What would Jack Bauer do?"Senior judges from North America and Europe were in the midst of a panel discussion about torture and terrorism law, when a Canadian judge's passing remark - "Thankfully, security agencies in all our countries do not subscribe to the mantra 'What would Jack Bauer do?' " - got the legal bulldog in Judge Scalia barking.
The conservative jurist stuck up for Agent Bauer, arguing that fictional or not, federal agents require latitude in times of great crisis. "Jack Bauer saved Los Angeles. ... He saved hundreds of thousands of lives," Judge Scalia said. Then, recalling Season 2, where the agent's rough interrogation tactics saved California from a terrorist nuke, the Supreme Court judge etched a line in the sand.
"Are you going to convict Jack Bauer?" Judge Scalia challenged his fellow judges. "Say that criminal law is against him? 'You have the right to a jury trial?' Is any jury going to convict Jack Bauer? I don't think so.
"So the question is really whether we believe in these absolutes. And ought we believe in these absolutes."
I wonder if anyone has pointed out to Justice Scalia that his justification for the efficacy of torture is based on something that is very much "fictional." Los Angeles and California were not saved, because they were never threatened. Both accounts are falsehoods, lies, if you will, invented for the purpose of entertaining a bored and frightened populace. And, I'm sure the good Justice would be appalled to hear that his beloved Agent Baur is also "fictional." Jack Baur was never born, never lived. Jack Baur exists in precicsely the same way the Easter Bunny or Santa Claus exist. So, Antonin Scalia is now using the Easter Bunny as proof that torture works?
Sadly, this is all the right wingers have left to point to in this wretched "debate," reality being rather unkind to their argument. When dispassionately reviewed, all the various techniques of torture have been shown to create nothing of true value to the societies and governments practicing them. In fact, it becomes immediately and plainly obvious that torture is never used to get the tortured human beings to tell the "truth," but in every single instance is designed to get the tortured to tell the torturing human beings only what they want to hear, which is never anything resembling an objective "truth."
Why does the right wing love torture? After much consideration, I have come to the conclusion that it is simple projection. These proponents "know" that torture works for one simple, shared reason. They truly understand their own weakness and cowardice. They know without a second's reflection that, at the first hint of imposed discomfort, they will squeal like little girls and spill their guts to their potential torturers, even offering to help them destroy their own former comrades, friends and families. Then, they project this behavior to all other human beings. Since no other person can possibly be better than them, they assume all other persons must also be cowardly and craven, just like themselves. Alas, the world exists far beyond the confines of their fleshy envelope and the mind it drags around. All others are not like them, and they are mystified by such creatures as Joan Of Arc, and assume HER to be the Easter Bunny....
IMHO, Vic
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