Day responds,
It is those last words that most completely damn the Bush administration as barbarians unfit for leadership of the free world. Few would find appeals to national security very compelling if the president insisted that victory in the War That Dare Not Speak Its Name required feeding the armed forces on the flesh of fallen Iraqis, and yet there is very little evidence, historic or current, that indicates torture will be of any use in turning back the forces of expansionist Islam.
"Cannibalism is necessary to win the War on Terror." Sounds ridiculous, and will likely never be argued. But if one excuses torture, one will excuse other atrocities.
One who says "Torture is necessary to win the War on Terror" is not above saying "Raping Iraqi women and girls is necessary to win the War on Terror." After all, it's another way to tell the Iraqis "we mean business." Don't aid and abet the insurgents, then you don't get raped.
Who knows, maybe it is already policy. Right now, such incidents are reported as "isolated" and "unfortunate," and those who get "caught" by the media are punished. Such was the Abu Ghraib spin of two years ago, when we all knew (or should have known) that even worse things were going on as a matter of policy.
But if barbaric methods are used as standard practice in order to "defend" and "save" a civilization, then that civilization is not worth defending.
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One who says "Torture is necessary to win the War on Terror" is not above saying "Raping Iraqi women and girls is necessary to win the War on Terror."
ReplyDeleteAbsolutely, 100% correct!
The photos (that we know about) at Abu Ghraib may not amount to torture. But
ReplyDeleteif photos and videos came out showing American POWs treated the same way as were the victims of Abu Ghraib, our nation would be outraged, and legitimately so - except for the apologists of Abu Ghraib. For if they utter a peep, they would show themselves to be hysterical, hypocritical idiots.
The problem is the Bush Administration appears to be defining "torture" out of existencce. "That may look like torture to you, but we don't think so..."
And in any case, forcing a person to say what you want them to hear doesn't protect anybody. It just leads to even greater brutality and injustice.
"We have lost liberties to exigent circumstances on numerous occasions in the past, only to have them returned once the exigency subsided, because in the long run, WE ARE THE GOVERNMENT."
ReplyDeleteExcept:
1. We have also lost liberties in the past that were NEVER returned.
2. The chances that liberty lost in the current "crisis" will be regained are next to none. The Administration has talked of this thing going on for decades. It is obvious that they want the War on Terror to work like the War on Poverty and the War on Drugs. They will create excuses to keep it alive. I believe the real purpose is to change fundamentally the indiviudal's relationship to the government, with fear as the excuse.
3. If one vote is just one of hundreds of thousands, just for one seat in a 435-member House of Representatives, one of (often) millions for a seat in the Senate, and one of tens of millions for the President, I don't think we can accurately say that "we are the government." The very structure tends to favor a privileged few with the resources to influence politics and policy.
Well, Selective Service and economic freedom. World War I, Prohibition, the New Deal, World War II, the Cold War, the War on Terror - far from temporary "exigencies," we've seen a never-ending build-up of the State. Robert Higgs has a good article on this.
ReplyDeleteConsider a major change like the 1994 Republican takeover of Congress. In what way has government gotten smaller? Do we have more freedom of speech, or less? More asset forfeiture, or less? The trend goes in one direction, toward the Total State.
You are right, of course, we are the government. The people can force change. But not through the electoral process. That's a sham, and McCain-Feingold Incumbent Protection Act and prohibitive ballot access laws just make it a bigger sham.
We can't overlook the causes of terror - our own 60-year meddling in the politics of the Middle East. We can guard against terror by beefing up border and coastal control, and getting the hell out of other countries.
ReplyDeleteAgain, Selective Serice. It's not that kids are getting drafted, it is that the government claims that right - 13th Amendment prohibition on "involuntary servitude" be damned.
ReplyDeleteAnd asset forfeiture in the War on Drugs. Oh, that money looks "suspicious." We'll just take it!
Any time the burden of proof falls to the accused to get his property back, we're dealing with a thuggish, rights-violating government. Any time a citizen has to justify why he's carrying wads of cash to a cop, we have systematic rights violations - an invasion of privacy.
ReplyDeleteBut these takings by government - outright theft - happens all the time now. It didn't happen before the War on Drugs, at least not nearly on this scale. The freedom to go about your business without being stopped by a stormtrooper is gone.
If you want a specific example of a right taken away, how about the right to make your own choices about what goes into your body? If we can't be free there, then "freedom" has no meaning. The War on Drugs is a complete repudiation of the 9th and 10th Amendments of the Constitution. At least the Prohibitionists had enough respect for the rule of law to amend the Constitution. The War on Drugs is a different animal. Its propenent are freedom's enemies who have done incalculable damage to our country.
That said, maybe I wasn't careful with the point I was making. My point is that the very growth of our government is the very evidence of lost rights and freedoms. The very existence of regulatory agencies is a rights violation of our property. The income tax rates have never shrunk to 1916 levels. Where was the BATFE 100 years ago? The very existence of the agency is a rights violation.
The Department of Health and Human Services - by its very, unconstitutional existence - is a violation of our property rights (our taxes fund the department). You get the idea. Government has always gotten bigger doing things unauthorized by the Constitution and that are unworthy of a free society. It its size, scope, and power, it hasn't come close to going back to 1916 levels. In so doing, it has taken away the rights and freedoms we would have had.
There is no reason for me to believe that, once the government starts spying on Americans without search warrants, and starts to use torture, that these will only be "temporary." Politicians, once having tasted such power, will always claim there is an "emergency" that will require their continued use.