201ctorture\u201d is. The  whole point of these memos is to repeatedly recalibrate the definition so Mr.  Bush can keep pleading innocent.<\/p>\n<p>By any legal standards except those rubber-stamped by Alberto Gonzales, we  are practicing torture, and we have known we are doing so ever since  photographic proof emerged from Abu Ghraib more than three years ago. As Andrew  Sullivan, once a Bush cheerleader, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.timesonline.co.uk\/tol\/comment\/columnists\/andrew_sullivan\/article2602564.ece\">observed last weekend<\/a> in The Sunday Times of London,  America\u2019s \u201cenhanced interrogation\u201d techniques have a grotesque provenance:  \u201cVersch\u00e4rfte Vernehmung, enhanced or intensified interrogation, was the exact  term innovated by the Gestapo to describe what became known as the \u2018third  degree.\u2019 It left no marks. It included hypothermia, stress positions and  long-time sleep deprivation.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Still, the drill remains the same. The administration gives its alibi (Abu  Ghraib was just a few bad apples). A few members of Congress squawk. The debate  is labeled \u201cpolitics.\u201d We turn the page.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2007\/10\/14\/opinion\/14rich2.html?th&amp;emc=th\">Read on here<\/a>.  And change the way we encourage this behaviour with our own apathy and convenient spin.<\/p>\n<p>And <a href=\"http:\/\/www.iht.com\/bin\/printfriendly.php?id=7869778\">here&#8217;s another cry for decency<\/a> from the dean of the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs at Princeton University.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The delusion of our own integrity has worn thin. Linked here is an NYT editorial, The Good Germans Among Us, detailing the quilt of lies and deception that we have sewn to keep ourselves in &#8220;the right&#8221; while portraying others (Iraqis, Burmese, Chinese, Afghan &#8230;) as brutal, terrorists and wrong. While the tale is focussed &hellip;<br \/><a href=\"https:\/\/www.astraea.net\/blog\/lying-to-ourselves\/\" class=\"more-link pen_button pen_element_default pen_icon_arrow_double\">Continue reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">Lying to ourselves<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[14],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-167","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-risk-and-terror"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p4hwcd-2H","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.astraea.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/167","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.astraea.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.astraea.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.astraea.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.astraea.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=167"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.astraea.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/167\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.astraea.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=167"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.astraea.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=167"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.astraea.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=167"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}