This is an interesting piece by Krauthammer --- in a kind of perverse sense.
Torture is okay when you have the “ticking time-bomb situation.”
Ah, but how do you know that the prisoner under your power has placed a time bomb? Who decides that he qualifies for the rack? And of course, as always, quis custodiet ipsos custodes --- who is around to police those who have the power to put people on the rack?
This whole discussion has a kind of 15th and 16th century flavor to it, at least for those of us who are of Anglo Celtic origins. Our peoples went through all of this with Henry XIII, the Star Chamber, and Elizabeth I, and came out the other side with better solutions.
Krauthammer doesn’t like our solutions. Apparently he is too vicious for Anglo Saxon civilization, and wants to go back to a world of more comfort to him --- one with medieval torture and ethnocentric no-holds-barred violence.
What is particularly interesting (in a kind of perverse way, you understand) is what Krauhammer assumes and what he does not assume.
He assumes that the War of Terror is actually something real.
It is not. It is nothing more than a ploy to subvert the rights and appropriate the assets of European Americans. There would be no War on Terror had the Gov. of the USA not done two things:
1) Give one sided support to one side in a nasty tribal fight over land in the Middle East; and
2) invade Iraq.
The day we become honest brokers in the Middle East, get the hell out of Iraq, and shut down our borders to everybody, especially including Muslims, is the day our problem with Islamic violence goes away.
Such a simple and sensible plan doesn’t suit Krauthammer and people like him. They have other aspirations, which however they cannot justify by argument and appeal to the interests of the American people, hence their need for the Big Lie and endless dishonesty. |
