{"id":400,"date":"2014-12-12T23:00:44","date_gmt":"2014-12-12T23:00:44","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/lordre\/?p=400"},"modified":"2014-12-14T09:47:16","modified_gmt":"2014-12-14T09:47:16","slug":"united-states-of-asphyxiation-exceptional-torture-or-torturous-exceptionalism","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/lordre\/2014\/12\/united-states-of-asphyxiation-exceptional-torture-or-torturous-exceptionalism.html","title":{"rendered":"United States of Asphyxiation: exceptional torture, or torturous exceptionalism?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Vous dites que vous \u00eates mon juge, avisez-vous bien de ce que vous faites, car en v\u00e9rit\u00e9, je suis envoy\u00e9e de par Dieu et vous vous mettez en grand danger.<\/em><\/p>\n

You say that you are my judge. I do not know if you are! But I tell you that you must take good care not to judge me wrongly, because you will put yourself in great danger.<\/p>\n

Joan of Arc<\/strong><\/p>\n

\n

How do we breathe, when a government can stoop no lower in its\u00a0penchant for hypocrisy, lies and pointless violence against innocent people?<\/p>\n

I expect that few of us have had the time to read all the details of the US Senate’s torture report<\/a> yet, but it confirms what many had already said\u00a0the CIA were doing to detainees, although now in a lot more horrifying detail. Not simply at the Guantanamo Bay detention camp (Gitmo), but at numerous “black sites” throughout the world.<\/p>\n

Of particular concern is the fact that at least one\u00a0person actually died under the CIA’s supervision as a result of deliberate neglect and mistreatment. Such events do more than upset the constitutional and societal norms mentioned in the report as fundamental parts of the United States\u00a0that had to be defended if the so-called war on terror (ostensibly a war for the defense of liberal democratic ideals) was to have any merit. They challenge the notion that the United States is “exceptional”, and thoroughly\u00a0discredit\u00a0all of its rhetoric of moral superiority over other states or\u00a0even the terrorist organizations it sought to combat.<\/p>\n

I believe that the United States’ belief in “exceptionalism” – something that Barack Obama has himself affirmed that he believes in – is the reason why the United States perpetrated these crimes. A belief that one is exceptional and morally mightier than others leads to a sense of immunity from prosecution, a sense of being above international law and a sense of being entitled to perpetrate the crimes that the US\u00a0has gotten used to accusing other regimes of. This same delusional sense of exception and immunity is why the United States is giving military assistance to a\u00a0dangerous dictatorship currently responsible for massacring thousands of civilians in Ukraine and endlessly\u00a0threatening the security and integrity of Russia.<\/p>\n

Just as the torture report cracks\u00a0the sanitized, friendly neighborhood\u00a0mask from the face\u00a0of the world’s most abhorrent and cowardly country, America’s support for the military dictatorship in Ukraine bankrupts its moral standing on the international stage. As I recently explained at Press TV, the supposed academic theories of democratization portrayed by the US as a path to peace are reduced to folly.<\/p>\n

Revising knowledge structures, dismantling arrogant power rhetoric will make world #peace<\/a>: my latest @PressTV<\/a> op-ed http:\/\/t.co\/3YhhCtYIiO<\/a><\/p>\n

\u2014 Harry J. Bentham (@hjbentham) December 7, 2014<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The path of\u00a0the United States is the worst path for any country to follow. It is the\u00a0path of sordid and blood-splattered hypocrisy, the\u00a0incarcerated\u00a0millions, of torture and endless dictatorship. A\u00a0regime that suffocates its people is a\u00a0coffin; it will\u00a0draw its supporters to the grave.<\/p>\n

#ICantBreathe<\/a> projector art is popping up around the country. Creative civil disobedience. #BlackLivesMatter<\/a> pic.twitter.com\/8Cd60LN7l8<\/a><\/p>\n

\u2014 Bipartisan Report (@Bipartisanism) December 12, 2014<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The question the American people need to ask themselves is, how do they breathe? Many of them already\u00a0chant in street protests that they\u00a0can’t – a slogan based on the dying cry of Eric Garner – a man suffocated by another member\u00a0of America’s executioner force\u00a0like so many others. This is no digression.<\/p>\n

The United States’ failure to guarantee\u00a0the human rights it preached has many facets, foreign and domestic, each of which challenges everything that America imagines itself to be. The sense of immunity that white police officers have in their treatment of African Americans is the same sense of immunity that the torturers and executioners in Guantanamo had – a culmination of institutionally racist thoughts and policies\u00a0anchored in America’s\u00a0traditions of racial\u00a0segregation, super power arrogance and paranoid militarism.<\/p>\n

Get the full guide to my theory of politics and technology in Catalyst\u00a0<\/em>below:<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Catalyst: a Techno-Liberation Thesis<\/em><\/a> (2013)<\/p>\n

\n

By Harry J. Bentham <\/a> \"HJB<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Vous dites que vous \u00eates mon juge, avisez-vous bien de ce que vous faites, car en v\u00e9rit\u00e9, je suis envoy\u00e9e de par Dieu et vous vous mettez en grand danger. You say that you are my judge. I do not know if you are! But I tell you that you must take good care not…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":577,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[46,8,68,37,72,67,18,66,16,15,69],"tags":[287,295,284,285,286,290,291,283,294,296,292,289,293,282,281,288],"class_list":["post-400","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-alter-globalization","category-antistatism","category-conflict-2","category-history","category-international-relations","category-middle-east","category-nsa","category-politics-2","category-press-tv","category-us","category-violence","tag-american-exceptionalism","tag-black-sites","tag-cia","tag-cia-torture","tag-cia-torture-methods","tag-director-brennan","tag-eric-garner","tag-feinstein","tag-guantanamo-bay","tag-how-do-they-breathe","tag-i-cant-breathe","tag-obama","tag-police-brutality","tag-senate-torture-report","tag-torture-report","tag-us-exceptionalism"],"yoast_head":"\nUnited States of Asphyxiation: exceptional torture, or torturous exceptionalism? - L'Ordre<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/lordre\/2014\/12\/united-states-of-asphyxiation-exceptional-torture-or-torturous-exceptionalism.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"United States of Asphyxiation: exceptional torture, or torturous exceptionalism? - L'Ordre\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Vous dites que vous \u00eates mon juge, avisez-vous bien de ce que vous faites, car en v\u00e9rit\u00e9, je suis envoy\u00e9e de par Dieu et vous vous mettez en grand danger. 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