“Gee whiz, I wasn’t supposed to do it, I saw the world blow up, but I did follow the rulebook”

by digby

Poor Joan Walsh. Sometimes it just pains me to see her trying to make sense among the babblers that are featured on Chris Matthews’ show every day — including the host. Today, we saw Donnie Deutch claiming that he’s a screaming liberal but he nonetheless believes that torture is acceptable if someone is trying to kill his family. Therefore, torture of “terrorists” is necessary, and he thinks a lot of Americans agree with him. (How we determine whether these are, in fact, terrorists who have such information is not discussed and neither is whether or not he would agree to torture American criminal suspects if the authorities said they were withholding valuable information. )

Joan gallantly made all the right arguments about torture being immoral, useless, illegal etc but it didn’t penetrate. Instead we see Chris Matthews, who up until now has taken a fairly hard line against torture, saying some things that are totally ridiculous about the efficacy of torture based on a bunch of nonsense he made up in his head about the jihadi supermen. And then he comes up with his latest “middle ground” argument when Walsh points out that regardless, it’s all illegal and until the politicians have the courage to legalize it, it can’t be done:

Matthews: I’d rather it be outlawed and force the president to justify breaking the law. I’d rather have that situation because that puts higher pressure on him or her not to break the law. But if they have to do something in the national interest you don’t come afterward and say, “gee whiz, I wasn’t supposed to do it, I saw the world blow up, but I did follow the rulebook.”

We expect president to protect us in extremis, but you’ve got to have judgment at the top. And I don’t want to remove any tool from them in judgment at the top. Generally it may not work. but you’re not going to tell me that in a ticking time situation that you might not be moved to try it.

We’ve got to stop lying about not calling torture torture and stop saying denial of oxygen isn’t torture and stop playing with the rule book. the rule book can say no torture. But presidents have to do things like shoot down airplanes with 200 people on them. They’;ve got to do things that aren’t in the rule book Imagine that. cheney might have had to shoot down that plane that landed in Pennsylvania with the passengers,. he might have shot down that plane if it got through. And he might have done that and I’m sure it’s against the law to shoot down airplanes, but he would have done it because that would have been the right thing to do.

Joan then pointed out that making a bunch of enemies in this “reign of torture” might just be the biggest mistake we make to which Donnie Deutch balefully shook his head and said:

Joan. (sigh) Joan you know what? Unfortunately sometimes we’ve got to go back and watch the Nicholson speech in A Few Good Men. Sometimes we need these guys on the wall that we don’t want to talk about at parties.

Just shoot me now.

I don’t know how prevalent Matthews’ latest “idea” is among the villagers, but it goes back to Alan Dershowitz whose original articles after 9/11 were among those that put torture on the table. He argued, however, that we should legalize torture so the president isn’t put in the position of breaking the law, which at least respects the basic notion that the president is subject to it. Matthews thinks the president needs to have the law stay in place as a sort of guideline that forces the president to think a little bit before he does whatever he needs to do to keep us all safe. He literally believes that the president has no obligation to follow the law, however, but rather use his “judgment.” The founders must be rolling in their graves.

BTW: the idea that the Vice President was doing the right thing by ordering the military to shoot down an airliner is mind-boggling. The president was certainly available to make that “judgment” himself and according to the 9/11 report there were people in the room who were profoundly suspicious that ole Uncle Dick forgot to ask him before he made that decision. That alone should be cause for anyone to doubt whether or not that particular “system” of relying on judgment calls is a good idea.

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