But I hope no one goes away from this thinking that the whole debate about torture and prisoner abuse is just some liberal plot to discredit Bush. The evidence is quite abundant, and if you haven't seen any of it, you really do need to start reading Andrew Sullivan (who, by the way, was a hawk on the Iraq war).
I won't try to reduplicate his work, but let me just throw one quote at you from Ian Fishback. He is the 82nd Airborne Division captain who went public with a letter to Sen. McCain urging passage of the McCain Amendment in order to set clear standards for the conduct of American soldiers. Sullivan calls him an American hero.
In a Human Rights Watch report, Capt. Fishback said he had witnessed violations of the Geneva Conventions that nevertheless appeared to be U.S. policy. He concluded:
If you draw a hard line and you say “Don’t do anything bad to prisoners,” ... then, yeah, that is an easy line to draw, but when you start drawing shades of gray and you start stripping prisoners, or you start making prisoners do humiliating things and then you tell a soldier to draw the line somewhere, then ... things are going to get out of hand because everyone is going to draw the line at a different place.
... It’s unjust to hold only lower-ranking soldiers accountable for something that is so clearly, at a minimum, an officer corps problem, and probably a combination with the executive branch of government ... . [B]y trying to claim that it was “rogue elements” we seriously hinder our ability to ensure this doesn’t happen again.
That makes such great good sense that it's a shame it hasn't penetrated up the chain of command.
26 comments:
My link beats your link Levin v. Sullivan
David, you just don’t get, do you? You’re wasting bandwidth over this impeachment and torture nonsense. You complain about your original post degenerating into an “incredibly inane thread” without considering how incredibly inane your subject was.
Here are some suggestions to help you avoid inanity:
1. Don’t be a dupe of the liberal East Coast media and the Democrats by repeating their silly charges against Bush, which change from week to week. No sane person is interested in discussing their endless conspiracy theories or crackpot schemes for fixing the entire world. There are enough blogs dedicated to UFO abductions and Area 51 cover-ups.
2. Don’t cite Andrew Sullivan as an authority on anything. He is a notorious homosexual and therefore, by definition, is totally lacking in good judgment.
3. Don’t cite Sen. John McCain as an authority on military matters. His sole claim to fame is having spent the entire Vietnam War as a POW. There is nothing very smart about getting captured, and nothing very heroic about sitting in a prison cell.
4. Don’t quote from goofy green outfits like Human Rights Watch. They have as much credibility as PETA and are twice as hypocritical.
5. To help you remember not to be inane, or to repeat inanities, make a large sign and put it up near your computer. The sign should read:
Al Gore might have created the Internet, but George Bush created Global Warming!
Wow.
Way to go, Chad. It took 30 comments to sink this low in the earlier thread. Now you have managed to do it in two. You have a fine career ahead of you.
I’ll tell you what is “low,” David: insinuating that there’s something defective in an argument but not explicitly stating what is defective. That would be “low” as in “cowardly.”
Now, “really low” is what’s happening over at the City Lights blog, where Ed Kemmick and some of his pals are discussing having sex with animals. That would be “really low” as in “really sick.”
David,
Do something important, like fix the time zone on your blog.
David: You might want to check IPs. If Chad is not Don Mellon, I'll eat my hat. I warned you. In listing the targets of his bigotry, I forgot to mention his hatred of gays, but he has taken care of that for me.
As for being a dupe of the East Coast media, how about one of the the Other Coast media? I refer to the Economist, that bastion of extreme moderation in England. Late, as always, I was reading the Nov. 12 issue today. In an editorial on Bush and terror, it said Bush would be correct in saying "that anti-Americanism is to blame for some of the opprobrium heaped on his country. But why encourage it so cavalierly and in such an unAmerican way? Nearly two years after Abu Ghraib, the world is still waiting for a clear statement of America's principles on the treatment of detainees. Mr McCain says he will keep on adding his amendments to different bills until Mr Bush signs one of them. Every enemy of terrorism should hope he does so soon."
Amen.
Don: What is low is pretending to be a number of other people and never using your own name; never addressing a point anyone raises about your posts; and then attacking your critics from behind yet another mask. You're not even low. You're just a weenie.
To Ed Kemmick: I’m really sorry you’ve been so terrified by this “Don” bogeyman that you’re obsessively looking for him everywhere. But, please, go back to City Lights and do your girlie man sniffling over there. Nobody here is afraid of “Don” or “Anonymous” or any other poster.
Not terrified, just disgusted. I'm a big fan of David's blog and I hate to see it derailed by weenies who refuse to debate, but only snipe and decant tripe. Have the courage of your convictions, Don! Oh, wait. You have none.
To Ed Kemmick:
“Debate”? What a crock. Everybody knows about YOUR BLOG. You delete whatever you can’t refute on YOUR BLOG. That’s why you always win on YOUR BLOG.
Stop your pathetic whining, will you? Go back to the phony little world you’ve created on YOUR BLOG.
Don, if I may call you that, COME OUTTA THE CLOSET, PAL! You're helluva a writer and a helluva an itellect! (albiet if the claims of bigotry are true, you're also a helluva an a**hole!) But at LEAST come outta the closet and tell us who you really are. Then we can debatwe. I'd really like to engage you in some serious debate. Your pathologies are freakin' fascinating!
LK
Ooopsie! That should be debate. That's the scotch talkin'. But, Don, tell us about yourself. How does one get to be like you are? You aren't from around here, are you? What's your background?
p.s. I get damn tired of debating the lowbrows on the wack side of things. But you, YOU, are good! Get serious. Knock off the nonsense, and give me your best arguments! Don't hold back. Let's see what you got.
Chad (or Don, or whoever you are):
Sorry. It didn't occur to me that you may have meant your post as a serious argument. Let me respond point by point:
1. Agreed. No one should simply parrot the allegations of the "liberal East Coast media" or of either political party. But one also should not ignore a substantive issue just because one party or the other might attempt to use it to political advantage. Right?
2. This is a novel concept to me. I eagerly await your empirical evidence for the assertion that people of certain sexual orientation are "totally lacking in good judgment."
3. Neither Sen. McCain nor I, to my knowledge, has claimed that he is an authority on military matters. However, he is an authority on torture, or at least far more of one than I ever hope to be. He should be heard.
4. The credibility of Human Rights Watch is irrelevant. Capt. Fishback has acknowledged that he is the source of the only quote I used in my post. To my knowledge, he has not disavowed the quote or claimed that Human Rights Watch misued or misinterpreted him in any way. If anyone's credibility is at stake, it is his.
5. Are you certain that posting an inane sign would prevent me from making inane comments? It might just encourage me.
By the way, it's nice to see Rich finally taking a stand on two points:
1. He likes Levin plus Sullivan better than he likes Sullivan alone.
2. He prefers using the accurate time on blogs.
Richologists await further clues.
Refreshing, it is, to see David beat back his opponents with such ease. They are overmatched. But therein lay the frustration with blogs - like Cool Hand Luke, they keep coming back, with nothing.
david,
Doesn't seem to be much commenting on the impeachment of the week. Perhaps it's time to move along to the next in the line of moonbat impeachment idiocy?
My point exactly.
To David:
1. Point: “It didn't occur to me that you may have meant your post as a serious argument.”
Counterpoint: Perhaps that’s because you’re so used to no one taking your blog seriously.
2. Point: “No one should simply parrot the allegations of the ‘liberal East Coast media’ or of either political party.”
Counterpoint: No one should parrot anything, period. Unless, of course, they parrot things for a living, e.g., journalists; or they parrot things for fun, e.g., bloggers.
3. Point: “But one also should not ignore a substantive issue just because one party or the other might attempt to use it to political advantage. “
Counterpoint: The validity of your statement depends on (1) your definition of a “substantive issue”; and (2) the source of the “substantive issue.” Most substantive issues, outside a court of law, are determined by the mass media. It is strictly up to the media whether a mere news event (“Man Bites Dog”) can be converted into a substantive issue (“Debate Over Rabies Shots for Humans Heats Up”). The conversion of a news event into a substantive issue is usually performed on the op-ed pages of the big city newspapers and then subsequently parroted by the television news, small town papers, and bloggers.
While I am inclined to think that torture is a “substantive issue,” at least for philosophers, I am suspicious of the blue city and blue state media outlets that converted stories of “torture” into a “substantive issue.”
Aside from their obvious motives for destroying a red president, there is also the possibility that the blue city and blue state media outlets know what sells. But that is too cynical.
4. Point: “This is a novel concept to me. I eagerly await your empirical evidence for the assertion that people of certain sexual orientation are ‘totally lacking in good judgment.’"
Counterpoint: I never asserted “that people of certain sexual orientation” were totally lacking in good judgment. I said homosexuals were totally lacking in good judgment. The homosexual’s conscious choice to copulate with members of his own sex is a testament to his total lack of good judgment. Nothing could be more fundamentally wrong.
I eagerly await your empirical evidence for the existence of “sexual orientation.”
5. Point: “Neither Sen. McCain nor I, to my knowledge, has claimed that he is an authority on military matters. However, he is an authority on torture, or at least far more of one than I ever hope to be. He should be heard.”
Counterpoint: Sen. McCain graduated from the US Naval Academy in 1958 and embarked upon a career in the US Navy. That is to say, he attended one of the foremost military colleges in the world and was commissioned as a line officer in one of the foremost military organizations in the world. Granted, McCain never claimed to be a Napoleon Bonaparte or a Fredrick the Great, but when it comes to military matters, the Congress and the public generally defer to his “authority.”
However, the discussion was about torture, primarily in a military context, i.e., men captured on the field of battle, confined as prisoners and tortured (whatever the definition of torture).
To say that McCain is an “authority on torture” is absurd. It is the same as saying that a man who undergoes heart bypass surgery is cardiologist. Saddam Hussein is an “authority on torture.” John McCain is an authority on BEING tortured. But that experience does not qualify him to speak on the ethical or legal aspects of torture.
6. Point: “The credibility of Human Rights Watch is irrelevant. Capt. Fishback has acknowledged that he is the source of the only quote I used in my post. To my knowledge, he has not disavowed the quote or claimed that Human Rights Watch misued [sic] or misinterpreted him in any way. If anyone's credibility is at stake, it is his.”
Counterpoint: Human Rights Watch would have never published Capt. Fishback’s opinions if his opinions disagreed with the party line. Any advocacy group can dig up someone to support their beliefs. Capt. Fishback is not testifying under oath, his credentials have not been fully established, and no cross-examination has taken place.
"Chad" (Don):
Counter-counterpoint to points one through six: So?
I know this is an impossible dream, but would it be possible to get this discussion on point? Let me try by posing a few hypothetical questions to see if we have any grounds of agreement at all. Set the facts totally aside: I'm not asking you to agree that the hypothetical accurately describes the facts. I'm just trying to figure whether you disagree with me on the facts or on principle. So far, I have been unable to tell.
1. Has a president who willfully violates a legal act of Congress committed an impeachable offense, provided that the offense reaches the level of "high crimes" as understood in the Constitution?
2. Does engaging in torture or illegal prisoner abuse constitute a "high crime"?
3. Does ordering subordinates to engage in torture or illegal abuse constitute a high crime?
4. Does condoning or otherwise justifying as a matter of policy acts of torture or abuse constitute a high crime?
5. If Congress passes a law that specifically directs the commander in chief to curb certain abuses, and the commander in chief denies that he is bound by that law, and further abuses occur, should the chief be impeached?
Again, I'm not asking you (or Rich) to concede that any of these things actually has occurred. I'm only trying to figure out whether there is enough common ground between us to even bother with the evidence.
“David” (Ed? Tony?):
My previous post was merely intended to point out that you are relying on shaky people and shaky “evidence” to develop your “Impeach Bush” case.
As for your five hypothetical questions above, I think you need to run them by a constitutional scholar. While you are talking to him, you might want to ask about the theory of “separation of powers,” since you seem to believe the president takes orders from the Congress.
On the other hand, if David Boies (the lawyer for Gore, Enron, Tyco, etc.) is not available for your consultation, you could grab a copy of “American Constitutional & Legal History” edited by Melvin I. Urofsky (two volumes, Knopf, 1989).
Article 1: "Congress shall have the power ... To make Rules for the Government and Regulation of the land and naval Forces."
Article 2: The president "shall take Care that the Laws be faithfully executed."
I don't think I need a constitutional scholar to tell me what that means.
Well, David, if anybody can interpret the Constitution, I guess we don’t need a Supreme Court anymore. (And, yes, I know Sandra Day O’Connor already proved that.)
Chad, That's the great thing about America. The founders designed a Constitution that was meant to be understood, useful and flexible. It says plainly what it means.
To David:
Basically, I agree with you about the Constitution stating “plainly what it means.” But unfortunately the document was fatally corrupted in the aftermath of the Civil War by the forced adoption of several amendments. And, in any event, its “flexibility” has rendered it essentially useless as a guiding document. Politically motivated jurists can see in it anything they want to see, somewhat like seeing a portrait of Jesus Christ in a mud pie thrown against a wall.
The US Constitution was created for a republic, something we no longer have.
Yes IMPEACH BUSH! Dick Cheney would make a great president and Karl Rove an even better vice president.
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