Sherry Chandler

Do something

Watch at YouTube.

Here’s the petition.

Though I see no reason to pick on Condi in particular. I think we should impeach them all and try them for war crimes.

And I think we must admit our own collusion. In Last Train From Gun Hill, a hero’s good intentions, and why we can torture without guilt, Lance Mannion makes these observations:

Revenge fantasies are the staple of American macho pop art. From movies to television to comic books to video games, for decades and decades Americans, American young men mostly, have been raised on one simple story. The bad guys invade, they do the hero wrong, the hero takes bloody revenge. Virtue, such as it’s there, is reactive—good is what opposes evil, period—and narcissistic. The hero may have a job that makes him the objective champion of others—superhero, cop, private detective, soldier—so that he would at first appear to be acting disinterestedly as an agent for justice. But sooner rather than later the story always gives him a reason to make it personal.

Last Train to Gun Hill is admirable in that it tries, for a while, to have the hero ignore the personal and act disinterestedly, and in the end he doesn’t become the direct agent of vengeance. The bad guys die by their own hands. Rick’s stupid sidekick kills him and gets himself killed in the process by being stupid on his own accord. And Craig Belden essentially commits suicide by drawing on a man he knows is far faster and more deadly than himself. But the effect is almost the same as it would have been if Morgan had completely taken things into his own hands. The bad guys die to slake our thirst for revenge. When it’s all over, Morgan hasn’t succeeded in what he set out to do. He’s gotten his revenge despite himself and the movie ends without letting us know if he feels bad about that. He boards the train with a look of grim resignation and that’s the last we see of him. We’re left to be satisfied with knowing that at least he tried. He wanted to do the right thing. His intentions were what counts.

And this is the point where this post stops being a movie review and starts being about torture, war, and John McCain.

This habit Americans have of being content with our good intentions is one of our greatest character flaws as a people.

I won’t get into our habit of thinking that in any confrontation we are the good guys—a vain and close to insane assumption by a people whose nation was founded on slavery and a centuries-long attempt at genocide.

But even when we are the good guys it shouldn’t be enough that we intend to act as good guys should act.

Here we are, though, a generation after Vietnam, forty years after the murder of Martin Luther King, assuming that we are always the good guys and that as the good guys we’re allowed to do whatever we want to do, as long as our intentions are good.

If we go to war, it’s because we were forced to. If we kill women and children when we go to war, it’s because, well, war’s hell, isn’t it, and remember we didn’t want to go to war, the other side made us. If we torture prisoners—well, we don’t. We don’t torture anybody. We may have to do some things that are kind of like torture, but we don’t want to and we sure don’t enjoy it and when we finally resort to it, it’s only because we have no choice, the bad guys have forced us into it.

Our good intentions in every case are proof of our goodness and other people should recognize that and admire us for it.

I apologize to Lance for clipping at such length but the argument is, I think, a very important one.

There are two moments in the last eight years that have stuck with me through all the ensuing horrors and though they were sort of quiet moments, no blood or explosions, both made my blood run cold. One was when George W. Bush blithely called his war the first war of the 21st century. And the other was when Condoleezza Rice, in her tight annoyed voice, called it (and I have to paraphrase) ridiculous to think the United States would ever use its force for anything but good.

I thought at the time that such a statement was either incredibly naïve or a bald-face deception. Doesn’t matter. Neither characteristic is something I want to see in my National Security Adviser or Secretary of State.

But no one protested at the time. Probably because almost everybody agreed with her.

Possibly related posts:

Train I ride is 16 coaches long…

That guy totally threw a shoe: the game

The National Religious Campaign Against Torture

Animator vs Animation

The Unforeseeable Outcome

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