Dum Pendebat Filius

Rudy Giuliani jumped the shark two days ago, readers, in his quest to become President of 9/11. I strongly encourage you to read his comments in full, but here’s a sampling:

I’m not sure [that waterboarding is torture]. It depends on how it’s done. It depends on the circumstances. It depends on who does it. I think the way it’s been defined in the media, it shouldn’t be done. The way in which they have described it, particularly in the liberal media. So I would say, if that’s the description of it, then I can agree, that it shouldn’t be done. But I have to see what the real description of it is. Because I’ve learned something being in public life as long as I have. And I hate to shock anybody with this, but the newspapers don’t always describe it accurately.

(Applause)

[...]

Sometimes they describe it accurately. Sometimes they exaggerate it. So I’d have to see what they really are doing, not the way some of these liberal newspapers have exaggerated it.

Readers, this statement is wrong, and bad, in so many different ways… where do you start?

First of all, as many other bloggers have been quick to point out, Giuliani’s comments are a textbook example of “moral relativism,” which, according to wingnuts, is one of the worst things a critic of the Global War on Terror can be guilty of. To say that waterboarding can be right or wrong, depending on who does it and why, is nothing but moral relativism.

Second of all, Giuliani does not have the courage of his convictions: he won’t come out and say he’s in favor of waterboarding, choosing instead to pretend to believe “the liberal newspapers” are lying to us about the practice, as if maybe the military and CIA have come up with a kinder, gentler, more humane way to waterboard people, and the “liberal newspapers” are just lying about it.

Third, he won’t even commit himself to his own moral relativism or his imputations of media treason… “sometimes they describe it accurately, sometimes they exaggerate it.” Perhaps Mr Giuliani, or some member of his campaign staff, could help the public understand what’s going on here. Could we have some examples of accurate descriptions and exaggerations?

It gets better, readers:

And I see, when the Democrats are talking about torture, they’re not just talking about even this definition of waterboarding, which again, if you look at the liberal media and you look at the way they describe it, you could say it was torture and you shouldn’t do it. But they talk about sleep deprivation. I mean, on that theory, I’m getting tortured running for president of the United States. That’s plain silly. That’s silly.

Something’s silly here, all right, readers. Nobody with a functioning moral compass would joke around about real sleep deprivation. Some of its effects:

John Schlapobersky, consultant psychotherapist to the Medical Foundation for Victims of Torture, was himself tortured through sleep deprivation, in his case in apartheid South Africa in the 1960s.

“Making a programme in which people are deprived of sleep is like treating them with medication that will make them psychotic. It also demeans the experiences of those who have involuntarily gone through this form of torture. It is the equivalent of bear-baiting, and we banned that centuries ago.

“I was kept without sleep for a week in all. I can remember the details of the experience, although it took place 35 years ago. After two nights without sleep, the hallucinations start, and after three nights, people are having dreams while fairly awake, which is a form of psychosis.

“By the week’s end, people lose their orientation in place and time – the people you’re speaking to become people from your past; a window might become a view of the sea seen in your younger days. To deprive someone of sleep is to tamper with their equilibrium and their sanity.”

Certainly Rudy Giuliani isn’t getting a solid eight hours a night on the campaign trail, but for him to compare his experience to that of someone who’s been forcibly kept awake for days in order to coerce a confession out of them is just sick. Here are the words of former Israeli PM Menachem Begin, who was tortured in the USSR:

In the head of the interrogated prisoner a haze begins to form. His spirit is wearied to death, his legs are unsteady, and he has one sole desire: to sleep, to sleep just a little, not to get up, to lie, to rest, to forget….Anyone who has experienced this desire knows that not even hunger or thirst are comparable with it…I came across prisoners who signed what they were ordered to sign, only to get what the interrogator promised them. He did not promise them their liberty. He promised them—if they signed—uninterrupted sleep! And they signed….And having signed, there was nothing in the world that could move them to risk again such nights and such days….The main thing was—to sleep.

Rudy Giuliani is morally bankrupt. He’s a fake tough guy, a cheapjack bully, a sick creep, and a pathetic human being, who does not deserve to get within a mile of the White House for any reason.

I’d like to see Rudy Giuliani tell someone who’s been tortured by sleep deprivation that it’s “silly” to call their experience by the name of torture.

Readers, it’s not that difficult to understand, and it’s not at all difficult to see right from wrong here:

The United States of America does not need to torture people. Period. Full stop.

Waterboarding and sleep deprivation are torture. Period. Full stop.

Torture is wrong. Period. Full stop.

It is inexpressibly sad that we’ve come to a point where such things need to be said in the United States of America. How can we ever hope to hold ourselves up as an example to the rest of the world if we can’t even agree that it’s wrong to torture people?