Christian Democrats in the United States

Monday, August 24, 2009 5:16 PM

due process about cia abuse allegations is a good thing

This WSJ Editorial is a typical response of the threatened power mongers in the industrialized murder system.

If it is true, as the Wall St. Journal Editor asserts, that a nearby gunshot, a power drill threat and cigarette smoke are "all that the uproar over 'torture' is about," then the CIA has nothing to worry about. If we think in terms of the twisted inquisitorial logic they want the power to use against any and all suspects, then after all, if the CIA has done nothing wrong, they have nothing to worry about by being investigated.

Water-boarding is certainly more harsh than those three things, and we know that happened under direction of the justice department, so we already know that the WSJ Editor is spinning the details to hide worse offenses from the public mind. That is a crying shame, that the Wall St. Journal panders to the lowest common denominator (of its market).

Our system of justice is not inquisitorial, and that is the point. The fifth amendment is not only the right not to incriminate one's self on the stand, it is the right not to be insulted by accusatory prosecutors with no evidence and not a leg to stand on. That kind of justice system is exactly the kind the terrorists claim they want to impose on the world, clothed in religious garments. That kind of justice system is what we are supposed to be fighting, because when instituted with industry, it destroys freedom and runs rampant, thirsting for blood on a massive scale. Then the ideals exploited for its construction are abandoned, and even the noblest people involved in its origins are obliterated.

To avoid the terror of an inquisitorial state, we create checks and balances against the tendency of human institutions to favor that method of operation. That means that no agency or officer of government can be given special treatment under the law. As far as secrecy, in any interrogation scenario, a hardened terrorist will be a good judge of how much someone is bluffing. Or, they simply will not care if they are killed anyway, because they have deluded themselves with visions of martyrdom.

Most human storytelling is about the hero struggle against unbelievable odds - but it turns out most people want to do good works for God in their lives anyway, so in the long run I hope we'll be okay. If you can imagine yourself a terrorist for a moment, however someone gets into that, they would have to believe themselves to be a hero struggling against the forces of evil. Let's imagine that Hitler won world war two, and now the conflict is between nazi-fascist America and islamic-fascist Asia. (How does that scenario avoid global nuclear war?) Certainly, the United Nazis would be torturing islamic terrorists with acid, electricity, family killings, vivisection, any number of unimaginable horrors.

Yet, because humans are tenacious creatures, people would resist. There is simply no point to torturing people's senses, and if there is no point, then there is no threat in the long run from either bluffing or actually carrying out the threats. The only way to "win" this conflict is a "mutual win." The other alternative is "mutual kill." The way to win is to convince the intellect of human beings, Muslim or not, that the United States is better than that. We must convince terrorists, and people the terrorists appeal to, to examine themselves, to ask if they may be deluded by people who imprint and mis-use that hero complex on them for their own gain. Many people on both sides are deluded by that hero complex into committing senseless violence. The mutual win is when we both step down from our bloody altars, sit down together in the ashes, let go of our sorrow and cry. It would be over.

In the Muslim ethos, one might say Mohammed was a revolutionary, he changed that part of the world, he forced people out of the sterile darkness they lived in at the time, and that change was like a birth pang for society and culture, which flourished in variety, novelty and intellect for a brief time. I daresay many cultures purporting to be "more Islamist" than each other, men like flamboyant apes puffing for mates and subjugating their women and opponents with force, have taken their minds a step back to a time far before Mohammed, before Jesus, and before Moses. We have been given so much more to work with, so much potential for beauty, and people who set up governments like that squander their potential in blood. Any successful government in the modern world must provide a stable platform for constant change. Public, open, democratic government is the only way to accomplish that.

When Atty. Gen. Holder said it would be "unfair to prosecute... for conduct that was sanctioned in advance," he was wrong. That argument says a soldier "just following orders" is always right, even when those orders are illegal. Due to our essential need for checks and balances in government, under the Bush administration, the CIA should have known better, the CIA should have pushed back against orders from the Justice Department and the White House that were obviously morally wrong and illegal by violating core principles of common law jurisprudence.

The soldier counter-argument, that jarheads can't be legal scholars, does not apply, because these aren't GIs, they are educated, trained CIA interrogators. Besides, Army regulations for proper conduct of field soldiers under command are extremely clear. Mỹ Lai must never happen again. In cases of abuse, when command has deviated from the psyche of civilized, peace-loving people, when the actions are not tactical and disciplined but are offensive against all civilization, soldiers are obligated to mutiny, preferably relieving their command into custody but fighting if necessary. They must risk death to take the matter to higher command above their commander's head, they must risk court martial to do the right thing. If necessary they must take the matter out of the military, above the President's command, to the courts, Congress and the public. It's the right thing to do, dumb-ass, so do it. It's not hard to figure those things out.

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