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

[BoulderSue]

Thanks, Jane! I, too, am of the school that believes that human rights are for all humans. Our good buddy Pervez Musharaff has said that security (his brand) will save Pakistan. Boy do we know how to pick allies! Bush claims he wants to spread Democracy starting with Iraq? I doubt he understands the fundamental concept of Human Rights. It is an ingrained thing not defined by partisan politics, but felt on the deepest level by anyone open to the notion, and "secure" enough in his own humanity to understand it, live it.
A few days ago I got a call from London from BBC World. I subscribe to a few BBC UK news programs/blogs. They asked if I would be willing to speak on the radio program, "Have Your Say" on the subject of Pakistan. I said "Sure!". Then I called my Dad, a WWII vet who flies the flag every day because I was a little excited that I had been asked to speak on such a widely disseminated program. My Dad asked what the subject would be. Pakistan. Then he said "You're not going to say anything controversial, are you?" I was stunned. There was real fear in his voice! That's where George Bush's rantings about "national security" have gotten us: fear of saying the "wrong" thing! My Father, who fought in the Battle of the Bulge, been at the liberation of Nazi death camps was afraid that his "little girl" might get in trouble for speaking her mind. I assured him I had no inclination to "burn the Bastille", but he refused to talk about it further. That is the source of National Insecurity: fear, fear that Bush/Cheney have used ruthlessly, shamelessly, and have succeeded far too often. The program went fine. I said we ought to be fighting al Qaida where they are, and working with the Pakistani army to help us since they have neither the knowledge or nerve to confront al Qaida and Taliban tactics, and badly need vetting.
Richardson was right: our strength comes from commitment to human rights.

[Judd16]

Lincoln is also credited as saying "The constitution is not a suicide pact."

[waiguoren]

Once again --- Jane Smiley, Outstanding!

[psk]

If national security were truly all that important, wouldn’t we be well on our way to having secure borders by now? Why are some of our ports owned by foreign countries? Why are foreign countries / companies allowed to buy American companies / land / buildings / etc?

Why is it that none of our nuclear (and other types of) power plants are secure? Why are the chemical plants, oil refineries and water supplies still not secure? Why is our imported food supply not safe? Why are our children’s toys polluted with lead and other poisons? (Why are we still importing anything from China anyway?) Why are there still THOUSANDS pouring across our southern border each month?

We no longer have privacy in communication, whether it is by phone or email. Even letters or packages sent in/out of the country can, and often times are, checked. Flying has gotten to be a nightmare.

We have been told we must give up certain liberties in order to have security. I’ve seen many liberties given up, but no securities have materialized.

[Dap]

Dear Ms. Smiley,

You tell'em my dear! Happy Thankgiving to you and yours. Agape.

[MSB]

Very well said.

[jdm58]

Love the article, but would like to take the discussion to a global level. Until HUMAN RIGHTS are guaranteed GLOBALLY to ALL, there can not be a NATIONAL SECURITY of ANY country. This is especially true in the case of any country DENYING human rights to its citizens. Denial of basic human rights, perceived or actual, is the ROOT CAUSE of all terrorism today. Even though the terrorists themselves practice a form of denial of rights by endangering innocents in fighting for their cause, the initial call to violence stems in the hopeless despair of an individual who believes there is no other choice available to them. One mans terrorist is another mans freedom fighter. Richardson, and Kucinich as well, were spot on in their answers.

[DumbDad]

Geopolitically, though, 'national security' has nothing to do with tribalism except to get the tribe to support the nationstate interest, which is always pursued with the people as the soldier servants it needs, but is always hampered by the people's other concerns. Letting the people have too many human rights is always a threat to the Cheney types, because for them the 'survival' of some national security 'interest' is always at stake.

[RobertPaul]

Thank you Jane for an unusually concise and insightful piece.

Did it ever occur to anyone (certainly Not Pelosi) that Bush and Cheney are not operating in the truest sense of our National Security?

[rush]

Excellent! Excellent!

[Bobzmcishl]

The human rights vs. national security is another one of those where the moderator insists on a Y/N answer to a complex question. Obama was correct in taking issue with CNN for trying to put a simplistic spin on it. Why can't we have both human rights and national security? They are not mutually exclusive. Those types of questions do a service to the debate forum.

[cognate]

I fear a government that tortures more than any number of terrorists.

[Querent]

Wow, Jane. Nobody can tell it like you, really. It's the incisiveness of your mind that makes your precise use of language such a great pleasure. Thanks for explicating this point which many of us probably would have passed over until later in the cycle, when we would have had to have said, "Wait a minute . . ."

[TommyMcCarthy]

I've enjoyed Jane Smiley's fiction for many years and was very pleasantly surprised to find her byline when I first stumbled across the Huffington Post a couple of years back.I knew nothing of her politics really, she might have been a conservative Republican for all I knew.

I remember being amazed by her posts here...a passionate progessive, (like me) and every bit as angry as I was about the hostile takover of our Democracy, but armed with an eloquence I could never hope to approach..­........it was breathtaking, ...quite literally thrilling.

Ms. Smiley is the reason I returned to this site where I now have MANY favorites. As enjoyable as those "red-meat", "give-'em-hell Jane!" pieces are I have to say today's calmer more reflective post is the best I have ever read (and I've read every one). Choked me up actually.

I'm real proud of my big, loud, profane raucous, whining, squawking,arguing, lefty netroots family here at The Huffington Post, and I wan't to thank Jane Smiley for this eloquent reminder of what unites us ALL.

Seems like brighter days are just ahead, and that's thanks in no small part to this crew right here... from Ariana to Jane Smiley to Nora Ephron all the way down to little ol' you and me and our 2cents worth in the comments.

Some folks don't care for him, but I like the way the sometimes LESS eloquent James Carville puts it in that inimitable ragin' cajun' style....

IT AIN'T ALLUS' EASY BUT IT'S PRETTY SIMPLE
.........W­E'RE RIGHT....T­HEY'RE WRONG.....

Thanks, Jane...reg­ards......­.......tm

[mpgarr]

oops--I left out one more part of Lincoln's words--"for the people"-sorry-I hate that you cannot edit these posts once they are up--it never fails I make some sort of mistake!!!! uuurrgggghhhh!!!