I don't think the American government torturing a green card holder can be classified as a human rights violation "coming back to America." This is an extremely weird and callous post that suggests an immigrant who moved to the US in 2007 deserved torture. - ThreadSky

sarahjeong.bsky.social • 22 days ago

I don't think the American government torturing a green card holder can be classified as a human rights violation "coming back to America." This is an extremely weird and callous post that suggests an immigrant who moved to the US in 2007 deserved torture.

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wickdchiq.bsky.social•22 days ago

No it’s a recognition of the imperial boomerang. The torture and violations you commit abroad end up coming back to the country. Guantanamo Bay set a precedence that Americans don’t have to think about because it’s done abroad not thinking it will be used in America

markstoneman.com•22 days ago

This was the thing that disappointed me the most about Obama's tenure: his inability to close the Guantanamo legal void. And yeah, what we do to others dehumanizes us as much as it dehumanizes those we targeted.

wickdchiq.bsky.social•22 days ago

Yeah this was a great disappointment

notacquiescing.bsky.social•22 days ago

A tragedy beyond measure.

wickdchiq.bsky.social•22 days ago

Tactics of torture and human rights violations are like those imposed on Guantanamo Bay prisoners minus waterboarding. Passing the Patriot Act in 2001 was the codification of torture. There is a straight line between post 9/11 renditions and immigrant detentions

https://www.nytimes.com/2011/09/07/us/sept-11-reckoning/civil.html?unlocked_article_code=1.4E4.PzsB.cMZMM4VLBCu3&smid=nytcore-ios-share&referringSource=articleShare

wickdchiq.bsky.social•22 days ago

I think you need to read Michel Foucault’s writings on the imperial boomerang 🪃

https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/opensecurity/foucaults-boomerang-new-military-urbanism/

sarahjeong.bsky.social•22 days ago

You realize that the guy who got tortured isn't a US citizen? The US govt tortured a man who isn't a citizen and you're saying he deserved it because of the imperialist boomerang. You think you're flashing your leftist cred but you're a reactionary caping for the torture of the powerless. Nice.

wickdchiq.bsky.social•22 days ago

Doesn’t matter. The tactics are the same and those tactics come back to the domestic populace.
I never said I was left, right or centrist.

Show me where I said it’s deserved. Show me.

You’re extrapolating a lot from what I didn’t say

sarahjeong.bsky.social•22 days ago

What else is meant to be inferred by this incredible voluminous series of whataboutist posts asking "why should it stay there?" I'm not an idiot.

spinster777.bsky.social•22 days ago

You could infer that when a gov't gets comfortable violating human rights abroad, and the public fails to prevent it, eventually that gov't will violate rights in the same way at home. Pointing out this easily observed fact is not at all the same as advocating for violence.

maskfairy.bsky.social•22 days ago

I don’t think she was saying that she thinks it should have come back to haunt us. I believe she was saying that historically speaking, we shouldn’t be surprised when the atrocities we commit overseas wash up on our own shores.

Also, do you know who you’re talking to here?

wickdchiq.bsky.social•22 days ago

It’s not whataboutism it’s historical fact that led to the treatment of this man being legalized. Hence the “why should it stay there?”
Trump can do what he does legally because Dubya et al passed the Patriot Act that determined that you could do that legally.
What you’re accusing me of is a reach

foglandia.bsky.social•22 days ago

It’s not legal. Not under current US law.

chanda.bsky.social•22 days ago

I think the “imperial boomerang” analyses about the US are actually not very good ones since they ignore that the US is a settler colonial state built with the labor of and on the backs of enslaved people.

imperatorgabs.bsky.social•22 days ago

I recently read Blood in my Eye, by George Jackson, and feel like the Black antifascist writers have A LOT to say about what's going on in the US right now.

wickdchiq.bsky.social•22 days ago

And yet America practices imperialism and neo-colonialism elsewhere. These are not mutually exclusive concepts. They’re a continuation of exactly those truths you referenced

chanda.bsky.social•22 days ago

I agree but also for this reason what happened in the post-9/11 era was an extension, not a beginning, and what is happening now, is an extension, not a boomerang

insidiouslygrim.bsky.social•22 days ago

But escalating I think.

https://www.providencejournal.com/story/news/local/2025/03/15/rhode-island-doctor-rasha-alawieh-deported-despite-federal-court-order/82441360007/

chanda.bsky.social•22 days ago

Agree that we are seeing an escalation! Not the first time in US history.

haikugoat.bsky.social•22 days ago

I sometimes share the impulse to view 9/11 WoT as a turning point, what with the proliferation of Good Guys Do Torture TV shows and so on, but then I remind myself that that's just cause I'm a Millennial, and that's when *I* came to political consciousness, not when history started.

haikugoat.bsky.social•22 days ago

There's not really that meaningful of a difference b/w Jack Bauer blondly torturing Arabs on 24, and Jack Wayne shooting dehumanizes Native folks in old Westerns.

wickdchiq.bsky.social•22 days ago

Yeah that was a turning point for me too

chanda.bsky.social•22 days ago

I do think it was a turning point in the sense that it was a specific evolutionary moment for American fascism! But yeah, it’s pretty wild to see it as when history began wrt to the US and the Middle East given 1991, the 80s, the 70s, the 60s, and so on 😭

wickdchiq.bsky.social•22 days ago

An imperial boomerang is exactly what it is. It is about the things a country does abroad that come back home in policy, strategy and tactics.

3fecta.bsky.social•22 days ago

Chickens coming home to roost.

chrislarsen.bsky.social•22 days ago

Wasn't there a commentary about Nazi fascism saying that it was just colonialist actions used against Europeans?

chanda.bsky.social•22 days ago

Right, and the US started doing those things in the US first.

chanda.bsky.social•22 days ago

The metaphor of the boomerang — which is an interesting one since it’s based on an Indigenous technology — isn’t the right one for what’s happening in the US.

debbral35328.bsky.social•22 days ago

I'm sorry I'm not an academic, but how exactly is this a controversial take? Reminder Obama promised to end and close GITMO, but didn't. Americans knowingly allowed people including children to be held indefinitely and tortured without any legal recourse. Now. It's being used against US res?

debbral35328.bsky.social•22 days ago

Maybe don't be surprised when you spent decades torturing people? It was NEVER RIGHT! but not surprising it's continuing?

sleepyredpanda.bsky.social•22 days ago

i'm fairly certain that erica is not suggesting that ANYONE "deserves" torture

when the US legitimizes the use of torture for people we don't like, it is inevitable that it will be used against an increasingly larger number of people. many innocents are already tortured daily. his case is horrible

sleepyredpanda.bsky.social•22 days ago

but it's not actually as much of an anomaly as people seem to believe

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