original email:
Why We Like Australians
T. B. Bechtel, a City Councilor from Newcastle, Australia , was asked on a local live radio talk show, just what he thought about the allegations of torture of suspected terrorists.
His reply prompted his ejection from the studio, but to thunderous applause from the audience.
HIS STATEMENT:
"If hooking up one raghead terrorist prisoner's testicles to a car battery to get the truth out of the lying little camelshagger will save just one Australian life, then I have only three things to say...
Red is positive, Black is negative, and make sure his nuts are wet."
(end original email)
[ warning: facts and citations ahead. I took the time to collect these; at the very least, read item [9] below. ]
If you can be sure they're terrorists, and not some saps that were in the wrong place at the wrong time (like the Chinese Uighurs - the religious refugees that were cleared by the US of all terrorism charges five years ago, but who were still refused release until last month [1][2]), that's one thing.
Of course, the United States has always stood for justice and the rule of law; do we disregard those principles when it's inconvenient? If they are terrorists, try them and then lock them up or execute them. If they're not, let them go. Holding anybody without any kind of due process, for seven years, on an anonymous say-so (in the case of the aforementioned refugees, the say-so was that of Pakistani bounty hunters who were being paid for prisoners they turned in - conflict of interest much? [3]) is simply not consistent with who we are as Americans. Worse, when push comes to shove, we've been forced to admit that we had no more evidence than unsubstantiated rumors on many of these people, and they've been released back to what's left of their original lives. Even if I weren't originally opposed to the US, I think I might be if they took me away from my wife and kids for 6-7 years for no reason, and then refused to admit they'd made a mistake [4][5].
This is roughly akin to the no-fly list: a list of people so dangerous that they cannot be allowed to fly under any circumstances, but who are also so innocent that we can't arrest or accuse them of anything, even with the expanded powers of the PATRIOT Act [6]. This is a list that's reached nearly 400,000 names now [7]. With fewer than 200 known terrorist groups worldwide [8], if we assume 200 terrorists on average for every group (a wildly inflated figure for the vast majority of groups), the number of names on the no-fly list is an order of magnitude greater than the number of terrorists in all known terror groups worldwide.
I appreciate the sentiment, but there's three things we need to remember (as a country) when fighting this (or any) war:
1) we're Americans, and we hold ourselves to a higher standard than those we're fighting;
2) if we abandon our standards when they become inconvenient, or allow ourselves to be frightened into giving up the liberties we've fought and died for, the terrorists have already won - even if we capture and execute every last one of them.
3) how we conduct ourselves and prosecute a war against terrorists is chiefly responsible for whether we win allies or create easy recruiting for the very people we're fighting.
The best tool we can use in this fight is our common sense, and our refusal to be terrorized [9].
- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uyghur_people
- http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2009/06/16/2599957.htm?section=world
- http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=105188932
- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lakhdar_Boumediene
- http://abcnews.go.com/Video/playerIndex?id=7781827
- http://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2008/09/my_la_times_op.html
- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/No_Fly_List
- http://www.nationmaster.com/graph/ter_num_of_kno_ter_org_pre-number-known-terrorist-organizations-present
- http://www.schneier.com/essay-124.html
2 comments:
There's a great animal satisfaction to be had by dropping moral and ethical considerations and giving in to the basest impulses. This is why video games are fun.
Behaving this way in the real world is murder or mob violence. And once we're rid of our conscience, it's easy to get us to do the same thing to each other.
Well said.
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