My Country, Then and Now
Maybe it's just because it's just those it's-3:30-a.m.-and-here-I-am-back-in-the-office blues talkin', but this op-ed by Brother Tom, about our current treatment of prisoners in the War on Terra as compared to George Washington's treatment of prisoners during the Revolution, really got to me. Or maybe it's because of the overwhelming feeling I've been having of late that the country I fell in love with as a kid may be rapidly disappearing. Anybody who doesn't worry that we have become the Bad Guys isn't paying attention. It's easy, see, to become the Bad Guys when you are fighting the Worse Guys.
I saw this pattern before during the Cold War (with regard to our actions in Central America in particular): we find ourselves fighting a really bad lot. We come to think that extraordinary measures are permissible to defeat them. So we end up doing things that any even halfway sensible person can see are wrong. Then the worst among us argue that what we're doing is permitted on account of how terrible our enemies are. Consequently, our (terrible) enemies in effect set the standards by which we judge the rightness of our actions. But of course (a) they are terrible in combination with (b) anything we do is permissible so long as it is better than what they do leads to moral disaster.
Maybe it's just because it's just those it's-3:30-a.m.-and-here-I-am-back-in-the-office blues talkin', but this op-ed by Brother Tom, about our current treatment of prisoners in the War on Terra as compared to George Washington's treatment of prisoners during the Revolution, really got to me. Or maybe it's because of the overwhelming feeling I've been having of late that the country I fell in love with as a kid may be rapidly disappearing. Anybody who doesn't worry that we have become the Bad Guys isn't paying attention. It's easy, see, to become the Bad Guys when you are fighting the Worse Guys.
I saw this pattern before during the Cold War (with regard to our actions in Central America in particular): we find ourselves fighting a really bad lot. We come to think that extraordinary measures are permissible to defeat them. So we end up doing things that any even halfway sensible person can see are wrong. Then the worst among us argue that what we're doing is permitted on account of how terrible our enemies are. Consequently, our (terrible) enemies in effect set the standards by which we judge the rightness of our actions. But of course (a) they are terrible in combination with (b) anything we do is permissible so long as it is better than what they do leads to moral disaster.
posted by Winston Smith at
4:18 AM
1 Comments:
I've long considered Friedman the only sane person at the NYT.
Humane treatment of prisoners is something we all agree with, I think. Note that the prisoners were killed "in what Army and Navy investigators have concluded or suspect were acts of criminal homicide."
So our policy is NOT to approve.
In the case of "torturing" (I use scare quotes, because this is not proven) al-Qaedas, they are combatants out of uniform, which according to tradition and even the Geneva Convention are spies, not prisoners of war.
Spies may be killed on the spot. A bit of "coercive questioning" is not out of order.
Even still, I would want lives to be directly at stake, not just fishing for general info. On the other hand, if using kid gloves on the guilty costs the lives of innocents, I don't see that as inherently moral.
Post a Comment
Subscribe to Post Comments [Atom]
<< Home