The pander-to-fear-du-jour for members of congress is a >provision that would prevent the transfer of Guantanamo detainees to the US for any purpose, including for prosecution. Passage of this ill-founded measure could effectively put the nail in the coffin of efforts to end the failed Guantanamo experiment, perpetuating its legacy of arbitrary detention and detainee abuse. It would also leave little alternative but to either release people who should not be released, or detain them indefinitely without charge or trial, or try them in the universally discredited kangaroo courts known as military commissions, which have conclusively demonstrated their inability to try their own way out of a paper bag.
I am a discontent and distressed taxpayer! "Disgruntled" is a word that might describe my deep dissatisfaction with how my tax dollars are spent. Yet, on April 15, 2009, typically thought of as "Tax Day," I felt no need to join my fellow citizens in protest. I did not attend a "Tea Party". I too believe, in this country, "taxation without representation" is a problem. One only need ponder the profits of lobbyists to understand the premise. Corporate supplicants amass a 22,000 percent rate of return on their investments. The average American is happy to realize a two-digit increase. Nonetheless, as much as I too may argue the point, assessments are paid without accountability, what concerns me more is my duty dollars did not support what I think ethical projects.
It is now acceptable to go on national TV and argue openly for the use of torture as formal US bi-partisan consensus policy.
I went looking to see what I could find in terms of prominent media figures defending the use of torture, and here's what I found.
Most egregious is radio host and (non-practising, I hope) attorney Michael Smerconish who is a regular contributer to Hardball. Here he is in December of 2008:
This is [J. Glenn] Gray's principle, which I mean to adopt and expound: "The greater the possibility of free action in the communal sphere, the greater the degree of guilt for evil deeds done in the name of everyone."16 The principle invites us to focus our attention on democratic rather than authoritarian regimes. Not that free action is impossible even in the worst of authoritarian regimes; at the very least, people can resign, withdraw, flee. But in democracies there are opportunities for positive response, and we need to ask to what extent these opportunities fix our obligations, when evil deeds are committed in our name.
Michael Walzer, Just and Unjust Wars, 2nd Ed, 1977. p298
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