The latest American to be arrested for committing a suspected terrorist attack is an enthusiastic reader and commenter on conservative blogs. Under their own logic it's now time to detain and torture Michelle Malkin, Ann Coulter, and the rest of their rabble-rousing crowd. Wonder how conservatives - and Democratic enablers like the Clintons - will react to this development?
Chad Castagana left comments (including one stirring endorsement of Katherine Harris) at conservative websites with names like Expose The Left and Free Republic. Much as I deplore this sort of thing, I expect to see these websites castigated in the public press while their contributors make human pyramids and bleed from dog bites in Gitmo.
The pro-torture advocates believe that our government should continue to detain and torture people without evidence, simply on suspicion -- suspicion that's based on nothing more than guilt-by-association, however tenous, or simply guesswork. The rationale is that the imminence and severity of a terrorist threat allows us to bend the rules. It's the Cheney "one percent doctrine" - if there's a one-percent chance doing this will protect us, it's worth it.
Stopping to prove the guilt or innocence of those about to be tortured is, according to torture's advocates, an indulgence we can't afford ourselves. (One rhetorical trick they like to use is to describe torture of suspects as the torture of terrorists, thereby attempting to sidestep this issue altogether). Leaving aside all the other strong arguments against torture - it's ineffective, provides bad intelligence, etc. - this is what separates those who believe in justice from those who don't.
Malkin makes the case right here:
"It is one thing to debate the ethics of torture in a general sense, whether captured terrorists can be subject to uncomfortable conditions in order to extract information about their network and associates. It's quite another to understand the use of torture in order to save the lives of innocent people. An attack was imminent, and the information had to be obtained, no matter the method."
Make no mistake, Chad Castagana's false "anthrax" letters to people like Keith Olbermann and David Letterman were terrorism, according to both common understanding and the Department of Defense, which defines it as "the unlawful use of -- or threatened use of -- force or violence against individuals or property to coerce or intimidate governments or societies, often to achieve political, religious, or ideological objectives." (Wonder why they didn't prosecute him under the Patriot Act.) His attacks were not only imminent, they were already underway.
My position on torture and unlawful detention hasn't changed: it's wrong, it's hideous, and it offends everything that makes us who we are as a country and a people. But, hey - fair is fair. Surely those patriotic conservatives who believe that it's justified should be willing to take a few waterboardings for the cause. Whaddya say, Michelle and Ann?
You wouldn't be the first innocent women tortured by your Republican leadership ... just the first non-Arab innocent women. And many of the ones subject to that treatment in Iraq had far less connection to any known terrorist than you guys apparently do, based on the evidence presented against Castagana.
So, come on in, kids! The waterboarding's fine! Aren't you ready to wear the hood for the conservative cause? Or at long last will you and your mainstream politician/enablers finally cease and desist?
Sadly, that list of enablers now includes Bill and Hillary Clinton, who recently chose torture as a handy opportunity to triangulate. What do you say now, Mr. President and Sen. Clinton? Are you going to thoughtfully ponder the value of wracking Bill O'Reilly's body for the sake of safety? And is Alan Dershowitz going to gin up another phony scenario - say, one where one million people will die of anthrax poisoning in an hour and only the bloggers at Little Green Footballs how to stop it?
Then, for God's sake, all of you - knock it off. Torture doesn't work - and it's an un-American activity.