More Fun With Jack Bauer

Joseph Farah, one of the many lunatics over at the wingnut fringe site WorldNetDaily posted an article today titled Life imitates '24', once again trying to justify our use of torture because Jack Bauer does it on TV. I already covered this absurd notion a couple weeks ago, but there was one thing about the show that I forgot to mention, and that's the fact that 24 is the first carbon neutral television production. Now, if the right-wing wants to use a work of Hollywood fiction to justify breaking the law, then how do they reconcile that with the idea that the people behind that show are championing the "liberal" cause of fighting climate change?

It's funny because I discussed this very same topic the day before I wrote about Jack Bauer in my Earth Day column; why is the party that uses 24 to support torture, not listening to 24 about the environment? It's an appropriate analogy for the Republican Party, wrapped up in fiction while ignoring the reality that's right in front of their face.

Here are some PSAs from the cast of 24 about climate change:

24 Going Green PSA - Kiefer Sutherland


24 Going Green PSA - Cherry Jones


24 Going Green PSA - Mary Lynn Rajskub

Kit Bond + Fox News = Sunday Stupidity

So I'm torturing myself, aka watching Fox News, and just like actual torture, watching Fox News often leads to bad information. Missouri Senator Kit Bond is on right now defending torture like a good little lapdog and he's using this clichéd line that if we prosecute the high level officials that authorized torture (Dick Cheney), then we'll turn America into a Banana Republic. No, he doesn't mean we're all going to get a nice pair of khakis, he means that like a South American dictator, Obama would be using the law to get political power.

Of course that claim is embarrassingly stupid and only something a Republican could come up with, but what really bothered me was Bond saying we can't criminalize these actions. What actions, torture? We can't criminalize torture? That's essentially saying we can't criminalize crime. Torture is illegal. I keep hearing everyone from right-wing whackjobs all the way to President Obama saying we have to look forward instead of backward and we can't dwell on the past, but using that logic, we'd never prosecute anyone for a crime. Once the crime is committed, it's in the past; if I punched Kit Bond in the face, I don't think the judge would be too impressed with my "hey, let's look to the future" defense. Just to be clear, I don't advocate violence against anyone, even political figures, I leave that up to the conservative media.

Fox News apologist Chris Wallace continued this idiotic conversation by asking Democratic Senator Carl Levin if the next president considers Obama's tactics in Pakistan to be a war crime, should Obama be prosecuted? There's really no other way to say it after such a stupid question, but Chris Wallace is apparently a complete idiot. Presidents don't just get to decide what is and what is not a war crime, torture is undoubtedly a war crime and is considered as such by the entire modernized world. Once again, Wallace was just demonstrating that Fox's bias isn't just from Bill O'Reilly, Glenn Beck or Sean Hannity, but it permeates every facet of the network, even their "fair and balanced" reporting.

Senators Levin and Bond continued their debate with Bond suggesting that releasing these torture memos have made us less safe. Levin, showing the common sense absent from his Republican counterpart, made the simple observation that releasing these memos wouldn't be necessary if the law hadn't been broken in the first place. Terrorist groups have already used the fact that we torture as a method for getting new recruits; the release of memos doesn't change that. The Republican Party, specifically the previous administration made America less safe, so all those people who claim Bush "kept us safe after 9/11," you need to remember who authorized the use of these tactics.

24 is not a documentary

I know they're the party that elected The Terminator to be governor, but has the Republican Party truly become so insane that they're endorsing war crimes because they see it on TV? The United States of America does not torture, but that doesn't stop Glenn Beck and other Fox News shows are airing clips from 24 where Jack Bauer defends his techniques in a congressional hearing; is that really the route you want to go, Fox News? You weren't airing clips when Jack Bauer was interrogating a corrupt president, and we sure could've used his help with that the last eight years. This is how silly our national dialogue has become, the adults are trying to have a rational discussion about defending America and then the Neocons barge in and say we should torture people because the guy from Young Guns does it all the time.

Leave it to the hypocrites of today's current Republican Party to rely on something from Hollywood to justify their methods. I thought they were all just a bunch of latte-sipping liberals over there, but somehow they have the right idea on how to interrogate a detainee? Real life is not television, the conspiracy doesn't unravel at the top of every hour, we don't wrap up conflicts in one perfectly-timed day and you can't get travel all across Los Angeles in 10 minutes. Seriously, have you watched 24 lately? It gets more ridiculous every year, and this is coming from a guy who watched seven seasons of a teenage girl slaying vampires.

Bringing this back to reality, I am stunned to see people actually defending the fact that we waterboarded Khalid Sheik Mohammed 183 times in one month. That's six times a day. If waterboarding is so effective, why the hell would you need to do it 183 times? Apparently it was done so much to discover details about a link between Iraq and 9/11, of course there was none. Now I'm sure some of you are thinking, I can't possibly be worried about the treatment of the man who orchestrated the 9/11 attacks can I? Yes, I am. I'm not defending Khalid Sheik Mohammed, I think he should rot in prison for the rest of his miserable existence, but we cannot justify torture under any circumstances. No matter how horrible the person or their actions, we can never stoop to that level of barbarism.

I hear people like Rush Limbaugh say these guys weren't tortured, they were just slapped around a little bit. Well, if it's something so innocuous, what's the point? If they're not being hurt, why would that make them talk instead of just a normal interrogation? To the people who say waterboarding specifically isn't torture, I suggest you watch this video:



That's conservative writer, Christopher Hitchens, saying that waterboarding is undoubtedly torture. You can find videos like this all over YouTube of people in a controlled environment, who know they're in no imminent danger, lasting no longer than mere seconds.

If you have any other doubts that waterboarding should be classified as torture, why did we put Japanese war criminals on trial after WWII for waterboarding? What changed since 1945? Torture had no place in our society 64 years ago and it certainly has no place here today. We cannot appeal to our basest of instincts, and sacrifice our morality because of fear or a thirst for vengeance. What makes us better than people like Khalid Sheik Mohammed is that we hold ourselves to a higher principle those principles must apply to all people, even the most heinous villains. There are no exceptions for justice.