Freedom and Detainees
President Bush is quoted today as saying it is "absurd" to criticize our handling of the people we have detained at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. Since a veil of secrecy has been raised around the place we can't know for certain what is taking place there. But why did we choose a piece of Cuba in which to imprison these people, if not to avoid the constraints of our own laws that require certain basic rights for prisoners held in this country? What about the flights we are hearing about, of jets chartered to the CIA, spiriting prisoners to countries not bound by our rules about torturing prisoners?
One of two things must be true about all this. Either the threat of terrorism is so potent that it must be met with the abandoning of all our historic guarantees - innocent until proven guilty, the right of the accused to be represented by council - or we have finally simply decided we are no longer going to hold to those standards. For whatever reason.
If the first is true - that we cannot afford the luxury of the freedoms we have enjoyed because of the danger posed by terrorism - then the terrorists have won. They have forced us to become like them, to regard any means necessary to prevail as legitimate. If I am being cavalier when I say that I would rather take my chances living in an open and free society than try to find safety by jetisoning those freedoms, so be it.
If, on the other hand, it turns out that the Bush administration has, for whatever reasons, used the terror of our time to gain a stranglehold on the way we live our daily lives, they are going to have a lot to answer for.
And I believe they will fail.
One of two things must be true about all this. Either the threat of terrorism is so potent that it must be met with the abandoning of all our historic guarantees - innocent until proven guilty, the right of the accused to be represented by council - or we have finally simply decided we are no longer going to hold to those standards. For whatever reason.
If the first is true - that we cannot afford the luxury of the freedoms we have enjoyed because of the danger posed by terrorism - then the terrorists have won. They have forced us to become like them, to regard any means necessary to prevail as legitimate. If I am being cavalier when I say that I would rather take my chances living in an open and free society than try to find safety by jetisoning those freedoms, so be it.
If, on the other hand, it turns out that the Bush administration has, for whatever reasons, used the terror of our time to gain a stranglehold on the way we live our daily lives, they are going to have a lot to answer for.
And I believe they will fail.
posted by Blayney at 1:26 PM
1 Comments:
They will almost certainly fail.
To call any reputable organization's report "absurd" is not what I expect from the leaders of our country. The "Gulag of our time" reference might be a bit hyperbolic, but it is not absurd.
The criticism of Newsweek is along the same lines. The White House knew that there was corroborating evidence. The FBI had that evidence. To blame Newsweek is reprehensible.
President Bush commented today that he did not know enough about the circumstances surrounding Watergate to comment on whether Deep Throat was a patriotic hero. In and of itself, that scares me.
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