If Crushing the Testicles of an Innocent Child Isn't Nazi, What Is?
Revolution #027, December 19, 2005, posted at revcom.us
On December 1st, my tape recorder was running as I covered a debate between human rights lawyer Doug Cassel and torture-advocate John Yoo. Yoo is the lawyer who drafted essential elements of the Bush administration's legal justifications of torture. Reviewing Yoo's new book, The Powers of War and Peace: The Constitution and Foreign Affairs after 9/11, in The New York Review of Books, David Cole wrote: "Few lawyers have had more influence on President Bush's legal policies in the 'war on terror' than John Yoo."
Here's what I recorded:
Cassel: If the president deems that he's got to torture somebody, including by crushing the testicles of the person's child, there is no law that can stop him?
Yoo: No treaty.
Cassel: Also no law by Congress -- that is what you wrote in the August 2002 memo...
Yoo: I think it depends on why the President thinks he needs to do that.
* * * *
Later in the event, someone in the audience compared Yoo's position, and the Bush administration's policies on torture, to Nazi Germany. Yoo objected: "To equate Nazi Germany to the Bush administration is irresponsible." Some booed. But more people in the crowd applauded what Yoo said, as if this is a comparison that you just can't make.
Well, people, I have to ask:
If advocating crushing the testicles of an innocent child isn't Nazi, what the fuck do you have to do to be a Nazi?!