[Reuters] CIA Holds Top Al Qaeda Suspects in Jordan

I hear the siren of the PC Police....

What identifies America's greatness is how she treats her own not the enemy. That's why people feel so threatened by the Patriot Act. Extraordinary measures for extraordinary times. We also have done a better job historically than most of treating the enemy fairly.

But these terrorists are a new kind of enemy who were not conscripted by their government to fight in some war. These are rabid individuals who are willing and maybe even eager to die and to kill as many innocents as they can with their supposed martyrdom.

We can't be afraid of every slippery slope.

 

The Geneva Convention guarantees those rights.

 

The most slippery of all slopes is the one that erodes our rights. What makes America great is the idea of justice for ALL, a belief in freedom, democracy, humanity, etc.

Not stealing is something that applies to everyone. Just because someone isn't an American doesn't mean it's ok to steal from them. In the same way torturing somebody is bad. It's not only bad when you do it to Americans. It's bad when it's done to anybody.

You can say that is PC but those principles and values have been around a lot longer than the PC movement.

I agree that there are rabid individuals who are eager to die taking out as many innocent Americans as they can with them. And if we let those kinds of people shake us from our moral stance, and our values, then there mission is a success. By torturing others we are giving them success. We don't have to. There has been no proof that torturing these people has been a big help to us.

 

Due process in this case isn't to protect the terrorists it's to protect people from torturing innocents. Just because they aren't Americans doesn't mean they can't still be innocent. If we torture someone who is innocent, that isn't excused because we weren't obligated to give them due process.

 

No, it doesn't. It protects soliders a nation states, not supranational terrorist organizations. Just as it doesn't protect a spy, or a soldier out of uniform (assumed to be a spy).

 

Exactly how do you know that the people being arrested are "supranational" terrorists and not simply Iraqis unhappy with being occupied? Even rebels are afforded rights under the Geneva Conventions and by all accounts, the VAST majority of those being arrested in Iraq are Iraqi citizens, not foreigners.

You are supporting behavior that has been banned for good reason. If we want to be a "shining beacon of light" for the world, we need to act like it.

 

Oh gee, you mean its not only Americans that are innocent? C'mon FB.

My point is that 'due process' is too vague. What do you mean by due process? There should be some review aside from the arresting or in this case capturing authority? No doubt there is review from very high positions for people like the Sheik. The soldiers who captured him are not the one's deciding whether or not he's guilty. We aren't talking abu grab here, where people were swept up in groups, we're talking about specific high level AQ members. Do they have to be indicted in a US court? That's silly and the reason I point out that our Constitution (and the courts that sprouted from it) were not meant to be arbiters of every conflict, but only of those in the US. This is true of the UN declaration against torture as well, which speaks to what happens 'within (a country's) jurisdiction.' Undoubtably these guys are getting some kind of 'due process,' because they wouldn't be considered 'top level' otherwise.

As to whether we should have a moral imperative against torture, I don't think we can operate in a black and white world. If we decided to neither aid nor cooperate with those who torture, for example, we would have to cut all dealings with the PRC, Russia, and a whole list of other countries. That doesn't sound like something that would be good for the world to me. So where does that leave us? The middle world of gray I guess. I think this is very hard, like SJC.

If someone is clearly not innocent, but a member of AQ, can they be tortured? Or is torture of anyone out of the question? If a nuke was going to go off in NYC in three hours, and we'd just captured the guy who planted it - would you, like FB, say 'screw it on principle?' I'm afraid I wouldn't be able to do that, and that guy (or gal - don't want to be sexist!) would be in a world of hurt.

 

If you're talking about the Geneva Convention of the Treatment of Prisoners of War, then no, it doesn't cover terrorists. The Sheik is not a rebel (and I'm not even sure rebels are covered, they definitely aren't if they're dressed as civilians), he's a terrorist. We are not talking about Abu Grab but high level AQ people. If your only argument is that innocents might be tortured then that clearly is NOT the case with the sheik.

 

I was just saying that rounding up people might bring you some innocents. I'm also not saying we have to cut off all contact with nations who torture. But we should try and use diplomacy and pressure against those countries to eliminate torture.

 

If we value our principles more than our lives, or don't want to be hypocritical, or don't want to abandon our principles because its 'cheap and easy,' then how can we have open trade and cooperation with countries like China and Russia? Wouldn't shutting down relations with them be the course more true to our principles? How can we daily profit from the workings of those governments and still be true to our principles? Aren't we valuing money over our principles? In your earlier posts your talk about upholding our principles as if in a vaccuum. Better to die than violate them. Now you say you don't want to do that. You want to continue to make money off our cooperation with these agents, but maybe make some shallow efforts to change them (hey China, stop torturing people, will ya?). I'm confused.

 

I have had a problem with China's most favored status. That was among my biggest disagreements with Clinton's foreign policy. I never said we should shut down relations. But we don't have to support them with aid packages. We could tie aid to humanitarian reforms, etc. Depending on the level the other nations vilate human rights then we should cut off economic relations with them. Our nation is one of consumers and I am all for restricting trade with any nation that has continued, gross human rights violations. In the outsourcing thread a while back I did talk about not supporting inhumane conditions in order to make a profit. I'm not putting money above principles. I think economic benefits, boycotts, aid programs, etc. should be among the tools we use when dealing with other nations to try and help spread our principles.

I don't understand why you are calling efforts to stop the human rights abuses shallow.

Also there is a huge difference in what you do yourself and what someone else does. We may not like it when other nations use torture, but there is a limit to what we can do about it. We can definitely control whether or not we ourselves use torture.

While another nation may not hold those same values that Americans have professed to hold in as high of an esteem. We bill ourselves as a force what's right, justice, freedom, decency etc. China does not.

That doesn't excuse anything China does, and we should be doing more to stop the Chinese from their human rights abuses.

 

Because condemning a practice as a moral imperative on one hand, and gaining benefit from the same agent on the other is a bit shallow. Either you place it above all other criteria (as in 'better to die than') or you don't. If it is, as you indicate, a binary choice, one or the other, then mixing and matching (maintaining relations and subsequent benefits) is shallow and fails the test of being an imperative.

 

The difference is that we can't be personally responsible for others. Like I said we should try and use persuasion and pressure to get others as well. But we can't choose their values for them. We can choose our values for ourselves. We can try and spread our values, using legitimate means.

As I have said I would be in favor of not profiting by those who are excessive in their human rights decisions. So I don't think it's good to profit by torture. Even if our prices go up because we don't trade with China, or whatever. I do feel that torture and human rights are more important.

But I don't advocate cutting off all contact, because we should be using contact to try and influence them.

The test for being an imperitive is one we set for ourselves. We can't make it an imperitive for everyone else, because we don't have that kind of control.

 

Sheesh it's simple. Torture is wrong, it's always wrong and in no case is it justified. In the most extreme immanent danger hypotheticals you might present there is no legal or ethical way for an agent of the United States to engage in torture without faceing prosecution. If you don't stand for what's right then your no better than the dellusional zealots you oppose. Yea it puts us at a disadvantage in warfare, the same disadvantage as not using chemical or biological weapons or political assination or bombing civil populations into oblivion. It's tough to be the good guys.