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

[clark56]

The demise of America is the price of buying into Smiley's convoluted thinking. America (warts and all) does more in the world to help others secure human rights than any other nation in the world. By insuring the national security of America, the world is more likely to succeed in providing human rights to all. She seems to be suggesting we follow the Saddam Hussein model.

[JimReed]

"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."

You might be mixing apples and oranges here. We were not protected by mutually assured destruction as much as we were by leaders who wanted to avoid that war. Imagine what the cold war would have been like if we had elected a "war president".

[Average]

I would hope that most people recognize that the two are NOT mutually exclusive! Now you I guess.

[kelargo]

Which is more important; the foundation of a house or the windows on a house?

Human rights is like the foundation of a house.
Nation Security is like the windows of the house.

Which is more important?

You need a solid foundation to build the house.
and the Government of the people and for the people need transparency to achieve security.

[BobHiggins]

Thanks for jumping on this.

Without human rights there is no security, national or otherwise.

Without the freedoms guaranteed in the Constitution and Bill of Rights there is no "America."

Remove the grape from the wine and you're left with stagnant water.

Thanks for writing.

Bob Higgins
http://worldwide-sawdust.com

[live by the golden rule]

Too many Americans have fallen for the Republican trap of giving up their human rights for security [but of course, by making more people hate us, the Republicans have given us less security].
Dictators always operate by frightening people with an external or internal security threat until people eagerly discard the human rights of others, not realizing that they are giving up their own freedom at the same time.
Given the Republican attack and fear machine, Richardson may well have "lost the election" by understanding America's core principles. Too many Americans forget what America is all about. Why did people fight the British? Let's see what happens in the New Hampshire primary. The state's motto is: live free or die.

[hontonoshijin]

I used to be a voting citizen of New Mexico, and admire much about Bill Richardson, though I wish he would lose some weight.

His answer was right, except for one mistake: He accepted the definition of his opponent, and answered within that definition. As Jane's article ably points out, the opposition of human rights to national security is specious.

It is the right wing's familiar ploy: Define the terms, and then whatever answer the opponent makes must lead to a gotcha.

Never, never, never accept a rightwinger's definition of the situation. That's the problem right there.

[thedirtman]

There is no false dichotomy here. While I can see interrelationship there is a difference.

What is more important - the baby or the bathwater? The bathwater protects the baby, but without the baby there is nothing.

America is not about national security, important though it may be. Our focus should be on the baby.

[gardenbookie]

Jumbo shrimp. Military intelligence. National security. Oxymorons.

[spicegal]

Somehow this country seems to have lost sight of that wonderful ideal of "give me liberty or give me death". The Republicans use fear to divide and conquer, and America has been happy to submit by becoming a nation of paranoid cowards, willing to give up everything for so-called "safety", which is nothing more than an illusion anyway. Every single member of Congress, and the President, took an oath to uphold the Constitution, not an oath to keep every American safe at all cost.

[BinBaldwin]

Raven

I see your post has the usual ridiculous " wackos on the right" nonsense. Without national security there will be NO HUMAN RIGHTs. Common Sense 101.

[thedirtman]

Bravo! America was never a nation of paranoid chickensh!ts. America is about human rights, and freedom and democracy and fair market values. America is not about national security.

The last six years has been an absolute nightmare because the greatest nation in the world has forgotten what is stands for. Watching the MSM prove it over and over is worse than watching your best friend die.

[BinBaldwin]

Avedon

What Amendment expanded the Bill of Rights to cover the entire planet? Show me?

[BinBaldwin]

The BILL of RIGHTS cannot be defended without National Security. National Security must come first. I site Iraq as an example. Without security they will never have a Democracy and they will never be able to abide by the Constitution they created.

[syzito]

We are not loosing our human rights we are giving them away by electing the same people over and over.It's not the politicians fault, its ours, for continuing to put them in office.If you do not believe this country is headed in the correct direction then vote the ones responsible out of office.