printOn dunking Abu Zubaydah, the views of that great patriot, Pat Buchanan, jibe with mine, as expressed in “To Bug Or Not To Bug Abu Zubaydah’s Cage (That’s Not The Question).”
Arguing from the natural law, as is my wont and preference, and pitting it against the positive law, Jonathan Turley’s purview, an impassioned Buchanan put the torture tempest in perspective:
Dunking Abu Zubaydah “is a violation of positive law, it is not a moral evil. Do you mean that waterboarding [this fella] is worse than dropping two atomic bombs on innocent people and burning 120,000 of them to death, sentencing 40,000 more to death by radiation—all to convince the Japanese cabinet to change its mind? What was worse?”
Turley, ventured Pat, is right about the letter of the law, but not necessarily about the higher moral law.
Watch:
Ultimately, the faff over “torture” allows members of the Evil and Stupid parties to get away with murder, both having acquiesced in launching an unjust war against innocent Iraqis. This is the real war crime.
Turley is right that “A banana republic is a country that allows its leaders to commit crimes…’.
I agree that the invasion of Iraq is a crime on a greater scale, but the crime of torture (duress and coercion to an extreme extent) is well beyond a simple crime, such as one might commit by forgetting a duty or a guideline. It is well into the realm of conspiring to deprive (granted – unpopular) people of rights.
Absent a real trial (such as we used to see on TV when Perry Mason was shown) – wherein, evidence is presented and witnesses examined etc. – WHO is empowered to ‘decide’ that any particular person is guilty of a crime?
It is certainly a crime to assault and batter a person – even if one feels it is important and just do so. That’s teh law.