Author: chimesfreedom

Editor-in-chief, New York.

Is it Safe?: Torture American-Style

In the movie Marathon Man, there’s a famous sequence where the Nazi war criminal (played by Laurence Olivier) uses dental tools on Dustin Hoffman’s mouth to torture him into answering the code question “Is it safe?”  I remember the movie from my youth, as well as movies like The Deer Hunter, which shows America’s enemies using torture techniques on American prisoners of war — played by Robert De Niro, Christopher Walken, and John Savage.  In The Deer Hunter, the captors force the three Americans to play Russian Roulette and punish the soldiers by putting them in an underwater cage full of live rats and dead bodies.

Watching these movies as a kid, these torture techniques were things that our enemies did.  Americans do not torture.  If we adopt the techniques of the bad guys, then there is no longer a difference between us and them.

Torture has been in the news lately because of the release of former Pres. George W. Bush’s book, Decision Points.  In it, he describes how when the CIA asked him whether he would support waterboarding Khalid Sheik Mohammad, he responded, “Damn right!”  Former Vice-President Cheney has stated he is a “big supporter” of waterboarding.

Waterboarding is torture in violation of international law.  But what about when government officials feel the country is in danger and it is necessary?

Pres. Obama has been criticized for his failure to investigate and prosecute the Americans who used torture techniques.  I understand his aversion to opening up a partisan fight.  Some claim, though, that the failure to pursue the perpetrators leaves a precedent for future presidents that torture techniques will be tolerated.

There’s an old joke about a man who goes to a woman and asks, “Will you sleep with me for a million dollars?”

The woman thinks for a few minutes, and responds, “Sure.”

Then the man asks, “Will you sleep with me for ten dollars?”

The woman says, “Certainly not!  What kind of woman do you think I am?”

The man responds, “We’ve already established that.  Now we’re just negotiating on a price.”

The joke reminds me of our attitudes about torture.  You’re either for it or against it, and then it’s just negotiating when to use it.  Nobody advocates torture for jaywalking.  If you’re for it, it’s for the extreme situations.  So you can’t rid yourself of the responsibility by saying “I only advocate it for certain situations.”  You’re pro-torture or anti-torture.  That part is simple.

Unfortunately, the line about what my country does and tolerates is not as simple as I believed when I was a kid watching movies.

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    The Promise

    Bruce Springsteen The Promise Today is the release date for Bruce Springsteen’s “new” CD/DVD set, The Promise.  The songs on the two-CD set mostly were recorded during sessions after 1975’s Born to Run and before 1978’s Darkness on the Edge of Town. But ultimately they were left off the latter album.  It’s interesting that the DVD documentary and the album are named after the song “The Promise,” a song never given a proper release and long one of my favorite songs.

    There are many songs about broken hearts, but there are not many great songs that are about broken dreams like “The Promise.”  A testament to the power of this song is the fact that in the new documentary, Springsteen said that he did not release the song in 1978 because he was “too close” to it.

    Many have speculated about what the song specifically means to Springsteen, tying it to his situation of being embroiled in a lawsuit with his former manager Mike Appel over control and ownership of his songs.    But like most songs that come out of a strong personal meaning for the songwriter, this one has universal themes that touch people unconnected to its origins.

    In 1998, Springsteen released Tracks, a 4-CD set of unreleased songs from throughout his career.  He miscalculated how much his fans had grown to love “The Promise” through years of bootlegging, and fans complained that the song was left off the set.  He remedied the situation by adding the song to a single CD Best of Tracks collection, making fans happy for the song but not happy to have to buy the Best of CD for a couple of bonus songs when they had already purchased the 4-CD set.  At the time, he said he did not release “The Promise” on Tracks because he was not satisfied with the versions in the vaults, so he recorded a new version with him alone at a piano for the Best of CD.

    I loved the piano version of “The Promise” that he released on Best of Tracks, and with the Internet now I’ve heard several versions of the song.  I first heard the song as a bootleg on a record album in the early 1980’s, and it immediately became one of my favorite songs.  In that version, it featured the full band.  So I have a fondness for the full band versions of the song.

    The song is about people with dreams — and in particular a person who travels to participate in car races in his car, “Challenger” — and what happens after the dreams are broken.  I like the line about how even when you win, you still feel like you carry something from those you defeated.

    I won big once and I hit the coast,
    But somehow I paid the big cost;
    Inside I felt like I was carryin’ the broken spirits
    Of all the other ones who lost.

    When the promise is broken you go on living,
    But it steals something from down in your soul;
    Like when the truth is spoken and it don’t make no difference,
    Something in your heart goes cold.

    The song has several references to “Thunder Road.” The name “Thunder Road” ertainly had various meanings for Springsteen after a song by that name appeared on his previous album and had created such high expectations and pressure for the upcoming album.

    In the different versions of “The Promise” I’ve heard, Springsteen sometimes places different emphasis on the final lines about the narrator and Billy saying they were going to “take it all and throw it all away.”  Sometimes he sings with resignation and despair, sometimes he sings with hopeless defiance.  But that’s one of the signs of a great song and a great singer, that they can convey different meanings and emotions with the same material.

    I’m glad that this song never got thrown away.

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