Dick Cheney--Admitted War Criminal and Monster

The War Criminal Protection Zone. Today, Dick Cheney confessed to being a war criminal on national television. Here, Cheney refers primarily to waterboarding

The vice president was unapologetic in his defense of the Bush administration's anti-terror policies, including the use of waterboarding . . . . Cheney said waterboarding was an appropriate means of getting information from Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the alleged mastermind behind the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.

He was also asked whether he authorized the tactics used against Khalid Sheikh Mohammed. "I was aware of the program, certainly, and involved in helping get the process cleared, as the agency in effect came in and wanted to know what they could and couldn't do," Cheney said. "And they talked to me, as well as others, to explain what they wanted to do. And I supported it.

What makes Cheney such a monster is that he's so matter of fact about his involvement in waterboarding "program." The same is the case with all the crimes perpetrated by the guards and administrators at Guantanamo, the abuses that went on in the brigs off South Carolina, and extraordinary rendition.

But there's another dimension to the war criminality of Dick Cheney and the rest of the Bushies--the matter of fact way in which the news is received in the United States. Perhaps the best measure of our lack of response to the Bush administration's crimes is the fact that Cheney's announcement isn't really news. Rod Blagojecovich, Jesse Jackson jr., Michelle Obama's inauguration dress, Sean Avery's dating life--that news.

Dick Cheney's announcement isn't.

The major question about Cheney is whether American society so inoculated to the shocking and immoral that Cheney's confession about his war crimes has no effect. The idea is that American popular culture produces so many gruesome images of murder, rape, and other kinds of brutality that political torture no longer has the power to shock. How shocked can somebody be after they've seen a body run through a wood chipper as in Fargo? In fact, waterboarding quickly became a stock image as information about the Bush administration's torture practices emerged and isn't seen as any more shocking than serial killing or school shootings.

But I think it's the other way around. In my opinion, the Bush administration is like slavery in that Bush's crimes against humanity are such an enormous blow to our collective self-esteem that they can't be fully acknowledged. Consequently, the media and the public construct a kind protective space in which Bush's war crimes can be readily acknowledged by people like Cheney but given no symbolic resonance in terms of our moral judgments of the Bush administration, Dick Cheney, or the CIA and military people involved in carrying out the orders. Ultimately, the public doesn't have to come to any kind of judgment about itself or "America" either.