Peter Beinart responds to the idea that torture is contrary to what America is:
The implication of the statements by Obama, King, and Yarmuth is that there is an essential, virtuous America whose purity the CIA defiled. But that’s silly. Aliens did not invade the United States on 9/11. In times of fear, war, and stress, Americans have always done things like this. In the 19th century, American slavery relied on torture. At the turn of the 20th, when America began assembling its empire overseas, the U.S. army waterboarded Filipinos during the Spanish-American War. As part of the Phoenix Program, an effort to gain intelligence during the Vietnam War, CIA-trained interrogators delivered electric shocks to the genitals of some Vietnamese communists, and raped, starved, and beat others.
He goes on to note that torture has always had its American defenders. As Ta-Nehesi Coates remarked, “Dick Cheney wasn’t actually going to any ‘dark side.’ He was going to the American playbook.” Not surprisingly, the majority of Americans today support the torture techniques used by the CIA.
Torture and its justification are part of our American heritage. Like everyone else, we’re sinners and we make excuses for our sins. Believing in some inherent American moral superiority is just another case of idolatry. Preaching America’s elect saving power is just one more false gospel. Giving legitimacy to our atrocities is just an old trick of the devil. America too could have crucified Christ.
Will America improve? That will depend on whether or not we first acknowledge our country’s failures, vices, and sins and then properly atone for them. There can be no reformation without reparations.
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