(to continue)
My biggest problem with the War on Terror is not specific issues like waterboarding. My biggest problem is the way in which we as a nation have taken counsel of our fears.
There are evil people in the world. Yep. Got that. A lot of them are Muslims. Got that, too. 9/11 was another "day that will live in infamy". Yep, still with you. The world has crazies and that means it is a dangerous place. And if some crazy blows up my building, I'm dead as the proverbial doornail.
And all that means we still need Marines and the rest to do the nasty bits to protect us. I'm there, too.
But....and this to me is a really HUGE HONKING BUT: when it comes to the design for state action (a/k/a "policy-making"; a/k/a deciding who to "go to war against"), that design *must* not be governed solely or primarily by our fears. And it must not be made without empirical attention to the real risks involved: yes, there are dangers, but before we as a matter of national policy decide its okay to make systematic exceptions to the principles our system is built upon, we had damn well better be sure that the risks are not just real but as big and as personal as the public rhetoric suggests.
And no one, anywhere, has yet demonstrated to me that the risks to the average American justify the systematic freedom-trampling of the "Patriot" Act nor the millions of searches daily made by the TSA without a warrant and without probable cause.
Frankly, any constitutional violations by the professional interrogators at Gitmo are dwarfed by the systematic rape of individual rights done in the name of the War on Terror and assented to by my fellow citizens via airport searches, victim disarmament, and the dozens (hundreds? thousands) of rules of the Patriot Act and regulations promulgated under its delegated authority.
I no more think every action taken at Gitmo "crossed the constitutional line too far" than I think every one serving in Vietnam was a baby killer because Lt. Calley crossed the line at My Lai.
But I do think our political leaders and generals (most generals are just politicians who wear a lot of fruit salad) have been regularly and systematically crossing the line in their pursuit of the War on Terror.
In *theory* there is nothing wrong with invoking national security. But, if one agrees with the first parts of the Declaration of Independence, "national security" comes second and "individual rights" come first. One can *legitimately* be invoked only when those doing the invoking have sufficiently made the case of necessity. And sufficiently making the case must be more than simply playing on the fears of violent death at the hands of bad guys. Sufficiently making the case means (i) showing that the risks are quantitatively and qualitatively bigger than than the destruction of rights; and (ii) demonstrating that the measures taken actually do end up reducing the risks.
And neither (i) nor (ii) have they done.
And, and what bothers me even more than the politicans' actions, I also think otherwise good and normal Americans have too often been letting them do so because those good and normal Americans have taken too much counsel of their fears.
There are a hell of a lot of risks out there that are bigger than the chance of dying at the hand of some terrorist whack job: dying of cancer or tuberculosis or heart disease come to mind, getting killed by a drunk driver, being killed by a jealous spouse, being collateral damage in a gang shooting, dying of hyperthermia when your car stalls on a snowy road in the middle of a blizzard, having too many concussions from playing football.
And NONE of those justify the taking of freedoms from each other that we've gone along with in our fear of terrorist Muslims.
Any more than George III and his ministers were justified in
their abuses and their usurpations.
IMO.
And do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind, that you may prove what is that good and acceptable and perfect will of God.
Romans 12:2 (NKJV)