Honestly, I was 100% sure that someone would accuse me of melodrama as I posted that. Thanks for proving me right. The truth is, this is how I feel.
That we have gone so far astray that we believe that it is ok to torture people, that we are willing to turn over so much liberty because we want to feel safe and what the hell the State probably wont abuse the extra power anyway and aw shucks only people with stuff to hide need to worry anyway. These are things that, to be honest, depress the hell out of me.
Yeah, you’re right. I hadn’t really read all the posts in the thread so I’m sure I just missed the FDR bashing posts.
Look, I don’t agree with what FDR did. I don’t agree with what Bush is doing. I was simply trying to enlighten some myopic posters who seem to focus all their hatred on the present. Certainly they would have less hatred to spew if the Bush administration had learned from the folly of FDR, but the way some of these guys carry on you would think that they believe that Bush invented this stuff.
Since we both agree that we have experienced threats to liberty before, let’s just carry on. I’m absolutely not trying to apologize for or condone the actions during WWII or today.
By this reasoning, do you believe that because nobody has mentioned Pol Pot, Francisco Franco or Stalin, they must agree with what they did (or are ignorant of their history)?
Does hating the past change things for you? Where do you reside in the time-space continuum? Perhaps, however, the myopia that must be corrected is not on the political side of the spectrum you think it is.
I rather like G. Gordon Liddy’s explanation of his position – he is on record as stating that he did what he did to save the Republic, and was willing to be punished to the full extent of the law for it when he got caught.
The obvious implication: If you think it’s truly necessary to beat information out of somebody to prevent a nuke from going off in Manhattan, do it, and go to prison for it like a man. No changes to the rules, no special permissions, no nothing.
I’m afraid you won’t be advancing to the next round of American Dictator.
The correct answer is the one I already gave – you don’t “endorse” or “authorize” anything. If some of your agents do illegal stuff, you use the information they get, sure, but you disavow them and leave them to twist in the wind.
If the hat is stocked with the names of “People Who Have Really Annoyed The People In Power” then there is adequate historical precedent for expecting precisely that.
Duke, of course this isn’t just about Bush, and it certainly is valid to point out that liberal democratic government has many times in the past been threatened by overreactions during “emergencies”. Just as long as we don’t try to use a tu quoque argument, defending our current policies by invoking the bad policies of the past. Torture and indefinate detainment are bad now, and they were bad in WWII, and they were bad in the Civil War, and they were bad in Ancient Rome.
As for the old ticking nuclear bomb scenario. Sure, if you are morally certain that a terrorist can tell you the location of a nuclear bomb if you resort to torture, go ahead and torture him for the information. But you aren’t going to get pre-approval for your torture. If the information you gain by torture isn’t worth losing your career and potentially going to jail over, then is the information really all that important? A nuclear bomb destroying Manhatten is worth risking jail to defuse. A random Iraqi guy brought in because he was suspected of being a member of a terrorist group isn’t…after all, in 99.9999% of the cases detainment of the suspected terrorist neutralizes him as a terrorist, if he is a terrorist. And if you want to roll up his organization and get effective information from him, there are better, more careful ways to do so.
The biggest problem with authorizing torture or “aggressive interrogation” is that it become impossible to control who gets subjected to mistreatment. At Abu Graib, the policy was that if you were a detainee there you were fair game for mistreatment, after all, these guys are terrorists, right? A “gloves off, no more hands behind our back” attitude is misguided. Sure, we can destroy any site, kill everyone there, or arrest any person we choose. The trouble with the insurgency is that we don’t know which sites it would be helpful to destroy, which people would be helpful to shoot, and who it would be helpful to arrest. Bombing more, killing more and arresting more will hurt our war effort without good intelligence. Turning the Iraqi populace against us is the surest way to dry up that intelligence, and bombing, killing and arresting people at random wis the surest way to turn the Iraqis against us.
Which is why I conclude that the only way to prevent the rot from spreading is to withhold any sort of authorization (i.e. the Feds do what they think they gotta do, and take their prison sentences and opprobrium like men afterwards).
If someone “appears” to be involved in terrorist activity then due process and the bill of rights should be discarded by our government?
It wasn’t too long ago that some conservative pundits were likening liberals to terrorists. The fact that these popular media figures can seriously make these comparisons with people listening and believing and the fact that people like you exist that believe it is OK to trash the Constitution of the U.S. in order to get a debatable increase in security scares the crap out of me more than any Muslim extremist sitting in a cave in Pakistan.
YOU are the biggest danger to me and mine that I see! And I say that as a patriot.
Due process unless?
Our laws say even the “guilty as hell” get due process.
Evil is not an American, not in my book. He and his kind are dangerous fools, willing to accept the most disgusting policies and acts, in the name of “good”, willing to accept the trashing of everything the country was supposed to be, in the name of false “patriotism”, willing to sacrifice the innocent along with the guilty. As long as it’s someone else, it’s all good? Bullshit.
Necessity is the plea for every infringement of human freedom It is the argument of tyrants; it is the creed of slaves.
–William Pitt (1759-1806)
Quis custodiet ipsos custodes? - Who watches the watchmen?"
– Juvenal, Satires, VI, 347
"Those who deny freedom to others deserve it not for themselves. "
Abraham Lincoln
"We cannot defend freedom abroad by deserting it at home. "
Edward R. Murrow
Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities.
Voltaire
“There is no crueler tyranny than that which is perpetrated under the shield of law and in the name of justice.”
– Baron de Montesquieu
He who allows oppression, shares the crime.
-Erasmus Darwin, grandfather of Charles Darwin
Now, when is Evil One going to revisit the thread and deal with the solution we’ve set forth for him? (Surely he isn’t going to complain that it’s “unfair”, having himself explicitly rejected that notion as relevant to the cold cruel pragmatic world we live in…)