It is a moral outrage to use waterboarding on Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, but there's no real issue with launching a drone strike on Anwar al-Alwaki.
If I'm reading this correctly, we should just go ahead and kill anyone in Al Qaeda instead of trying to take them alive. Or am I missing something? Nuance is tough sometimes.
8 comments:
would like to hear an explanation from somebody (ahem, Rich) on this one.
I didn't realize I had taken on the role of White Press spokesman.
You will get no defense of this from me. It's pretty clear that Awlaki was not a particularly good guy – he's alleged to have advocated some terrible things and his followers have been linked to terrorism, including Fort Hood. But is that supposed to mean we can start offing every jackass with a soapbox? I hope not. I am just as troubled by this as I am by officially sanctioned torture. Look, the targeted killing of bin Laden was completely acceptable. He was directly linked to the financing and organising of terrorist attacks against us and our allies. This was a well established fact before his death.
But where is evidence to suggest Awlaki is tied to any substantive support for terrorism?
This is a real game changer. We are asserting the right to target people for their ideas rather than their deeds. So a person...a citizen...who might inspire others to commit violent acts can now be eliminated without any due process?
All I can do is hope they had more than they are showing us on this guy. Some material evidence that he actually committed or was planning to commit a terrorist act. But I am deeply troubled by this.
You guys keep misreading me on this. This is not a political thing. It's about all of us. I will say this for about the fifth time on here: The last President who voluntarily surrendered power was George Washington. Obama has clearly been better than Bush on
prosecuting the war on terror while adhering to the framework of US and international laws. But he hasn't surrendered any of the powers Bush grabbed in the wake of 9/11. And I knew he wouldn't. Nobody who wants to be President, with the exception of Ron Paul, would. It's not in these peoples constitution. That is why they are running for President.
And when I saw people who I knew knew better acquiescing to the right to torture, I let them know I thought they were being awfully short sighted. I still think I was right. And I think Obama is clearly wrong here.
Regards,
Rich
Rich,
Your comment sounds pretty reasonable to me.
torture, torture, torture...
what is 'torture' to you, and what would be 'enhanced interogation'?
we need to speak the same language if we are to have a discussion.
Rich,
I assume you don't have to speak for anyone but yourself. And while I was curious concerning your take on the matter, I wasn't calling you out personally.
Gino makes the relevant point. We don't have any agreement on what constitutes torture in this country. And I'm not sure we ever can. That's always been my problem with the whole discussion. There's no agreement on what "officially sanctioned torture" is, or whether such an official sanction exists.
More generally, I'd like it a lot better if weren't involved in many things in the world, but we are. I personally would like to extricate ourselves from the Middle East as much as possible in the coming years. It's possible that we will be able to do so sooner than later because of other things that are happening, especially one state to my west. But the world isn't about to leave us to our own devices, either.
For an agreement as to what constitutes torture, we could actually go back to the Latin "to twist" and infer that true torture inflicts physical harm, no?
mark is concerned about north dakota. but why?
mark is concerned about north dakota. but why?
To a certain extent, what's going on in North Dakota could help us to lessen our role in certain parts of the world. And it's a deeply happy thing....
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