The Republican presidential candidates will gather in Washington, D.C. on Tuesday for a continuation of last week’s debate on foreign policy and national security. We hope it’s more substance than showmanship. What do I mean by this?
In the candidates’ first foreign policy debate last Saturday night, Congresswoman Michele Bachmann said President Obama is “allowing the ACLU to run the CIA.” Let’s clear one thing up before the next debate: Gen. David Petraeus runs the CIA. Despite Bachmann’s efforts to sensationalize national security, however, this isn’t about Bachmann versus the ACLU; it’s about the Constitution.
More importantly, during last week’s debate, four of the candidates (Bachmann, Herman Cain, Rick Santorum and Rick Perry), promoted “enhanced interrogation tactics,” including waterboarding, as necessary for national security.
Plain and simple, waterboarding is torture. As such, it is illegal under U.S. and international law. For good reason, I’m troubled when I constantly hear campaign rhetoric try to overtake the Constitution.
There was more. Most candidates also condoned indefinite detention, and extra-judicial killings of American citizens. And they made it clear they would not close the prison at Guantánamo Bay, where dozens of men continue to be held without charges or trials. That’s quite a sorry list of assaults on our constitutional liberties.
Candidates Ron Paul and Jon Huntsman came off as lonely voices Saturday with their stated opposition to waterboarding. Paul also opposes the use of indefinite detention and extra-judicial killings. As he said, “I don't think we should give up so easily on our rule of law.”
Neither do we.
This Tuesday night, we hope the candidates engage in a vigorous debate about national security and foreign policy by appealing to the values that have made the United States a moral beacon to the world. Keep politics on the stage and out of the Constitution.
Danny Groner: Jon Huntsman's Saturday Night Live Appearance Was Smart Campaigning
I believe that ship set sail long ago with the Bush administration and has since been lost in a sea of anti-self government, anti-immigrant, anti-social, anti-American sentiment spawned by the tea party.
There was a brief moment after Bush and upon Obama's inauguration--just post the awarding of his Nobel Peace Prize--that world sentiment against Bushism thawed enough for it to once again look to our country and its leadership for inspiration and moral direction.
But, alas, I fear that small-minded, fearful and heartless-the-core republicans and their candidates have since given democracy and our shining example of a 'melting pot' society, a bad name and everyone of our enemies and allies know it!
The problem is, not one of the eight candidates debating Tuesday night seem to grasp that appalling fact in the least bit.
When Politicians get into long discussions about anything from economics to National Security the "public's" eyes glaze over. Americans vote for who makes them "feel" good...
Huntsman is probably the best Republican running by FAR but he doesn't make people feel warm and fuzzy.,...when Obama ran everyone who voted for him overlooked the fact he had virtually no experience in any positions of leadership or power, nothing. Other than being appointed by his fellow students to run a college paper and serving as a half term US Senator...but he did make people "feel" good after 8 years of a maniac in office..
HUMAN BEINGS are wired to make decisions first and then justify those decisions mentally afterwards. We react viscerally, and most people don't tend to change their minds after they've made a decision.
That's why the closed-minded are so scary--rather than pretending, even to themselvs, that they're doing something because it's right, they doggedly maintain that something is right because they're doing it. Then they selectively choose only those things which support their confirmation bias to degrees the reasonable can only marvel at.
Shame on the GOP candidates for proving, in yet another manner, how far afield they are from sanity, because they continue to support torture even though the only "evidence" for its effectiveness is Rovian claims that torture led to Obama's "victory against terrorism" even though the very people who performed the information-gathering conlude definitively that torture played no role in gaining the information or access that achieved this.
Reacting vicerally is no way to pick a person for any job..thats how the world got Hitler, Castro and so on..Obama is the most inexperienced leader this nation has ever had that I am aware of in modern times...It would have been better had he served a few terms in the Senate, then he could have run, won and gotten something done.
As for the torture issue, why are you ranting at me, I never mentioned it. It goes without saying it is wrong. In DC they ALL knew it was happening including the Democrats and they said nothing for a long time...
Good luck getting a thoughtful and insightful discussion out of this crowd. Never...
BUT 'HORSING AROUND' INSTEAD"