You Can't Just Mine Nicaragua's Harbor
Over the weekend, I yelled at a book "You can't just mine Nicaragua's harbor!" The book was Company Man by John Rizzo, CIA recipient of the infamous "torture memo"s under Bush and lifelong CIA lawyer. I was reading it for reasons, primarily because I was interested in how someone like him would talk about the various things he's been involved in—at least what he'd say in print. I thought of that moment today as the news cycle remained full of people talking about Russia's interference in the 2016 US elections.1
I can't feel the same schadenfreude as some on the left (not liberals, actual left) that the US is finally facing a taste of what it dished up all over the world. Now we're the ones who had a strong man with dictatorial aspirations pushed in by another country's regime. I can't feel satisfaction, schadenfreude, or glee because the people suffering most under him are those whose lives were already precarious. I feel grim and shouty, but grim frustration, not grim satisfaction.
The wealthiest will benefit. Many others who will be harmed won't acknowledge that it happened or the ways in which they're harmed by the resultant policies. A C-Span caller apparently unironically thanked Putin. They'll rejoice in how those they hate are suffering more.
It leaves me wondering whether such things could possibly be a wakeup call for the self-described moderates or the subset of liberals who generally give the US's actions a pass. Does living through such things happening to oneself for one change anything about one's attitudes? Will those who protest such actions also start saying "You can't just mine Nicaragua's harbor!"?
I don't know.
Meanwhile, Rizzo's book was quite a moderate, law-abiding perspective. That's not a compliment.2 He used the phrase "just following orders" re: torture without any apparent irony or recognition of how such a defense had played in Nuremberg or My Lai. After I shared some of his perspectives with a friend who works on Holocaust materials, that friend referred to Rizzo as evil.
What frightens me is that I don't think I'd consider him more or less evil than your average person. Instead, he struck me as a person more concerned about legality than morality. It's a common characteristic. Such people will countenance great horrors, so long as those horrors are carried out in a legal fashion and not against them. Yet.
Notes
1. I don't want to minimize the many other things which affected the outcome which rest squarely on the US's own history, leadership, etc.. Our nation's entire history of limiting and suppressing the vote, racism, sexism, and the Democrats' relentless centrism all played roles as well. back
2. I'm generally baffled and horrified by those who insist that a current set of ever-evolving laws must not be challenged. Such things are possible even within the existing system and people (and corporations/groups) do this all the time in very un-dramatic ways. (They also do this in dramatic and even heroic ways, but these are the rarer cases.) back