The Common Tone

I think that’s the only comfort we have left; after all that Bush has done in the last eight years, his time is almost over. However, he seems determined to place as many ridiculously dense and painfully inhuman people in positions of power before he leaves. This recent article in the New York Times attests to this. Michael Mukasey, Bush’s nomination for attorney general, commented on the use of torture during his interview with the Senate Judiciary Committee. Mukasey is expected to receive the position, and his stance on torture, or specifically waterboarding is that “the White House has constitutional authority to act beyond the limits of laws enacted by Congress”. Where did this quick leap from democracy to totalitarianism come from? Waterboarding, for your information, is the technique of placing a cloth over someone’s face and pouring cold water incessently over their face, simulating drowning. Later in his interview Mukasey contests waterboarding as a torture technique. If preventing someone from breathing and causing them severe trauma isn’t torture for him, I can’t imagine what it would take for him to use that word. He must have had a horrifying childhood.

These appointments of shockingly ethic-less people to powerful positions is nothing new. Mukasey simply had the misfortune (our good fortune) to become a widely publicized story. For me the question is not “when will it end”. I know it will end, I trust it will, or at least improve. The question I pose is, “who will it be”. I wait with bated breath for the person who, upon accepting an influential and powerful post, realizes and acts with real responsibility. I await the Mukasey who answers the question of toture with a resounding “unacceptable in any account”. I await the person who really values the quality of all human life, not just their own.

*Afterthought: It is comments like this that just top the whole thing off. After today’s hearings, Republican Senator Jon Kyl praised Mukasey, “I’ve listened to your testimony here, and it seems to me that you are extraordinarily well-suited for this position, pretty much as well as anybody who hasn’t served in the position before could be.” Wow. Glad to hear that someone being offered a position with an immense amount of particularlycivil power in the most powerful nation in the world is “pretty much well-suited”. Very reassuring, thank you Jon.