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The Next Korematsu
I am becoming more and more sure that our treatment of Jose Padilla will become the next great stain on America’s honor.
5 Responses to “The Next Korematsu”
Stand by for commenters berating you for believing Padilla and his lawyers instead of…
Wait, no one has come out and said Padilla was never tortured have they?
Never mind.
Guilty of terrorism or not, his treatment is like something from the old USSR. And guilty of terrorism or not, the same can happen to anyone of us.
The ‘mosaic theory’ is useless when much of the info is gleamed from torture. When much of the info is lies told to stop torture, what does taht say of the big picture. We won the Cold War by mostly staying on the ‘moral high ground’. This GWOT is a sham because of torture and our surrender of civil liberties for false security.
You’re absolutely right. What’s really disturbing is the lack of outrage now, especially considering that this was done to an American citizen.
Rudi is absolutely correct. Well besides the fact that it’s horrific disgusting and about as unethical as things get, torture does not necessarily provide good information, especially if you’re looking for “tidbits”. You don’t even need to torture someone, if you incarcerate a normal person for some time, they’ll tell you whatever you want in exchange for freedom.
Especially repulsive is the apparent acceptance that we can incarcerate and interrogate people we know are innocent, in the hopes they may have seen or heard something that they may not even understand and therefore it wouldn’t occur to them to mention. If these are innocent people, why incarcerate them? Wouldn’t interrogating them once be enough? Oh and, what if you get it WRONG???
That’s what kills me about the administration. They talk in dooms day scenarios “Well, if we have Bin Laden in jail and we know there’s a bomb somewhere ticking, wouldn’t you want us to find out where, even if it meant hurting him?!!” But suddenly people can be tortured for “tidbits” they may or may not have. And what happens when we torture and destroy the life of someone who has NOTHING to do with anything? do we just say “oops, our bad”? Oh but we have the right to complain if an enemy captures and tortures one of our soldiers right? Because that’s different, because we’re the good guys, so we can use bad guy tactics. If it quacks like a duck….
Ugh, the policy, it’s theory, practice and utter lack of morals make me ill.