the smugness of secrecy
Music: Boards of Canada: The Campfire Headphase (2006)
You can file this under the "ideas I want to turn into an essay someday" category: Yesterday the Bush II administration fessed-up to what some folks have been saying for many years: the U.S. government has secret prisons and tortures suspected "terrorists" for information. A number of countries colluded with the CIA to keep the prisons and U.S.-style "alternative questioning techniques" under wraps. (This reminds me of a film I highly recommend: Radha Bharadwaj's Closet Land , a fantastic film that examines the horrors of these "alternative questioning techniques.") Bush's smug delivery of this admission yesterday is remarkable. Acknowledging the highest court's recent ruling against his torture policies, Bush extended his phallo-puffery into a threat:
the Supreme Court's recent decision has impaired our ability to prosecute terrorists through military commissions, and has put in question the future of the CIA program. In its ruling on military commissions, the Court determined that a provision of the Geneva Conventions known as "Common Article Three" applies to our war with al Qaeda. This article includes provisions that prohibit "outrages upon personal dignity" and "humiliating and degrading treatment." The problem is that these and other provisions of Common Article Three are vague and undefined, and each could be interpreted in different ways by American or foreign judges. And some believe our military and intelligence personnel involved in capturing and questioning terrorists could now be at risk of prosecution under the War Crimes Act -- simply for doing their jobs in a thorough and professional way. This is unacceptable
It is unacceptable to me and hundreds of thousands of people that my government considers the illegal and the immoral "professional," but few of us are surprised these days. That a U.S. president could say such things and then demand that Congress pass a bill to protect CIA torturers and re-establish tribunals to prosecute suspected "enemies" is about as "bully pulpit" as it gets.
What piques my interest (if I can keep the anger at bay) is the tone with which this secret was revealed: it is an unmeasured, haughty tone, one that has more in common with a Rambo film or a John Wayne yarn than presidential rhetoric of the past (except, perhaps, Teddy Roosevelt . . . and Eisenhower . . . oh, yeah, and Johnson . . . er, ok, maybe it's a staple). "Yeah, we got secrets, and we're entitled." The tone, however, is part of a deliberate political strategy for mid-term elections: bravado yoked to America's "heroes" is designed to shift attention from Iraq in a rhetoric of defending secret torture! Mon Dieu! y'all!
Jodi Dean is right: the dialectic of publicity and secrecy is truly the center of contemporary politics. To this we must add tone: perhaps it is apocalyptic, but it is resolutely paternal.
Bronzed poop aside, yesterday's revelation of baby Suri photos places the figure of Tom Cruise next to George W. Bush: both men are glossy, flat surfaces enacting a play of masculinity if a Cold War movie in which the figure of the father is dutifully being rehabilitated on our road to nowhere. This father is the potent man who is strong enough to be opaque, and if lies of commission are no longer politically viable, omission and filmic values are now in the script. If the Dem's and "independent" left are going for regime change, the game is clearly drawn for Daddies---Daddies only.