The tortured logic of the right
“ The moral authority of Democrats who give more rights to terrorists than unborn children is nil. But desperate to regain "values" ground on Republicans, the Democrats will make a show of treating Gonzales as their moral inferior. The same Democrats who couldn't abide John Ashcroft's piety at the confirmation hearings last time will appear quite pious themselves, chastising Gonzales for a lack of moral delicacy.
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If Gonzales had written a memo endorsing free abortions at Abu Ghraib and military hospitals, the Democrats would hail him as a sophisticated legal mind. But since he won't extend habeas corpus to al Qaeda, he lacks the "value system" to defend the Constitution. ”
The nomination fight of Alberto Gonzales for head of "Justice" has given conservatives an opportunity to show off how ugly their values can be. George Neumayr, like the Wall Street Journal, thinks torture is A-OK. We don't. It's that simple.
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Abortion is human-rights abuse worse than torture. Fetuses have more rights than adults. "The platform of the Democratic Party is built on a human rights abuse -- abortion. Yet Democrats still pose as champions of human rights. Today Senate Democrats will saddle up on their high horses to trample Alberto Gonzales for allegedly sanctioning human rights abuses against terrorists and detainees. The party of abortion will inveigh against "torture." Democrats who rationalize the near-infanticide of partial-birth abortion will accuse Gonzales of rationalizing detainee mistreatment." "The moral authority of Democrats who give more rights to terrorists than unborn children is nil." |
This space is too short to fully address the abortion issue -- check out the links on the right. Whatever you believe about when a fetus becomes a human (fundamentally a question of metaphysics) and what rights a potential human has over the rights of a woman, or whether a woman must sacrifice her own life for the potential life she carries (an extremist "Samaritan" ethics) -- it is incredibly naive for someone on either side of this national debate to pretend it doesn't exist. There is a debate, and most Americans today believe that, while a woman has some responsibility toward her pregnancy, she should be free to choose to carry it or not. The law should not impose the unconvincing, extremist beliefs of the few. On the other hand, there is no debate over whether a detainee is a human, endowed with human rights. |
| Democrats are the party of "the near-infanticide of partial-birth abortion." |
The phrase "partial-birth" abortion, an abrasively clever term concocted by right-wing spin doctor Frank Luntz (or someone like him), does not refer to any particular medical procedure. It has been used by Republicans to refer to exceedingly rare late-term abortions, done when the woman could die. But really the term is a vehicle for encapsulating the extremist dogma of a minority -- which even places the "rights" of a dead fetus above the life of a woman -- in an attempt to gain a vantage point for overturning Roe v. Wade. Democrats do not advocate abortion; we protect the rights of a woman to her life, to her health, and to her own decisions. |
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Democrats choose to protect terrorists rather than the Constitution. Suspension of habeus corpus and due process protects the Constitution. "The Democrats' idea of protecting the Constitution is to extend its liberties to terrorists who seek to destroy the Constitution. Between the survival of America and the imagined rights of terrorists, Democrats will choose the latter." "The Americans who wrote the Constitution would not recognize the Constitution of which Leahy speaks. Did they write the Bill of Rights for terrorists?" |
As Ben Franklin said, "They who would give up an essential liberty for temporary security, deserve neither." An American citizen arrested in the U.S., declared by Bush and Ashcroft to be an "enemy," and held by the military without charge and without attorney for an indefinite time -- a man named Jose Padilla -- should be given the same rights of due process in determining his guilt and punishment that we all expect. Habeus corpus -- the right to be charged with a crime rather than held in jail forever -- has indeed been suspended during war, but our Constitution has survived in spite of this, not because of it. It is especially unjustified for a war with no end in sight, the so-called war on terror. As for detainees abroad, at Abu Ghraib, Guantanamo and elsewhere -- many of whom are innocent -- their rights are not given by our Constitution, but rather by the standards of war and law readily agreed to by those who witnessed the tragedy and atrocity of world war in the 20th century -- and by the basic democratic values we hold ourselves to and we wish to export to the world. To compromise on torture is a betrayal of our values and a hypocrisy for all to see. |
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Gonzales' treatise on torture can in no way be linked to abuse of detainees. "The demented hijinks at Abu Ghraib didn't reflect the strictness of Donald Rumsfeld or the legal judgment of Alberto Gonzales but the looseness and sickness of a pop domestic culture the Democrats have worked hard to smuggle into a military they regard as reactionary." |
This "blame the troops" line -- that torture is accountable only to those who physically committed it -- is typical of the accountability-free Republicans of today. But it ignores high-level advocacy of torture, beginning with Gonzales' creative memo to the president, which laid the faulty legal groundwork for general directives and, in the end, specific policies. According to Newsweek, "With the legal groundwork laid, Bush began to act. First, he signed a secret order granting new powers to the CIA. According to knowledgeable sources, the president's directive authorized the CIA to set up a series of secret detention facilities outside the United States, and to question those held in them with unprecedented harshness. Washington then negotiated novel "status of forces agreements" with foreign governments for the secret sites. These agreements gave immunity not merely to U.S. government personnel but also to private contractors." |
The nomination fight of Alberto Gonzales for head of "Justice" has given conservatives an opportunity to show off how ugly their values can be. Neumayr, like the Wall Street Journal, thinks torture is A-OK. We don't. It's that simple.
And in tortured logic so twisted it defies common sense, Neumayr accuses Democrats of hypocrisy, for advocating both the rights of women at home and basic human rights of prisoners of war and others captured abroad.
The anti-choice position, when sincere and thoughtful, deserves respect -- but Neumayr is anything but sincere.
Neumayr goes further still, defending and encouraging the practice of torture. He is putting America in some distinguished company -- Pol Pot, Stalin, Hitler, and Saddam Hussein, to name a few of his fellow torture-advocates. But does he expect us to win any friends when images from Abu Ghraib are looped on Al-Jazeera?
We used to stand for something different as a country. These days it's hard to remember the word... What was it? Freedom?
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