09/13/10 – Jeremy Varon – The Scott Horton Show

All right, y'all, welcome back to the show.
It's Anti-War Radio.
Sorry if I sound funny, I was just coughing up a lung right before coming back on the air here.
I'm looking at witnessagainsttorture.org.
I know somebody's got to do it.
In this case, it's Jeremy Veron.
Am I saying it right?
You're saying it right.
Okay, great.
Well, thank you very much for joining us.
Welcome to the show.
Thank you.
All right, so hope and change and everything's better and different now because Barack Obama looks a lot different than George W. Bush, and it's all good, right, for the torture victims?
I wish that were true.
President Obama came into office promising real change.
On day one, he announced that Guantanamo would be closed within a year.
He outlawed so-called enhanced interrogations, and then there was great hope in the human rights and civil liberties community that the nightmare of indefinite detention, the denial of habeas corpus, and immunity for torture would come to an end.
But sadly, Obama has powerfully betrayed his promise with respect to issues of detention and accountability.
Guantanamo is still open, as everybody knows.
There's a system for indefinite detention.
In the works, the administration fought to have habeas rights denied to inmates in Bagram prison in Afghanistan, and then recently, the Justice Department won an appeals court decision in a case called Mohammed v.
Jefferson Data Plan, Inc., that basically said victims of U.S. torture could not sue, in this case, a private subsidiary that contracted with the CIA to render folks to secret prisons in Afghanistan and in Europe if it was determined that the trial would tread on sensitive national security issues.
So the case was essentially dismissed.
There will be no justice, no compensation, no admission of blame and guilt with respect to, I think it was the five plaintiffs who wanted some public recognition of the harm that had been done to them, and ideally, some kind of civil damages as a retribution for what they had suffered.
So this really, from our standpoint, is the nail in the coffin that should really eliminate any illusion whatsoever that Obama has any intention of bringing any meaningful judicial process to sanction those who designed and executed torture policies under Bush.
Doesn't that make him guilty of obstruction of justice?
I mean, he's guilty of not enforcing domestic and international law.
The United States is a signatory of the Convention Against Torture, which was ratified first in limited form under Reagan and then under Clinton.
And then there's a mandate that if any signatory has a strong suspicion that the convention has been violated, they're duty-bound to investigate and, if warranted, indict and convict.
So we're breaking our international treaty obligations.
Domestic laws against torture were wantonly violated, but those haven't been applied.
And then it's worse than what you described.
The Justice Department is being used to rig the law to prevent justice from being done.
So it's a sort of structural obstruction of justice, where the law is essentially jiggered to become meaningless.
And then in this case, the vast majority of what the plaintiffs wanted to discuss was already a matter of public record.
So the notion that this is far too sensitive to discuss in a court of law is absurd.
And then the dissenting judges say, said that in accordance with the lower court ruling, at the very least, you should have some kind of panel of judges look at the evidence and determine if any of it is so sensitive it can't be discussed.
And if a case can be made by non-sensitive evidence, then the case should proceed.
And in this case, the plaintiffs and their attorneys, you know, absolutely believed that on the basis of information already in the public domain, you could find on the plaintiff's behalf.
So it's a very, very sad day where the massive injury of torture has been followed by the insult of not giving the victims a day in court.
And it says a lot about the ideological orientation of the Obama administration.
You know, most charitably, you could say they're so afraid of a right-wing backlash that they want to tread softly on these issues.
But I'm starting to believe more and more that this is what they truly believe, and that the powerful go to great lengths to protect one another.
And it's the kind of club from which most of us are sadly excluded.
And in some weird way, you know, Obama's first loyalty is to, you know, his predecessor, and preserving a certain conception of executive power from which he himself benefits.
I don't think everything about Obama has been a betrayal.
But on these issues, the conduct of the administration has been egregious, and these are the issues I care about the most.
So it's quite depressing.
Well, when it comes down to it, the only remedy is impeachment, right?
I mean, that's, you know, not going to happen.
He's the chief executive, so there is no other thing to do except for the American people en masse to demand that the Congress remove him from office.
Right.
I mean, you know, again, that's, you know, a pipe dream.
You know, George Bush was impeached for, you know, a whole host of crimes.
If there's any effort to impeach Obama, it's probably going to be, you know, coming from the right.
Like, right now, it's not obvious what the remedy would be.
Now, this case probably will be argued before the Supreme Court, and there's a chance that the Supreme Court could rule in favor of the plaintiff.
You know, organizations, including my own, are still active in keeping the issue of torture in the public consciousness.
And then, you know, a day might come when we look back on this whole post 9-11 history and say collectively as a nation that horrible lines were crossed, extremes were pursued that never should have been pursued, that civil liberty and human rights were sacrificed to a certain conception of security, and we may have a reckoning with this the way the country has had at least a partial reckoning with slavery and the internment of the Japanese and so forth.
I don't have an enormous amount of confidence that this process will happen.
And then, you know, a very important moment is being lost when this is still fresh in people's memories.
You know, I can't say, you know, at hand there's an obvious remedy to all of this.
I would say that, you know, politicians are creatures of self-interest.
And then, if people who had voted for Obama in 2004 would consider 2008, I'm sorry, consider withholding their vote from him in the next election, that might send a powerful message.
I'm prepared to do that.
And I would like to think I'm not the only one.
I mean, the right is sort of much better at holding the Republican Party accountable to what they consider core values than progressives are holding Democrats to what you would consider, you might consider core values.
Yeah.
Well, and, you know, I'm glad you bring up the politics of this because it's just so obvious to me, and I don't know how anyone could escape the truth of this, that Obama's mandate was not to do a big liberal agenda like health care, et cetera.
No offense if that's your opinion, you're for it or whatever, but I'm just saying his mandate was to undo Bush to finally America was saying sorry for Bush.
They screwed up.
They even reelected that son of a bitch.
He killed a million people.
And they said, you know what?
We're going to elect a guy with a Muslim sounding name, a black guy, a Democrat.
That's different.
And we're going to tell the world we're moving toward peace and away from that.
I mean, his job, his only mandate was to come in and beat the Republicans down like they deserve to be beaten down.
And if you can't win, if any, if Barack Obama, Mr. Order can't win an argument about Guantanamo Bay or win an argument about why Islam attacked us that day or whatever madness these Republicans have to resort to, then he is a pathetic loser and should be thrown in the garbage can.
How could anyone lose an argument against a Republican?
He should have been doing nothing but prosecute them and destroy them.
And I don't mean Karl Rove type political prosecutions.
I mean, for torturing people to death, for lying people into an aggressive war, for throwing men's lives away for lies.
And see, I'm sorry I'm ranting too much and we got to go on a break, but the next segment is yours.
The next segment is yours.
Jeremy, when we get back.
Absolutely.
Perfect.
Antiwar radio.
Sorry to everyone for that, but I'm right.
You can watch the LRN studio cam and chat with other listeners anytime at cam.lrn.fm.
That's cam.lrn.fm.
All right, y'all, welcome back to the show.
It's antiwar radio.
I'm talking with sort of at and to Jeremy Veron.
He's from witnessagainsttorture.com and I was ranting before the break that the Democrats would be winning if they had any spine, they would do the right thing for a minute.
But as you were saying before, I think, Jeremy, they're not in it to do the right thing.
They're in it to win it.
They're in it to claim.
I mean, hell, Obama's even claimed the power to murder you and me, which is more than George Bush ever claimed.
Yeah.
I mean, I want to backtrack a bit to what you described as your rant.
It was edgy, but actually pretty eloquent.
And I think it captures something important.
Like a big part of the support for Obama was discussed with George Bush.
I mean, that was a lot of the sort of wind in his sails, the sense that the country had been disgraced and degraded, fundamental principles, savage.
We had near tyrannical government and there was this desperate desire to end the tyranny of sort of lawless rogues who had hijacked the nation's highest office.
And then there was also the promise of a transcendent post-partisan president who could represent all America, look forward, not, you know, look backward and take us over some, you know, glorious horizon of new possibilities for political consensus.
And I think Obama became so captivated by the mythology of that second aspect of his campaign that he forgot the first aspect and then thought that moving forward meant turning away from the past and doing nothing to correct the serious abuses of the rule of law, the Constitution of American values.
The post-partisanship didn't work because the right has sort of savagely attacked him.
He's been a very, very modest, if in ways meaningful reformer.
And then he's basically left untouched, I think, the worst aspects of the Bush legacy, which is the legacy of torture and an absence of accountability in the trashing of the Constitution.
And then I feel like part of a forgotten constituency, my organization has had a meeting with the Justice Department and then they listened to us with a kind of professed sympathy.
We're trying to negotiate a follow-up meeting with folks who actually set policy.
So far, we've gotten nowhere.
And I feel like they feel that this constituency I'm a part of is ultimately expendable, that a lot of us are going to vote for the guy next time anyhow, or we're so statistically insignificant that it doesn't necessarily matter.
And I think the bigger question is, then, has he betrayed his party or has he betrayed certain voters?
Has he betrayed the Constitution and has he betrayed human rights and principles of equality and dignity and respect for the sanctity of the human body?
So there's a kind of political story that looks very messy in ways that you captured.
And then there's a deeper story where sort of fundamental things about this society are at stake.
And then I don't think he comprehends the stakes of his own conduct.
And I think history will sort of judge harshly the path that he's given to his predecessor.
Well, and the denial of justice to the tortured.
And I mean, that's what this is really about, is the victims of Bush's crimes, of which there were many and who were all real human beings.
And it matters.
But I wanted to kind of bring up the fact that this guy's chief of staff is Rahm Emanuel.
And there's a great, I think, couple of articles, maybe even three articles by John V. Walsh at counterpunch.org about how in 06, Rahm Emanuel in the House engineered for the Democratic Party to work against any anti-war Democrats in the primaries and for Tammy Duckworth and all the pro-war Democrats.
And in every single case, Jeremy, the pro-war Democrat who won the primary lost the general.
And in every case where the anti-war Democrat won the primary, they won the general.
And Rahm Emanuel, with his evil warmongering for a foreign power strategy, cost the Democrats numerous seats in that election.
They somehow took the House and Senate anyway.
But it just goes to show this is not about good politics.
Like you said, betraying the Democratic Party and the interests of the party itself.
It's not about that.
It's about the interests of the state, the interests of the executive branch, the interests of the Pentagon, and the interests, of course, in Rahm Emanuel, IDF veterans case, the interests of whatever Benjamin Netanyahu and the American-Israeli Public Affairs Committee want.
And so if that means turning the government back over to the Republicans, fine.
At least we know we can count on them to kill everybody.
Well, you know, I'm scared of the midterms and I'm scared for 2012.
And people in the left are on a horrible bind where the Obama administration has, you know, needless to say, powerfully disappointed expectations and then barely seems worthy of our support any longer.
But then the alternative is, you know, truly terrifying.
And then clearly there needs to be a new phase of progressive mobilization.
I mean, so much progressive energy got wrapped up in the campaign.
And I think for good reason.
The rhetoric sounded wonderful, he's a messianic figure, he's an African-American.
And I wanted to support him for that, you know, reason alone.
And there was a lot of good reasons why we placed our faith in the promise of real change.
And then now, you know, we have to take stock of our disappointment and think about a next move.
And then we've seen in, you know, 18 months, the Tea Party movement shift the entire spectrum of the Republican Party to the right.
And it would be interesting to imagine if something like that could happen on the left.
And then I'm very careful not to be consumed by a sense of anger and despair.
And then the people who I want to help are least well served by my anger and despair and dejection.
They need my love, energy, optimism, and commitment.
This anti-torture work has been very, very frustrating, but, you know, we know we're morally right.
And then people all over the world thank us for continuing to sort of carry the torch of justice on these issues and not going away and not getting, you know, defeated.
So, you know, I think we need to take stock of our frustrations and at the same time ask ourselves what's the most constructive use that we can, you know, make of that.
And then sort of turning viciously against Obama in an emotional and in a personal way.
Even that I don't think makes much sense, because the problems are systemic.
And I think the systemic requirements of American power that projects itself globally is a certain kind of military regime and along with it a certain kind of, you know, detention apparatus.
And then ultimately the problem is a national security state connected to, in many ways, an imperial state.
And undoing those deep structures, that's the ultimate prize.
Politicians, administrations come and go, they mean a little bit left, they mean a little bit right.
But, you know, there is a bigger picture.
Well, it seems to me, Jeremy, like you, well you sound anyway, like you see it very clearly.
You've identified the most important issues and, you know, in particular, the torture issue, I think, is the very most important of the most important issues.
I guess aggressive war underlies it all, as you just said, but anyway, you're on the right side and a lot of people value your work and I really do appreciate your time on the show today.
I appreciate talking to you, it's been a lot better than a lot of other interviews I've done because it's really engaged, it's a real conversation and there's a real exchange of ideas.
Keep up your good work, okay?
Great, thank you very much everybody.
That is Jeremy Veron from Witness Against, no, WitnessTorture.org, that's the website for Witness Against Torture.