In case you haven't seen it, there is/was a lengthy exchange with commenter UpLateAgain in my Rape is Next post. I didn't have the energy or interest to get into a debate and didn't do a very good job, but it is what counts as "new content" on the blog for today. It can be found here.
UpLateAgain seems to have an inordinate amount of faith in the competence and good will of government officials. The individuals who will be doing the torturing will not be accountable for results, and they have no incentive to moderate their methods.
As an aside on Abu Ghraib, the maltreatment of detainees there by the 95-charley turnkeys was completely gratuitous. 95c's don't interrogate. They just house detainees. Messing around with them was not even part of an intelligence gathering procedure.
As for freedom we've lost and never regained after losing it in an exigency: 1. we never got back the checks and balances of federalism after the Civil War, and we lost any vestige of local sovereignty. 2. we never got back the concept of limited government after the New Deal measures and the total war state built up for WW2. 3. We never meaningfully demobilized from WW2 and have been in a state of pseudo war and mobilization for war ever since with a vast increase in our tax burden and decrease in our safety. 4. We have never retreated from building and growing a massive national security and surveillance apparatus, the cost of which is enormous.
Coercion in a war? Please. War is all about coercion. But violence, including torture, against a noncombatant, which status includes former combatatants taken as prisoner, is illegitimate. I will take the moral high ground any day, thank you very much, and UpLate Again and his ilk can stick their means justify the ends reasoning where the sun don't shine. The circumstances where you know that a detainee has critical information and can extract it by torture will be rare, and it is imprudent to base a policy of torture on the unlikely extreme case. Coerced information is not reliable, and you can bet your ass that detainees are being tortured to secure confessions.
This is my last post on the thread(s); I have to move on.
When cops stop behaving like carjackers and end no-knock raids, perhaps I'll stop calling them stormtroopers.
There are plenty of sites that expose the futility of thw War on Drugs, such as LEAP. What is infuriating, however, is the total lack of respect Drug Warriors have for the Constitution. At least the Prohibitionists had enough respect for it to amend it.
In pure, "ends justify the means" thinking, the War on Drugs is a disaster. That's because limited government is actually better government.
Defending the War on Drugs is telling. It isn't surprising that one who would abandon the rule of law (i.e., the Constitution) in order to wage the War on Drugs would be willing to place unchecked power in the President to wage the endless "War on Terror."
There are no checks and balances anymore. There are no restraints on government power. With the power to spy and torture, the Establishment will have more effective control of both parties and their dissenters - elections will be even more meaningless than they are now.
A tax cut here, some de-regulation there, does not result in smaller government or restored freedom. What the government has given back, it can just as easily take away again. That is the essence of lost freedom. It seems that now, only a cataclysmic change will reverse the tide.
Posts
UpLateAgain seems to have an inordinate amount of faith in the competence and good will of government officials. The individuals who will be doing the torturing will not be accountable for results, and they have no incentive to moderate their methods.
ReplyDeleteAs an aside on Abu Ghraib, the maltreatment of detainees there by the 95-charley turnkeys was completely gratuitous. 95c's don't interrogate. They just house detainees. Messing around with them was not even part of an intelligence gathering procedure.
As for freedom we've lost and never regained after losing it in an exigency: 1. we never got back the checks and balances of federalism after the Civil War, and we lost any vestige of local sovereignty. 2. we never got back the concept of limited government after the New Deal measures and the total war state built up for WW2. 3. We never meaningfully demobilized from WW2 and have been in a state of pseudo war and mobilization for war ever since with a vast increase in our tax burden and decrease in our safety. 4. We have never retreated from building and growing a massive national security and surveillance apparatus, the cost of which is enormous.
Coercion in a war? Please. War is all about coercion. But violence, including torture, against a noncombatant, which status includes former combatatants taken as prisoner, is illegitimate. I will take the moral high ground any day, thank you very much, and UpLate Again and his ilk can stick their means justify the ends reasoning where the sun don't shine. The circumstances where you know that a detainee has critical information and can extract it by torture will be rare, and it is imprudent to base a policy of torture on the unlikely extreme case. Coerced information is not reliable, and you can bet your ass that detainees are being tortured to secure confessions.
This is my last post on the thread(s); I have to move on.
ReplyDeleteWhen cops stop behaving like carjackers and end no-knock raids, perhaps I'll stop calling them stormtroopers.
There are plenty of sites that expose the futility of thw War on Drugs, such as LEAP. What is infuriating, however, is the total lack of respect Drug Warriors have for the Constitution. At least the Prohibitionists had enough respect for it to amend it.
In pure, "ends justify the means" thinking, the War on Drugs is a disaster. That's because limited government is actually better government.
Defending the War on Drugs is telling. It isn't surprising that one who would abandon the rule of law (i.e., the Constitution) in order to wage the War on Drugs would be willing to place unchecked power in the President to wage the endless "War on Terror."
There are no checks and balances anymore. There are no restraints on government power. With the power to spy and torture, the Establishment will have more effective control of both parties and their dissenters - elections will be even more meaningless than they are now.
A tax cut here, some de-regulation there, does not result in smaller government or restored freedom. What the government has given back, it can just as easily take away again. That is the essence of lost freedom. It seems that now, only a cataclysmic change will reverse the tide.