Sunday, August 21, 2005

 

Maybe "The Greatest Generation" Wasn't

I heard this on the radio this week, and was astonished at yet another tidbit of history we seem to have whitewashed from our collective memory:

Sunday was the 60th anniversary of a glorious day in world history - - the announcement that Japan would surrender, bringing the end of World War II.

[August 15, 2005 was] the 60th anniversary of a terrible day in San Francisco's history -- a victory riot that left 11 dead, 1,000 injured and the city's reputation besmirched.

"It was the deadliest riot in the city's history,'' said Kevin Mullen, a retired deputy chief of police who has written extensively about crime in San Francisco.

The riot, which followed the Japanese surrender announcement by a day, was mostly confined to downtown San Francisco and involved thousands of drunken soldiers and sailors, most of them teenagers, who smashed store windows, attacked women, halted all traffic, wrecked Muni streetcars -- 30 of them were disabled, and one Muni worker was killed. The rioters took over Market Street and refused to leave until military and civilian police drove them away long after nightfall following hours of chaos.

Now,there's nothing like eight years of parochial school to hone a nonbeliever, but I retain enough vestigial Catholicism to recognize that -- given the "right" (i.e., manifestly wrong) circumstances -- otherwise decent and law-abiding human beings are capable of acts of unimaginable cruelty and violence. That's why we need to check that temptation, which naturally comes to everybody.

It's now clear beyond question that that "checking" process wasn't done at immigrant detention centers immediately after 9-11. It wasn't done at Guantanamo Bay; it wasn't done at Abu Ghraib prison. It wasn't done at Bagram Air Force Base, or with the "ghost detainees" that we're holding only-Rumsfeld-knows-where.

In the immediate aftermath of September 11, 2001, Bush was quoted (or at least paraphrased) as saying that "the gloves are coming off." If we are ever to connect the dots on American torture, we are going to need to ask Bush, in one forum or another (I prefer an impeachment trial), "Mr. President, specifically with regard to detention and interrogation after 9-11, what was your definition of the word 'gloves?'"

posted by Michael 11:53 AM