Lindsey Graham Gets Detainee Rights…Right
By Justin Gardner | Related entries in The War On Terrorism, WarThe Republican Senator from South Carolina sums up my thoughts on torture with this passage alone:
By standardizing procedures in one document, our troops will know what’s in and out of bounds. To attempt to recapture the moral high ground, we also reaffirm our long-held position that federal agencies will not engage in techniques that violate standards against torture or inhumane treatment of detainees under the laws of armed conflict.Any efforts to create exemptions to the McCain amendment will, in my opinion, do far more harm than good, as they may set precedents that could jeopardize our troops in future conflicts. We will win this war by showcasing the differences between the United States and the enemy.
Indeed.
Becoming like our enemy will only further turn the hearts and minds of the world against us. Many of you may not consider that a very important fight to win (”global test” and all that), but trust me…please…it’s essential.
This entry was posted on Tuesday, December 6th, 2005 and is filed under The War On Terrorism, War. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
December 6th, 2005 at 9:34 pm
I’ve said it before, I’ll say it again: Lindsay Graham looks like a goober, sounds like a goober and yet, is not a goober.
December 7th, 2005 at 11:31 am
As I’ve mentioned elsewhere on Donklephant, my problem with the McCain amendment is that the definition of what is and is not acceptable practice really needs to be part of the amendment itself. Passing the buck to the military to write its own internal rules not only leaves the military open to second-guessing, but also strikes me as a cowardly attempt to avoid a public debate upon what exactly constitutes torture.
Did our nuking of two Japanese cities to end WWII – which was not just like, but well beyond what our enemy had ever done to us – turn the hearts and minds of the rest of the world against us? Also as I’ve mentioned at greater length elsewhere on Donklephant, I don’t buy the “moral high ground” meme when it comes to warfare. If torture were proven to be an essential and irreplaceable tactic in this war I might support it in spite of my moral objections, just as I have no problem with the U.S. killing civilians by the hundreds of thousands in Hiroshima and Nagasaki to avoid an even bloodier ground invasion of Japan. But I’m nowhere near convinced that torture is really that critical to American victory.
December 7th, 2005 at 11:34 am
Note: By “elsewhere on Donklephant” in my previous post, in both cases I refer specifically to the “Hanson on Torture” comments.