Why Human Rights are More Important than National Security

On Friday, the morning after the Democratic debate, I was stunned to read in the War Room column over in Salon that Governor Bill Richardson had said the wrong thing about national security versus human rights. Tim Grieve wrote, "We're not sure which office Richardson is seeking these days, but he came pretty close to disqualifying himself from either of them last night when he insisted that human rights are more important than America's national security." I'm not sure what planet Tim Grieve is living on, but on our planet, it is human rights that are precious and rare and always to be preserved and "national security" that is ever and anon a cant boondoggle. I was not alone in my dismay. I read War Room almost everyday and have liked Grieve's posts in the past. When I first read what he was saying, I thought he was joking; so did other readers. The entry got 57 responses. Almost all of them were outraged, and several called on Tim to explain himself. He never did.

Human rights are defined, most notably in the U.S. Bill of Rights. They are defined because the Founding Fathers realized that if they were not defined, they would be more likely to be abrogated or lost entirely. The Founding Fathers understood the temptation on the part of governments to give and remove human rights arbitrarily, because they had experienced such things before the Revolutionary War -- in the Stamp Act, in the quartering of British soldiers on American households, and in illegal searches and seizures, in no taxation without representation. They recognized that although British Law customarily acknowledged various human rights, it was essential to name, codify, and write them down to make it less likely that they could be taken away.

Human rights are profoundly local -- they reside in individuals. According to humans rights theory, if someone is human, he or she has the same rights as every other human. The rights of American citizens as described in the Bill of Rights have been expanded and extrapolated around the world so that they apply not only to us but to everyone. While in the U.S. this idea is a bit controversial, in other countries it is standard, accepted, and cherished. The codification of human rights, and the widespread acknowledgment of this, is one of the things that makes the modern world modern. To roll back human rights, even for some individuals, is to return to a more primitive, hierarchical, and un-American theory of human relations. One example, of course, concerns women. Can women routinely be imprisoned, sold, mutilated, or killed by their relatives? U.S. law says they cannot; in practice, many are, but no one openly promotes what many secretly do. If a candidate, even a Republican, ran on a platform of reducing the legal rights of women, he wouldn't get far (ask me again in 10 years, though). Or consider lynching. The U.S. has a long tradition of lynching. It was only after the Second World War that the Federal Government and state governments began enforcing their own anti-lynching laws. This was a victory for human rights. Do you want to go back? The Republicans would like you to, in the name of: "national security."

Guess what? There is no such thing as "national security"; it's a concept that not only hasn't been defined, it can't be defined. It is a psychological state. The very phrase describes an impossibility. All boundaries in the U.S. and in every other country are porous. Planes come and go, as do ships, trains, trucks, autos, information superhighways, human relationships, and human emotions. In addition, the smaller any threat becomes, the less safe we are against it. We no longer live in the world of Mutually Assured Destruction, where our thousands of warheads aimed at the Russians protected us, psychologically, from their thousands of warheads aimed at us. Since the end of the Cold War, threats have gotten smaller and more invisible. Where is that suitcase of nuclear material? Where is that vial of anthrax? But as they have gotten less easily detected, they have also gotten more local. 9/11 is what we always think of when we think of a breach of national security, but in fact, the destruction was not national, or even city-wide, or even district wide -- although the World Trade Center was less than a mile from the New York Stock Exchange, the NYSE was only closed for six days after 9/11.

The phrase "national security" cannot mean anything in a nation of almost 10 million square miles. The Bush administration and the corporatocracy knows this perfectly well. Witness how our chemical plants have not been secured from the possibility of terrorist attack -- there are too many of them, and the likelihood of any one getting attacked is too small to make it worthwhile for either the nation or the chemical industry to fortify them. The Dubai Ports deal of a couple of years ago demonstrated the same understanding on the part of the administration, that "national security" is merely rallying cry for fear.

The Bush administration has spent some trillions of dollars (I shrink from naming a figure, since, as big as it is, it is surely a lie) to attack a nation of a mere 437,000 square miles. In doing so, they have chosen to ignore such items of U.S. national security as public health and infrastructure maintenance. The population of the U.S. is demonstrably poorer, hungrier, less healthy, more homeless, more likely to be injured in an infrastructure failure, and more likely to suffer from a weather related loss than it was before the Bush administration came into office. A huge debt means that the economy is more likely to fail. The prospects of our children for a peaceful and prosperous future are worse. Nothing that the Bush administration or the Republicans or the Military Industrial Complex has done in the last seven years of foolish incompetence and braggadoccio has benefited the nation as a whole, though it has benefited a small class of investors and government cronies. As a result of the Iraq War and the Bush attack on the Constitution, I can be afraid of the obliteration of the entire idea of the U.S. -- I am afraid of that, thanks to the tyrannies of the Bush administration and the professions of the current crop of Republican candidates -- but not of the obliteration of the U.S. itself. Indeed, the war in Iraq shows more than one thing about the idea of national security, because even though the Iraqis have been attacked by the largest military in the world, they have been damaged but not subdued. The same would be true of the U.S., no matter who attacked us.

Liberals, progressives, and Democrats recognize, at least intuitively, that "national security" is a code word for tribalism, while "human rights" is a code word for the rule of law. Governor Richardson was straightforward in acknowledging this fact, and deserves praise rather than blame, especially from a writer for Salon.

Comments

[hglassberg]

Jane, this is just your most delicious commentary yet. Yours etc, H. Glassberg, President The Playdo Institute

[Qbear]

RICHARDSON NOT SO HOT ON HUMAN RIGHTS...uh...DUH!

Didn't you see him self destruct on the HRC debate on LOGO channel?

[AMERIKA]

Bill Richardson is the most qualified candidate to lead this nation. He totally gets it. He has proven again and again that he is not the consummate insider, but rather a competent governor. We need a president to lead us by governing this nation within the constraints of the constitution. Bill Richardson is that man.

[TribunusPlebis]

Jane Smiley's defense of the necessary primacy of human rights in American foreign policy is timely and indisputable. But she takes her argument too far when, in answering Tim Grieve's criticism of Bill Richardson (for saying that human rights are more important than national security), she calls national security meaningless and a mere form of "tribalism." Nuclear deterrence, which she says is obsolete, is in fact still quite active, inasmuch as Russian nuclear forces are most certainly aimed at American targets -- a fact we should not forget as Vladimir Putin more flagrantly violates his own people's human rights with every passing month and now regularly castigates the United States and its political system. But the most germane point is that human rights and national security are not in a zero-sum relationship: The United States can and should defend and try to advance human rights by all nonviolent, noncoercive means at home and abroad. That will augment the tangible security of Americans. Yet the increased belligerence of the Russian government, the rising military power of China, and the capability of non-state terrorist groups to inflict mass casualties are real or potential threats to the security of Americans, and that reality is not mere "tribalism." There will continue to be the need for traditional military means of self-defense, even by a U.S. administration whose priorities are substantially transformed in the direction that Jane Smiley, and this writer, prefer.

[Janelynne]

The question is a conservative frame that asks which is more important, your arm or your leg. The question posited by CNN's most esteemed moderator, Wolf the Blitzer, which should tell you something right there. This was the typical media trap question fishing for a sound byte. The Democrats who fall for this kind of idiotic frame are the product of the intended manipulation, one could only hope might be beneath our dignity. I am very proud of the candidates who saw it in the moment for what is was. At least of them fell hard for it. And then I guess it doesn't stop anyone from rhapsodizing on the "wrong answer" and going in circles for absolute weeks of parcing. Can't we just get a little smarter than this? Which is more important, your arm or your leg? Aren't partial birth abortions just the nastiest thing to do to a little child and isn't life better than death? Are we just suckers to buy into the K Street wording and wedging, a bunch of manipulated sheep? Is it more important to treat people with dignity or more important to prevent them from smuggling bombs into public spaces? PICK ONE. Remember this is the lightening round, we are using the honor system, so don't explain yourself, stutter, or get a mean face or you will be hounded by the media for weeks. Gees, is this a 6th grade class?

[emerywood]

Let's face it, we were totally negligent in not eliminating Bin Ladin and Al Queda for many years in spite of numerous warnings. We were too confident in our national security and way underestimated their wickedness and propensity in using deadly forces. If we had only dealt with them like we dealt with Jim Jones of the Heavenly Temple in the '70s, 9/11 would probably never have occurred. Now, from one extreme we have gone to another, of paranoia and pre-emptive attacks. We put aside human rights and human diginity for the sake of revenge and called it national security. We should just maintain our balance and go on, having learned a valuable lesson. We should concentrate on our enemies and not so much as to policing the entire world.

[Plisko]

Would the Republican willing to surrender his or her human rights so that other people can have national security please stand up?

[Yukon Jack]

National Security deals with two options:

Are you alive or are you dead?

Treasure your human rights as a DEAD person, six foot under.

[rini]

"Why Human Rights are More Important than National Security"

It's headlines like this that make liberals look weak on National Security.

Human Rights and national security go hand in hand! Now that's reality and it sounds a lot better.

What better way to reduce terrorists to parodies of themselves than to treat people, worldwide, in a decent manner? If we stopped acting as if the middle east is our gas station (I didn't originate this simile), maybe we wouldn't be is such deep doo doo.

Also, aggressive intelligence gathering with an eye for actual terrorists, instead of either indiscriminate wiretapping or "watch lists" made of up peace protesters and grandmas would be nice.

[Geauterre]

Jane Smiley's article on the importance of Human Rights as opposed to National Security, offers us a college level, textbook view of the world, in the hands of those whose agenda is far different from the ordinary.

It would be nice to think it an aberration. Unfortunately, as history so often points out, this is par for the course.

[mbaty]

Human rights should extend to healthcare and other basic needs. I agree that Human Rights are more important than 'national security,' in fact, they are what creates a stable, relatively secure country. Most of the problems we face now involve all of us, no matter which ideology we espouse--we all desire to be healthy, and to get the care we need when we're not; similarly, if our resources are drained by medical bills or other fundamental life issues, then we cannot thrive, and when the people do not thrive, the country becomes obsolete, even though the country can last because of the political structures in place. We see some people thriving and a whole lot of people not thriving, and the growing disparity is creating anxiety...as it should. We should be nervous about it, because it's a sign that our country could become obsolete. And then we'll have nothing to protect anyway, no need for 'national security.' And why care about securing a place that doesn't support you, that denies you healthcare or that bills you prohibitively after the fact, a place that, after ravaged by disaster, is then neglected by governmental warmongers who are isolated and detached? After this Iraq thing, I don't want to hear about "we don't have the money" to make our country truly great. If we're going to borrow outrageous sums, then maybe we should make sure we invest it into our collective well-being, so that we can all thrive and eventually have the money and the economy to pay it back.

[seattle1101]

The problem with this post, as is the problem with any number of posts, is that it attacks the Bush Administration. This fallacy has allowed the public to exonerate the Republicans when it is the Republicans, not Bush, who have done all this to our Nation. The party of fear, war, and hate has done this to our Nation. It began not with Bush, but with Reagan, and has continued apace within the Republican Party. The platform is not Bush's platform, but the Republican Party's platform of fear, hate and war. And it continues apace.

[Stacygs]

I am an admirer of Bill Richardson, and an active opponent of the use of torture by the United States. So, in a sense, I was pleased to hear Governor Richardson say that human rights are paramount.
I believe, however, that we should not be forced to accept the false dichotomy of security vs. human rights. If we sacrifice human rights to ostensibly gain security, we will have lost far more than we gained.
Most importantly, we cannot let those who would throw human rights by the wayside define the debate. Not only can we preserve human rights and still be secure, our security depends upon our preservation of human rights.

[Ryter]

Thank you so much, Jane. I felt sorry for Wolf for seeming so 'shocked' that someone would hold the sentiment of the Bill of Rights more important than some new nomenclature that was conjured up to serve a more sinister purpose. And from there the little sheep followed suit.

Tim Grieve and the whole bunch over at Salon may not really be the anti-christ's that we'd like to paint them. They probably don't see the obvious harm done by holding the idea of security over the reality of human rights. They've been brain-washed or have on some subliminal level succumbed to the hate-mongering, fear-promoting, small-minded consciousness that we've all been exposed to for the past six plus years.

There is a lot more than national security for our next world leader to address. We should probably all have our brains hosed down to remove the residual anxiety, fear, and hate that we've been dealing with almost non-stop.

And this is just another example that Bill Richardson gets it. He stood his ground, he knows his values. And that's another reason why I'm voting for him.

[MAGLATINA]

without the human element you cannot have security... it is as clear as that / no human rights, no security...