Letters to the Editor
RobKill
Published Letters: 3 Editor's Choice: 1
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The whole project is at best obscene and immoral, and should be illegal
[Read the article: The CIA's latest "ghost detainee"]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]I'm glad that Salon continues to focus on the abhorrent and immoral interrogation and imprisonment practices in use by our country with the approval (indeed, the insistence) of the president and his henchmen. It's disgraceful that the reporting by Salon and other sources has not brought these practices to an abrupt end, and that these abuses have not brought down the Bush government and put senior members in prison.
I think a line in this article hints at the underlying reasons that American outrage over these matters hasn't been greater. The author notes that, shortly after 9/11, Bush signed an order "authorizing broad covert action by the CIA to capture, detain or kill members of al-Qaida anywhere in the world". This order in itself is an outrage against the rule of law. By what right does our government "authorize" the killing of anyone, anywhere, without due process, trial, and all of the protections of an impartial judicial proceeding?
So long as we accept the idea that such an order falls within the powers of the president, arguments about the treatment of people "detained" (disgusting euphemism) as a result of the order will remain largely academic, exercises in hair-splitting. The only way to challenge the torture and secret prison policies effectively is to attack the root assumptions they depend on. We must condemn any extra-legal actions by any part of our government. Cut off funding for "black" operations. Demand that our government act always and only through legal means, both within our borders and beyond. Until we do that, the torturers and assassins will continue their work, while we distract ourselves with disputes over which agencies are covered by which laws, which practices constitute torture rather than "mere" abuse, and so forth.
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Sad
[Read the article: Stop lying to yourself. You love Dennis Kucinich]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]I don't get this article's tone at all. Does the thick sarcasm and the fixation on the UFO sighting hide a real admission that we ought to have the courage of our convictions and support Kuchinich? Or is it deployed in order to validate our cowardly preference for candidates who could keep their lunch money out of Nicolas Sarkozy's hands?
Either way, it's a sad testament to the state of affairs in the liberal/progressive/Democrat/whatever bloc. The ideals and positions we claim to admire just aren't cool, and so when the chips are down we don't back them, any more than we backed the poor kid with thick glasses who was getting the crap beaten out of him in the schoolyard. Sure, we want peace and justice, but not if it means standing beside a dude in a Phish shirt?
The most depressing thing is that Traister recognizes this, but can't even bring herself to raise her point without couching it in a bunch of smart-ass, distancing "humor". She seems to have caught a glimpse of herself in the mirror, and it bothered her, but in the end she sides with the cool crowd, chooses sneers over substance, nervous laughter over embarassing earnestness, and leaves the nerd to his thrashing.
This is why we always lose. The right isn't afraid to embrace its principles, but the left is not-so-secretly ashamed of its own. We don't need Ann Coulter to "emasculate" us -- we're quite good enough at that ourselves.
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Problems on two levels
[Read the article: Is Briana Waters a terrorist?]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]It's shocking that Waters was convicted on the basis of the evidence presented in this article. It's always hard to second-guess juries based on press reports, but this case is obviously absurd (unless the article is witholding some major information). Waters has suffered the fate of many of the Guantanamo prisoners, and the thousands rotting in Iraqi jails -- essentially convicted (in Waters's case, literally) based on nothing more than another person's accusation. That's the kind of thing courts and trials were developed to prevent, not abet.
But the terrorism angle deserves severe criticism as well. It's outrageous to allow the government to apply harsher penalties for crimes simply because they were motivated, in whole or part, by a desire to influence government policy. We may wish to condemn certain methods (such as arson) of registering dissent or protest, but certainly the motive is more admirable than simple greed, or personal vendetta, or any of the motives that drive similar crimes not categorized as terrorism. Which act was worse, the firefighter setting a wildfire in hopes of more overtime, or the ELF torching the university office in an attempt to express and enact their principles? I'm not saying that the ELF's act was right, or that no punishment should be meted out, but if anything the political motivation strikes me as a mitigating factor, not an aggravating one.
We must recall our own nation's history. How can we celebrate the Boston Tea Party and condemn the ELF? Was the dumping of all that tea not terrorism simply because the dumpers ended up winning the war? If we're willing to extend our understanding and even admiration to the Boston vandals of 1773, then we need to adopt a similar position when dealing with others who commit similar acts against property out of a desire to protest government and social policies.