Outlaw Outsourcing
Whether or not the U.N. always produces good reports, and whether or not they added substantial new information with the recent report about "ousourced" tourture, it is a healthy reminder of what this administration believes, and their consequential actions. So no one has a smoking gun linking Rumsfeld or the White House to the torture at Abu Ghraib… so what? The administration likes to play semantic games whereby “waterboarding” and the like don’t qualify as torture. But apparently that’s not good enough. The President refuses to actually admit that is he bound by laws that prevent him from ordering torture. Still not good enough. The fallback position: we can always export someone for torture by a cooperative government that’s not even nominally restrained by our pesky little laws. I’d mostly come to believe that anti-trade activists were wrong about globalization leading to a “race to the bottom.” Now, apparently, they have a point.
It is really shocking that people continue to defend this. The defense amounts to little more than: “Hey, if they want to spy on terrorists, or torture them, or string them up… what do I care? I wanna be safe!” The fact is, at this point many people have been locked up for years as alleged terrorists, then released for lack of any real case to be made against them. If no innocent people have been tortured, that would be an amazing stroke of luck, given this track record. What, exactly, does it take to qualify as a runaway, outlaw presidency? If only he’d have an adulterous affair with a young woman… oh boy, then we’d have him!
Look, this is really a simple choice: are we going to be the kind of people who torture or aren’t we? For a little further explication, try Michael Kinsley’s typically excellent essay about “salami slicing.” If we’re the kind of people who believe in torture, then let’s just say so, and be prepared to accept the moral implications. If we’re not the kind of people who believe in torture, someone needs to tell the President. Use simple terms and speak slowly and clearly. He’s not stupid, he’s just a little verbally challenged.
It is really shocking that people continue to defend this. The defense amounts to little more than: “Hey, if they want to spy on terrorists, or torture them, or string them up… what do I care? I wanna be safe!” The fact is, at this point many people have been locked up for years as alleged terrorists, then released for lack of any real case to be made against them. If no innocent people have been tortured, that would be an amazing stroke of luck, given this track record. What, exactly, does it take to qualify as a runaway, outlaw presidency? If only he’d have an adulterous affair with a young woman… oh boy, then we’d have him!
Look, this is really a simple choice: are we going to be the kind of people who torture or aren’t we? For a little further explication, try Michael Kinsley’s typically excellent essay about “salami slicing.” If we’re the kind of people who believe in torture, then let’s just say so, and be prepared to accept the moral implications. If we’re not the kind of people who believe in torture, someone needs to tell the President. Use simple terms and speak slowly and clearly. He’s not stupid, he’s just a little verbally challenged.
posted by wRONgainey at 9:20 AM
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