As he dragged him around

There's an episode of Star Trek called Patterns of Force, in which Captain Kirk and Mr. Spock beam down to a planet that has been corrupted by a blatant violation of the Prime Directive, the non-interference directive.  In an attempt to create order, Federation historian John Gill blunderingly introduced the planet to Nazism. The predictable result - instead of pure efficiency, you end up with a repressive regime built on hatred for a specific group, in this case the Zeons, the brilliant but pacifistic race from the neighboring planet.

It was, in all honestly, not one of my favorite Trek episodes, in large part because I found the premise so ridiculous, only slightly less of a hammer on the head as the half-black, half-white, good-vs-evil, racism-is-bad bluntness of Let that be Your Last Battlefield. I couldn't get past the absurdist notion that any intelligent person, no less a leading historian, could believe that good could come from turning everyone into Nazis. Not to mention the disconcerting images of William Shatner and Leonard Nimoy in Gestapo uniforms, Jews wearing swasticas. Who could have hatched the idea that there was anything we needed to learn from this? What could be more obvious?

Yet, with the release of documents over the last week showing the specific torture techniques that were engaged in and approved by the Bush Administration, and the rationalization and justification of those actions from supposedly intelligent people, I am no longer so sure that the idea for Patterns of Force was all that fantastic after all.

Whether it's the minimization of what was done (it's not torture if they did it a hundred times and he didn't break!), or the obscene argument that it's okay because it kept us safe, or the Roveian charge that President Obama is making us less secure by releasing the horrendous torture memos, or the depravity of Jesse Helms advisor-cum-Bush head speech writer Marc Thiessen charging that the torturers are doing the Islamic victims a favor by "liberating" them to speak freely, the torture cheerleaders are seemingly everywhere - and being given voice by our bankrupt media which can no longer tell right from wrong, but only present "alternative viewpoints" as if up-is-downism is legitimate journalism. Or, as if status quo is always better than righteous dissent, power wins out and the voice of the helpless is diminished. Who stands for the oppressed, when the oppressors sit down for dinner and drinks with those who are charged with keeping them in check?  In Patterns of Force, Kirk and Spock are able to gain entry into the Fuhrer's headquarters by posing as part of the media, not as a watchdog of the people, but as an arm of the powerful, there to broadcast the glorious words of their leader so that the population would follow cheerfully behind. Does that vision of the media's future differ so much from the reality of the co-called news media today? 

It's not that we didn't know that the prior administration was engaged in these activities; it's been clear for a long time that Bush, Cheney and crew had taken America into this dark cavern. Yet now, having gambled with America's long- and hard-earned moral authority by placing our markers on a torture regime, the apologists for (and, almost indistinguishable, proponents of) torture are doubling down on their tortured torture rationales.

John Gill was wrong, now and always.

Which is something to keep in mind on this Holocaust Remembrance Day, Yom HaShoah.

And it's why my antipathy runs so deep for people like Douglas Feith, Bill Kristol and - yes, I know this will come as a shock - Joe Lieberman.  What does it mean to these people who trot their Judaism out for all to see, and use it to endorse the types of techniques and behaviors that should be anathema to us as Jews?  Those are not my Jewish values, and they are not the values we need to see from our most prominent representatives.

Yet true to form, Joe Lieberman responds to the release of the torture memos by saying:

Well, I take a minority position on this. Most people think it's definitely torture. The truth is, it has mostly a psychological impact on people. It's a terrible thing to do...

Why do I think it was a mistake to give it out? I wasn't necessary. It just helps our enemies. It doesn't really help us.

Again, the president can decide what tactics he wants the CIA or the military to use on people we capture, suspects of terrorism. But to let our enemies know what we are going to do or not do, that's not a good idea.

Joe Lieberman needs to watch more Star Trek, because it occurs to me now that the writers of that Trek episode were right. We do need constant reminders.

And so, on this Yom HaShoah: Never forget.