(It must be noted that a close reading of the OLC Memorandum from the previous post is indispensable to a minimum level of informed thinking concerning the moral dimensions we are hoping to pursue.)

Is Abu Zubaydah an Islamofascist?

Why not torture a man like Abu Zubaydah?

What is al-Qaeda?  Does it have a command and control structure like that of the Democratic or Republican Parties in the Senate, for instance?  Was Zubaydah really the Number Four man?  How would a person who values thinking go about making an informed decision on the matter?

Is there something fundamentally inhumane or immoral with the Confinement Box Approach or Waterboarding technique ipso facto?  Should we not reflect a bit on the complex array of circumstances surrounding the implementation of such techniques?

There is always a well-known solution to every human problem—neat, plausible, and wrong. 

                  --  H.L. Mencken

First, let us think inside the confinement box.  Can you suspend disbelief, place yourself in the confinement box (visualize a shoddy, plywood, too-small coffin) with the bug of choice and attempt to feel your way through the scenario?  No really, this matters. 

We have learned that Abu Zubaydah was Waterboarded over one-hundred and thirty times.  Does this change the morality of Waterboarding itself?  Would not each subsequent instance lessen the potential severity of the experience for Zubaydah?  Please, after about nine or ten rounds, one can plausibly imagine the following exchange:

Outside of Zubaydah’s presence
Well-lit, clinical white hallway
Just moments before Round Ten
Cue Dialogue

Interrogator X:  This MotherF*****’s a rock.  Let’s do it again.  This time, we’ll talk about the bug and really, I mean really scream.
Interrogator Y: Yeah, this guy’s on the verge…

Round Fifty-Seven

Cue Dialogue

Interrogator X:  One more time?
Interrogator Y:  Why not, but if he shits his pants again…

You do the dialogue for Round One-Hundred and Twelve.

This is supposed to be a moment of levity and reprieve.  The sheer absurdity of the OLC Memorandum screams (unlike Abu Zubaydah) for mercy and pardon.  Can we not pause and celebrate the surreal.  Kommentator believes in laughing for crying, the healing power of laughter, laughter as medicine. 

HOWEVER

This is not 1984.  No need for fiction.  If you closely read the OLC Memorandum as invited, truth is, has got to be, stranger than fiction.  But now we must go beyond the words pasted on your screen, representing the lawyers’ sadism, and dig deeper.  Sadism might just feel good, even without an avowed masochist, but does it yield good, “actionable” information?  How would you know, my little caterpillar?  Before you go off, keep your intellectual, thought-generating powder dry and think before you comment.

To follow is the predicate for thinking about morality within the product line that is the War on Terror.  The OLC Memorandum must be understood as an epiphany or inflection point.  If they are to bottle Islamofascism, Islamofascists must be treated like a bottle of Aquafina.  Your charge:  Segment out ten minutes of your time and read the OLC Memorandum closely.  Turn on your intellectual labido with this little nugget of "justice."

The original memo in its entirety can be found here.

Emanations from the Godhead

This is the wellspring of ReduxMatters topical existence.  From this moment forward, we will dedicate the lionshare of our thinking to matters real and real-time.  To be sure, time there will be to wax pristinely philosophic, but let us now proceed to thinking, really thinking, about the life we perceive before us.  The objective is to provide the platform for all concerned, thinkers and voyeurs, activists and isolates, to dialogue on topics fundamental to us all.  Please, zoom out, inspect the issues from angles unfamiliar and uncomfortable.  Take claims made for what they are worth.  Ultimate worth derives from the knower's intent to think without pretense or self-aggrandizement in the name of discovering the best of all possible avenues to knowledge, true knowledge.  Here we go...

Within Good and Evil, Without a Way to Get Beyond: Warring on Terror

No more ridiculous characterization of pure hate has ever been offered to consumers of the War on Terror than that put forth under the American government's last POTUS, George W. Bush.  The phraseology is so wonderfully grotesque that one wonders if it was not coined in a moment of pure transcendent vision.  Please, say it out loud as you read it on the screen.

ISLAMOFASCISM

If the War on Terror requires an enemy at once ubiquitous, historical, and deranged, this rhetorical gem lives up to the demand.  What is so beautiful about the term is its ability to transition from Right to Left, from white to black, without even having to be actually uttered, let alone justified and explained.  The current POTUS, Barack H. Obama, in Turkey just days ago, refueled the language without even using the phrase.  Under the cover of offering an assurance to all of Islam that America is NOT at war with that religion, the President took the opportunity to reaffirm who we are at war with and on, the very same ISLAMOFASCISM.  Please take the time necessary to listen to or read the actual address so as you may verify the language. 

What is ISLAMOFASCISM?  Who are the ISLAMOFASCISTS?  How many ISLAMOFASCISTS sleep around the corners of civilizations both East and West?  Should I do something about the ISLAMOFASCISTS?

For Kommentator, there is no such thing as ISLAMOFASCISM or an ISLAMOFASCIST.  The War on Terror is a fiction manufactured into a complete narrative constantly in the process of being sold to consumers.  The sale is predicated on unthinking, as are very nearly all sales, of all commodities.  The "pitchmen" and "pitchwomen" of the narrative must be held to a higher standard, a much stricter scrutiny.  This begins with thinking on the part of the consumers, redux matters right now.  Let the dialogue begin.        

Luddites we are not

Technology is a means.  Never, under any circumstance, can we permit technology to become an end.  Whether personal existential emergency or public cataclysmic panic, no moment grants to technology the right to triumph over thinking.  This is an axiom steeped in the day to day final rehearsal that is real life.  Because so very many of our friends and family have been infected with the confusion, your own stand against “Technology as a God,” is demanded.  The scope of the disease is extensive because the number of voyeurs has grown like some recursive virus expanding exponentially.  In this sense, the voyeurs themselves have “gone viral.”  Please, do not misread what we are saying.  Let us pause a bit here, in the name of understanding, and get technology right.

It is essentially pointless, wasteful, and dangerous to rail against technology per se for two simple reasons. 

1. Technology can not fight back.
2. Technology is only a mirror image of us.

To take up arms against the defenseless is pure cowardice with a touch of sadism.  In fact, technology needs THOUGHTFUL care and attention.  As a reflection of us, raging against the machines is suicidal.  We are neither cowards nor suicidal.  So let it be understood, Luddites we are not.

Technology as a God

For the voyeur technology has become the absolute end.  The voyeur salvation is INFORMATION NIRVANA.  This obliteration of self and consequent relinquishing of control is obtained by voyeur adherents of varying sects. 

The Pontiffs who have blind faith and serve as leaders in the voyeur temple.
The Nihilists who have hatred for both independent thought and themselves.
The Cynics who have contempt for Truth and Knowledge.
The Confused who have devoted no time to thinking about thinking.
The Total Voyeurs who actually have undergone a Great Becoming, a fusion of man with machine, a metamorphosis (the technological devices are part and parcel of their being, at all times, excepting, we hope, when attending to fundamental matters of hygiene).

These sects are, of course, constructs which, when put into operation reveal that any given voyeur can be a bit of each to differing extents.

The voyeurs inability or unwillingness to seize control over their own thinking, the very thing which produces the SELF ITSELF, constitutes the critical existential dilemma.  Please, voyeurs, hear me.  If you truly desire to be controlled from without, we have the society and culture for you already, independent of your information nirvana.  Your abdication of self merely makes the herding that much easier for the regime of banality which seeks to pacify society.

ReduxMatters Reason for Being

The creation of ReduxMatters is a self conscious act of reclaiming the once great high ground of independent thinking.  This reclaiming is a twofold process.  In the first movement, we must identify, coalesce, and empower those who care deeply about independent thinking.  In the second movement, a battle must be waged against the voyeurs.  No violence.  Machines will not be set ablaze.  The battle is for the liberation of the voyeurs from their perverse Messiah’s pleasure. 

You are invited to enter the fray.