The Moderate Voice occasionally runs Guest Voice posts by readers who don’t have a weblog or have one and have something special to say here. Guest Voice posts do not necessarily reflect the opinion of TMV or its co-bloggers — but they do add to our free-wheeling debate. This is by reader Matt Pearl, a college student in Georgia.
A Fight for Ideals
By Matt Pearl
The War on Terror has been described as many things: a war for our safety, a war for our beliefs, a war for Western Civilization, or a war for the American Way of Life. You can listen to any pundit or politician, particularly the right-leaning ones, and they will describe it in one of those ways.
However, when I look at the conflicts that currently comprise the War on Terror, namely Afghanistan and Iraq, I see it more as a fight for ideals. We are spreading Democracy, creating governments with respect for individual and minority rights, and are currently trying to modernize the minds of those we liberated. One stated accomplishment of the Iraq War that particularly stuck out in my mind was the fact that we “shut down Saddam’s Torture Chambers.�
That was a truly great thing. Then I believed, despite dubious claims about WMD or ties to Al Qaida, that we were there for a noble reason: to instill in the Iraqis and their government a more Western view on human dignity and individual and prisoner rights. We were sending a clear message that we did not condone torture.
Well, my vision of our principled stand on torture dissolved last winter when our “Compassionate Conservative� President skirted, via signing statement, a Congressional ban on torture which, by the way, was supported by nearly the entire Senate.
Various Bush supporters such as Pat Buchanan took a uniquely Machiavellian view that anything that could keep America safe should be at the President’s disposal.
Well… at least their goal is a noble one…
So, I started to wrestle with a dichotomy… if torture could prevent terror attacks, would it be worth it?
The answer is not as obvious as some would make it out to be. How do you rank safety as opposed to an ideal of human dignity for all?
Well, if you do believe that it is an ideal for which we are fighting, then torture is never excusable. We are fighting to spread western ideals of human dignity and human rights to places and people that have never experienced them before. You cannot expect to advocate, with any credibility, an ideal to which you do not subscribe.
If we lose sight of our ideals, then what are we fighting for?
Joe Gandelman is a former fulltime journalist who freelanced in India, Spain, Bangladesh and Cypress writing for publications such as the Christian Science Monitor and Newsweek. He also did radio reports from Madrid for NPR’s All Things Considered. He has worked on two U.S. newspapers and quit the news biz in 1990 to go into entertainment. He also has written for The Week and several online publications, did a column for Cagle Cartoons Syndicate and has appeared on CNN.