“The United States must defend liberty and justice because these principles are right and true for all people everywhere. These nonnegotiable demands of human dignity are protected most securely in democracies. The United States Government will work to advance human dignity in word and deed, speaking out for freedom and against violations of human rights and allocating appropriate resources to advance these ideals.”
These are inspiring words, and they are the basis of our foreign policy for the past several decades. However, they are belied by our actions:
1) If we believe in liberty and justice, what gives us the unilateral right to detain people from anywhere in the world and hold them indefinitely at Gitmo and elsewhere without charging them with anything or allowing them to defend themselves?
2) How do you square the “nonnegotiable demands of human dignity” with putting prisoners at Abu Ghraib in the same room as rabid dogs – or the government’s unwillingness to punish those at the top of the chain of command for allowing (and perhaps encouraging) this to happen?
3) If we were truly against “violations of human rights,” why do we send prisoners to countries where we know they will be tortured? And why does our Vice President lobby Congress to explicitly permit the CIA to engage in torture?
“Yet the first duty of the United States Government remains what it always has been: to protect the American people and American interests. It is an enduring American principle that this duty obligates the government to anticipate and counter threats, using all elements of national power, before the threats can do grave damage.”
Really? We faced a much greater threat from Soviet Russia and China than we face from Al Qaeda (and certainly greater than any threat which Iraq posed). Yet we never attacked either country. We faced a greater threat from the Axis powers, but we did not send troops until we were attacked at Pearl Harbor. If this is “an enduring American principle,” when has it ever been used?
1st and 3rd points are valid enough, but the 2nd point is tenuous at best. The abuse of prisoners at Abu Ghraib is the responsibility of Lindie England (or whatever her name is) and her boyfriend. There is no proof that those at the top of the chain of command either encouraged or allowed it to take place — the fact that court-martials of the soldiers responsible for the abuse have occurred is proof that such behavior is not allowed. Note, you are not advocating an investiagtion or trial of those at the top of the chain of command, but outright punishment.
As for the second post, suffice it to say that different enemies call for different strategies. The US did not attack the USSR or the PRC (I assume you’re excluding the Korean War) because of a concept called MAD — mutually-assured destruction. It would be preferable we can prevent such a stalemate from occurring in the future, and in a war with an international terrorist organization, there can be no MAD, as there is no target against which the US can retaliate.
With the Axis powers, most Americans did not realize that they posed a direct threat to us until Pearl Harbor. Likewise, most Americans did not realize that threats emanating from the Middle East (or anywhere else in the world, for that matter) could pose a direct threat to them. Hussein did not have a direct hand in 9/11, but the event showed us that those who have a mind to attack America are capable of it. Furthermore, it is clear that Al Qaeda, Iran, and the DPRK all have America in their cross-hairs. For instance, I recall seeing an Iranian leader speaking to the AF officers on C-Span a while back: he ended every paragraph with “Death to America; Death to Israel.” Likewise DPRK children’s shows have, for decades had sing-a-longs about “killing all the Yankees and driving them from Korea.” The rhetoric of Hitler, Mussolini, and Imperial Japan were not nearly as much aimed at the US.
1) “The fact that court-martials of the soldiers responsible for the abuse have occurred” only shows that the Pentagon has identified scapegoats for Abu Ghraib. The chain of military command goes to the top, and Rumsfeld would be responsible even if he was unaware of the torture, as there were no explicit prohibitions against torture and it is logical to assume that hot-headed twenty year olds in combat would do the things which were done. However, there is plenty of evidence to suggest that Rumsfeld was very aware of how prisoners were treated. Placing inmates with dogs was used at Gitmo with Rumsfeld’a approval:
There is also evidence of direct involvement by Rumsfeld: “last month, Brig-Gen Janis Karpinski, the commander formerly in charge of Abu Ghraib, alleged that Mr Rumsfeld had authorised the use of ‘dogs, food deprivation and sleep deprivation’.”
The buck does stop at the top (or it should, anyway). Ken Lay claims that he didn’t know what was going on at Enron, but this didn’t get him very far. Why should Rumsfeld get a free pass?
2) Your point about MAD is well taken. However, this doesn’t negate my point that pre-emptive war is far from “an enduring American principle.” In fact, it’s never been an American principle.
Re “you are not advocating an investiagtion or trial of those at the top of the chain of command, but outright punishment:” actually, I think Rumsfeld should resign or be fired. I’m not advocating punishment. I don’t know enough about the code of military justice to know what offenses are punishable.
It is false that preemptive war is a new principle…you can keep repeating it, but that doesn’t make it so…what was the Cuban Missile crisis about? The Monroe doctrine? The Vietnam War, for that matter, was a preemptive war against worldwide communism, as was the Korean….
Preeemptive war is one of the most enduring American principles…at least since World War II…
Niall Ferguson, author of Colossus: The Rise and Fall of the American Empire, Harvard history professor, and fellow at Stanford’s Hoover Institute in the November 2005 Commentary:
Many critics seized on upon this [the preemptiveness of the Bush Doctrine] as a dangerous new departure. Yet the idea of preemption had been asserted by more than one President during the cold war, and had been assumed by them all. The radical aspect of the Bush Doctrine was not so much the theory as the practice.
We didn’t go to war in Cuba — our military involvement in Korea and Vietnam came after aggression by North Korea and North Vietnam — unlike Iraq, we did not enter a country which was not in a state of war (or civil war) and fire the first shot.
I would not consider the Monroe Doctrine to be an endorsement of pre-emptive war. It was basically a deal where we would stay neutral in European wars provided the countries in Europe would not interfere with countries in the Americas. Any involvement in this hemisphere by Europe would be viewed as cassis belli. This is much different than what has been called the Bush doctrine.
According to historian John Lewis Gaddis in Surprise Security and the American Experience, pre-emptive war and unilateralism are not as unprecedented in US history as many of the president’s detractors purport. It was actually quite common in the 19th century.
The basic points are that in the 19th and early 20th centuries, the US faced rogue and derelict (failed) states and criminals — Florida in 1817, Pancho Villa, etc. While in the mid- to late -20th century, we faced great power rivalry.
Pre-emptive war is essentially a return to an earlier American grand strategy (prior to the multilateralism and deterrence of the Cold War era). In a paper I wrote analyzing Gaddis’s book for a poli sci course last year, I asked the question, “What does the world today resemble more: 19th century North America, or the 20th century world?” Clearly, today there is no real rival great power (some argue that China is, but China, for all its ills is far too pro-status quo to seriously consider challenging the US militarily any time in the foreseeable future), but what we face are rogue regimes — Iran, the DPRK, Cuba, Syria, Libya, and the Serbia — and failed states — Darfur, Somalia, Haiti, etc. Therefore a more 19th Century-style strategy is more appropriate.
I would also add that, as far as torture goes, while a human rights violation is a human rights violation no matter who the victim is, a regime that routinely and intentionally violates the human rights of the average citizen for things like criticizing the government is much worse than a regime that tortures international terrorists who have killed women and children by sawing off their heads. I’m not saying that torture is ever justified, but moreover, just because Cheney and Rumsfeld may have authorized torture of Al Qaeda and Taliban detainees doesn’t equate them with the likes of Kim Jong Il, Saddam Hussein, etc.
Aggression by North Korea and North Vietnam against whom? Certainly they didn’t threaten the American homeland in any way, shape or form..and the fact that the Cuban Missile Crisis didn’t bloom into war is irrelevant – we were certainly prepared for it…it’s just that Kruschev blinked…
I’m sorry, I’m quoting from the print edition of Commentary, I don’t have a link…
However, Ferguson goes on to say:
Unlike many critics of the Bush administration, I did not dismiss the project as morally wrong. On the contrary, I argued that there were a number of regimes around the world that were likely to cease sponsoring terrorism, acquiring nuclear weapons, or murdering their own people only as a result of effective military intervention. My qualms have all along related to the ability of the United States successfully to execute such interventions.
One suggestion: I’ve noticed that as more people come to your site, the threads are getting longer. Would it be possible to number each post?
1) Aaron’s 11:07 post:
a) I should have qualified what I wrote to refer to recent American history (i.e., since World War I — you might consider the Spanish American War as pre-emptive war).
b) I certainly don’t equate Cheney or Rumsfeld with Kim Jong Il or Hussein. If we only tortured Al Qaeda, that would be different. However, we don’t know how many innocents were also tortured. The Canadian who was abducted, sent to a foreign country (Syria?), tortured for about a year, found to be innocent, and then returned home is an egregious example. The fact that he was denied compensation by the US makes it even more shameful. Many of the prisoners at Abu Ghraib were reported to be innocent and later released. You could make the case that torture is wrong in all circumstances — I’m not sure if I agree with that, but it is a legitimate argument, at least in “ticking time bomb” cases — but you can’t make the case that torturing innocents held in captivity is anything but abhorrent.
2) Aaron’s 11:08 post: by punished, I meant fired — not fined or jailed. I could have been more precise here.
3) To Mark: Aggression by North Korea against the South and aggression of North VietNam against South VietNam. If you believed in the domino theory, they did pose a threat to the homeland because the predicted spread of communism throughout Asia would irretrievably alter the world’s geo-political balance. At least that was the argument which was made at the time.
I certainly agree with you on the possibility of torturing innocents (somewhat uniquely among conservatives, I oppose the death penalty for similiar reasons). I thought about mentioning that, but forgot it by the time I finished the previous thought. My point was that while the US may torture innocent people, the US is still superior to the other regimes I listed in that if the US does torture innocents, it is an accident, not intentional. Again, that doesn’t justify it, and the US should most certainly compensate people who are falsely imprisoned or tortured.
The Bay of Pigs fiasco was similar to pre-emptive war in the sense that there was not a state of war, and we were involved in a military incursion (if you consider three planes flying missions over two days to be a military incursion).
However, there are substantial differences. First, it wasn’t a war. Secondly, US troops weren’t involved — we had proxies. Finally, the scale was so miniscule that I don’t think it is a valid comparison to Iraq, or any other hot war.
Look: if pre-emptive war is so ingrained in American foreign policy, why do they call it the Bush doctrine?
peter, good suggestion on the numbering – I’ll look into it…I think it’s the Bush doctrine because 9/11 forced Bush to articulate, agressively and explicitly, a strategy that was more implicit, but still there, prior…
The US is better than Syria, Hussein’s Iraq, Stalinist Russia, and Pol Pot’s Cambodia? Geez, that’s reassuring.
However, the argument that “while the US may torture innocents, it’s not really so bad because the torture is unintentiional” is a flaccid one. When you deprive the detained of due process, the captor is responsible for the error. A lot of the people at Abu Ghraib and Gitmo were simply in the wrong place at the wrong time. When you cast a wide net and refuse to allow the captured the right of habeas corpus, it’s your own fault when you abuse the wrong guy. You are punishing people before you have convicted them of anything.
I used to be against the death penalty for the same reason you are (i.e., the possibility of executing innocents). I am still against it in the vast majority of instances. However, when I read a piece in Esquire a year ago about the Aryan Brotherhood, it changed my mind. This is a group of convicts already in jail who do some very bad things (like get their comrades outside of jail to murder prosecutors). They quoted the prosecutor in the case (which happened to go to trial this week) as saying that when you are dealing with people who already are serving life sentences, the only leverage a prosecutor has is capital punishment. I think that the death penalty is moral in those instances.
Mark: I think you are contradicting yourself — first you state (at 10:48) that we’ve been conducting pre-emptive war all along — then you state (at 10:55) that Bush is different because notody before him did conduct a pre-emptive war — and then at 11:53 you state that it was a policy, but one which was never articulated (which is an oxymoron: how can you have a policy if you don’t tell people about it?) –
Come on, I’ve been perfectly consistent. I said Bush made explicit (or if you prefer, reiterated) a policy that had been there all along, just maybe not advertised…
A policy is no less a policy if it isn’t screamed from the rooftops…
And I’m not the one that said Bush was different (in practice, not in theory) – that was Niall Ferguson…
I think you are bobbing and weaving here — your argument is that we’ve had a policy of pre-emptive war, but we didn’t act on it and we kept it a secret — doesn’t sound like much of a policy to me — sounds more like the boilerplate “we won’t take any options off the table” — and while it was Ferguson who said Bush was different, you quoted him approvingly — presumably you wouldn’t have included the excerpt if you disagreed with it –
Sorry, no bob and weave here – I quoted Ferguson because you insist that Bush dreamed up preventive war – I was showing it wasn’t so. I merely quoted the entire paragraph Ferguson’s statement was in, and that happened to be the last sentence.
I think the context was pretty clear…and again, I’m not saying we kept it a secret – I’m saying that Bush explicitly articulated the strategy, to use your words, in response to 9/11…just as he reiterated it today. The Bush Doctrine was not my coinage, but it could mean many things – and perhaps one of the things it means is that preemptive war was going to be STRESSED with more agressiveness in light of those 3,000 murdered New Yorkers.
After all, a policy can be a greater emphasis on something just as well as it can be a new thing…
In any event, I approve of the concept, whether explicit as with Iraq and the Cuban Missile crisis, or implicit as in first-strike nuclear capabilities, and yes, the Monroe Doctrine, in my view, as well…for if the Monroe Doctrine didn’t contain an implicit threat, it wasn’t much use, was it?…
Maybe I’m stretching it with that last one, but the point of this whole overlong thread is that Bush didn’t take some radical departure after 9/11 – he just went to the trouble to make clear what our strategy and policy would be…
Wow, talk about coming late to the party – I’ll only add in another excellent book pertaining to this subject: The Savage Wars of Peace – Small Wars and the Price of Power, by Max Boot.
This is an excellent primer on the history of the United State’s unilateral and preemptive actions in wars that have mostly been forgotten over time. It would appear that many of the current President’s critics seem to have overlooked our country’s long history in launching such actions under the auspices of national defense.
From the Summary of National Security Strategy:
“The United States must defend liberty and justice because these principles are right and true for all people everywhere. These nonnegotiable demands of human dignity are protected most securely in democracies. The United States Government will work to advance human dignity in word and deed, speaking out for freedom and against violations of human rights and allocating appropriate resources to advance these ideals.”
These are inspiring words, and they are the basis of our foreign policy for the past several decades. However, they are belied by our actions:
1) If we believe in liberty and justice, what gives us the unilateral right to detain people from anywhere in the world and hold them indefinitely at Gitmo and elsewhere without charging them with anything or allowing them to defend themselves?
2) How do you square the “nonnegotiable demands of human dignity” with putting prisoners at Abu Ghraib in the same room as rabid dogs – or the government’s unwillingness to punish those at the top of the chain of command for allowing (and perhaps encouraging) this to happen?
3) If we were truly against “violations of human rights,” why do we send prisoners to countries where we know they will be tortured? And why does our Vice President lobby Congress to explicitly permit the CIA to engage in torture?
Also from the document:
“Yet the first duty of the United States Government remains what it always has been: to protect the American people and American interests. It is an enduring American principle that this duty obligates the government to anticipate and counter threats, using all elements of national power, before the threats can do grave damage.”
Really? We faced a much greater threat from Soviet Russia and China than we face from Al Qaeda (and certainly greater than any threat which Iraq posed). Yet we never attacked either country. We faced a greater threat from the Axis powers, but we did not send troops until we were attacked at Pearl Harbor. If this is “an enduring American principle,” when has it ever been used?
1st and 3rd points are valid enough, but the 2nd point is tenuous at best. The abuse of prisoners at Abu Ghraib is the responsibility of Lindie England (or whatever her name is) and her boyfriend. There is no proof that those at the top of the chain of command either encouraged or allowed it to take place — the fact that court-martials of the soldiers responsible for the abuse have occurred is proof that such behavior is not allowed. Note, you are not advocating an investiagtion or trial of those at the top of the chain of command, but outright punishment.
As for the second post, suffice it to say that different enemies call for different strategies. The US did not attack the USSR or the PRC (I assume you’re excluding the Korean War) because of a concept called MAD — mutually-assured destruction. It would be preferable we can prevent such a stalemate from occurring in the future, and in a war with an international terrorist organization, there can be no MAD, as there is no target against which the US can retaliate.
With the Axis powers, most Americans did not realize that they posed a direct threat to us until Pearl Harbor. Likewise, most Americans did not realize that threats emanating from the Middle East (or anywhere else in the world, for that matter) could pose a direct threat to them. Hussein did not have a direct hand in 9/11, but the event showed us that those who have a mind to attack America are capable of it. Furthermore, it is clear that Al Qaeda, Iran, and the DPRK all have America in their cross-hairs. For instance, I recall seeing an Iranian leader speaking to the AF officers on C-Span a while back: he ended every paragraph with “Death to America; Death to Israel.” Likewise DPRK children’s shows have, for decades had sing-a-longs about “killing all the Yankees and driving them from Korea.” The rhetoric of Hitler, Mussolini, and Imperial Japan were not nearly as much aimed at the US.
1) “The fact that court-martials of the soldiers responsible for the abuse have occurred” only shows that the Pentagon has identified scapegoats for Abu Ghraib. The chain of military command goes to the top, and Rumsfeld would be responsible even if he was unaware of the torture, as there were no explicit prohibitions against torture and it is logical to assume that hot-headed twenty year olds in combat would do the things which were done. However, there is plenty of evidence to suggest that Rumsfeld was very aware of how prisoners were treated. Placing inmates with dogs was used at Gitmo with Rumsfeld’a approval:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/07/13/AR2005071302380.html
There is also evidence of direct involvement by Rumsfeld: “last month, Brig-Gen Janis Karpinski, the commander formerly in charge of Abu Ghraib, alleged that Mr Rumsfeld had authorised the use of ‘dogs, food deprivation and sleep deprivation’.”
source: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml;jsessionid=YHPPQLRIYUBHJQFIQMGCFGGAVCBQUIV0?xml=/news/2004/08/15/wrum15.xml&sSheet=/news/2004/08/15/ixworld.html
The buck does stop at the top (or it should, anyway). Ken Lay claims that he didn’t know what was going on at Enron, but this didn’t get him very far. Why should Rumsfeld get a free pass?
2) Your point about MAD is well taken. However, this doesn’t negate my point that pre-emptive war is far from “an enduring American principle.” In fact, it’s never been an American principle.
Re “you are not advocating an investiagtion or trial of those at the top of the chain of command, but outright punishment:” actually, I think Rumsfeld should resign or be fired. I’m not advocating punishment. I don’t know enough about the code of military justice to know what offenses are punishable.
It is false that preemptive war is a new principle…you can keep repeating it, but that doesn’t make it so…what was the Cuban Missile crisis about? The Monroe doctrine? The Vietnam War, for that matter, was a preemptive war against worldwide communism, as was the Korean….
Preeemptive war is one of the most enduring American principles…at least since World War II…
Niall Ferguson, author of Colossus: The Rise and Fall of the American Empire, Harvard history professor, and fellow at Stanford’s Hoover Institute in the November 2005 Commentary:
Many critics seized on upon this [the preemptiveness of the Bush Doctrine] as a dangerous new departure. Yet the idea of preemption had been asserted by more than one President during the cold war, and had been assumed by them all. The radical aspect of the Bush Doctrine was not so much the theory as the practice.
We didn’t go to war in Cuba — our military involvement in Korea and Vietnam came after aggression by North Korea and North Vietnam — unlike Iraq, we did not enter a country which was not in a state of war (or civil war) and fire the first shot.
I would not consider the Monroe Doctrine to be an endorsement of pre-emptive war. It was basically a deal where we would stay neutral in European wars provided the countries in Europe would not interfere with countries in the Americas. Any involvement in this hemisphere by Europe would be viewed as cassis belli. This is much different than what has been called the Bush doctrine.
If you have a link to the Ferguson article, I would be interested in seeing it. I would like to see what evidence he has to support his conclusion.
According to historian John Lewis Gaddis in Surprise Security and the American Experience, pre-emptive war and unilateralism are not as unprecedented in US history as many of the president’s detractors purport. It was actually quite common in the 19th century.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/product-description/0674011740/ref=dp_proddesc_0/102-4571849-9978534?%5Fencoding=UTF8&n=283155
The basic points are that in the 19th and early 20th centuries, the US faced rogue and derelict (failed) states and criminals — Florida in 1817, Pancho Villa, etc. While in the mid- to late -20th century, we faced great power rivalry.
Pre-emptive war is essentially a return to an earlier American grand strategy (prior to the multilateralism and deterrence of the Cold War era). In a paper I wrote analyzing Gaddis’s book for a poli sci course last year, I asked the question, “What does the world today resemble more: 19th century North America, or the 20th century world?” Clearly, today there is no real rival great power (some argue that China is, but China, for all its ills is far too pro-status quo to seriously consider challenging the US militarily any time in the foreseeable future), but what we face are rogue regimes — Iran, the DPRK, Cuba, Syria, Libya, and the Serbia — and failed states — Darfur, Somalia, Haiti, etc. Therefore a more 19th Century-style strategy is more appropriate.
I would also add that, as far as torture goes, while a human rights violation is a human rights violation no matter who the victim is, a regime that routinely and intentionally violates the human rights of the average citizen for things like criticizing the government is much worse than a regime that tortures international terrorists who have killed women and children by sawing off their heads. I’m not saying that torture is ever justified, but moreover, just because Cheney and Rumsfeld may have authorized torture of Al Qaeda and Taliban detainees doesn’t equate them with the likes of Kim Jong Il, Saddam Hussein, etc.
“I’m not advocating punishment”
What was this about then?
“the government’s unwillingness to punish those at the top of the chain of command”
Aggression by North Korea and North Vietnam against whom? Certainly they didn’t threaten the American homeland in any way, shape or form..and the fact that the Cuban Missile Crisis didn’t bloom into war is irrelevant – we were certainly prepared for it…it’s just that Kruschev blinked…
I’m sorry, I’m quoting from the print edition of Commentary, I don’t have a link…
However, Ferguson goes on to say:
Unlike many critics of the Bush administration, I did not dismiss the project as morally wrong. On the contrary, I argued that there were a number of regimes around the world that were likely to cease sponsoring terrorism, acquiring nuclear weapons, or murdering their own people only as a result of effective military intervention. My qualms have all along related to the ability of the United States successfully to execute such interventions.
One suggestion: I’ve noticed that as more people come to your site, the threads are getting longer. Would it be possible to number each post?
1) Aaron’s 11:07 post:
a) I should have qualified what I wrote to refer to recent American history (i.e., since World War I — you might consider the Spanish American War as pre-emptive war).
b) I certainly don’t equate Cheney or Rumsfeld with Kim Jong Il or Hussein. If we only tortured Al Qaeda, that would be different. However, we don’t know how many innocents were also tortured. The Canadian who was abducted, sent to a foreign country (Syria?), tortured for about a year, found to be innocent, and then returned home is an egregious example. The fact that he was denied compensation by the US makes it even more shameful. Many of the prisoners at Abu Ghraib were reported to be innocent and later released. You could make the case that torture is wrong in all circumstances — I’m not sure if I agree with that, but it is a legitimate argument, at least in “ticking time bomb” cases — but you can’t make the case that torturing innocents held in captivity is anything but abhorrent.
2) Aaron’s 11:08 post: by punished, I meant fired — not fined or jailed. I could have been more precise here.
3) To Mark: Aggression by North Korea against the South and aggression of North VietNam against South VietNam. If you believed in the domino theory, they did pose a threat to the homeland because the predicted spread of communism throughout Asia would irretrievably alter the world’s geo-political balance. At least that was the argument which was made at the time.
Another example of pre-emption during the Cold War was the failed Bay of Pigs invasion.
I certainly agree with you on the possibility of torturing innocents (somewhat uniquely among conservatives, I oppose the death penalty for similiar reasons). I thought about mentioning that, but forgot it by the time I finished the previous thought. My point was that while the US may torture innocent people, the US is still superior to the other regimes I listed in that if the US does torture innocents, it is an accident, not intentional. Again, that doesn’t justify it, and the US should most certainly compensate people who are falsely imprisoned or tortured.
The Bay of Pigs fiasco was similar to pre-emptive war in the sense that there was not a state of war, and we were involved in a military incursion (if you consider three planes flying missions over two days to be a military incursion).
However, there are substantial differences. First, it wasn’t a war. Secondly, US troops weren’t involved — we had proxies. Finally, the scale was so miniscule that I don’t think it is a valid comparison to Iraq, or any other hot war.
Look: if pre-emptive war is so ingrained in American foreign policy, why do they call it the Bush doctrine?
peter, good suggestion on the numbering – I’ll look into it…I think it’s the Bush doctrine because 9/11 forced Bush to articulate, agressively and explicitly, a strategy that was more implicit, but still there, prior…
The US is better than Syria, Hussein’s Iraq, Stalinist Russia, and Pol Pot’s Cambodia? Geez, that’s reassuring.
However, the argument that “while the US may torture innocents, it’s not really so bad because the torture is unintentiional” is a flaccid one. When you deprive the detained of due process, the captor is responsible for the error. A lot of the people at Abu Ghraib and Gitmo were simply in the wrong place at the wrong time. When you cast a wide net and refuse to allow the captured the right of habeas corpus, it’s your own fault when you abuse the wrong guy. You are punishing people before you have convicted them of anything.
I used to be against the death penalty for the same reason you are (i.e., the possibility of executing innocents). I am still against it in the vast majority of instances. However, when I read a piece in Esquire a year ago about the Aryan Brotherhood, it changed my mind. This is a group of convicts already in jail who do some very bad things (like get their comrades outside of jail to murder prosecutors). They quoted the prosecutor in the case (which happened to go to trial this week) as saying that when you are dealing with people who already are serving life sentences, the only leverage a prosecutor has is capital punishment. I think that the death penalty is moral in those instances.
Mark: I think you are contradicting yourself — first you state (at 10:48) that we’ve been conducting pre-emptive war all along — then you state (at 10:55) that Bush is different because notody before him did conduct a pre-emptive war — and then at 11:53 you state that it was a policy, but one which was never articulated (which is an oxymoron: how can you have a policy if you don’t tell people about it?) –
Huh? An unstated policy – ever hear of that?
Come on, I’ve been perfectly consistent. I said Bush made explicit (or if you prefer, reiterated) a policy that had been there all along, just maybe not advertised…
A policy is no less a policy if it isn’t screamed from the rooftops…
And I’m not the one that said Bush was different (in practice, not in theory) – that was Niall Ferguson…
Just FYI, “unstated policy” in quotes returns 10,300 hits on Google…and “unstated policy” + US returns 968. Not exactly a new concept…
I think you are bobbing and weaving here — your argument is that we’ve had a policy of pre-emptive war, but we didn’t act on it and we kept it a secret — doesn’t sound like much of a policy to me — sounds more like the boilerplate “we won’t take any options off the table” — and while it was Ferguson who said Bush was different, you quoted him approvingly — presumably you wouldn’t have included the excerpt if you disagreed with it –
Sorry, no bob and weave here – I quoted Ferguson because you insist that Bush dreamed up preventive war – I was showing it wasn’t so. I merely quoted the entire paragraph Ferguson’s statement was in, and that happened to be the last sentence.
I think the context was pretty clear…and again, I’m not saying we kept it a secret – I’m saying that Bush explicitly articulated the strategy, to use your words, in response to 9/11…just as he reiterated it today. The Bush Doctrine was not my coinage, but it could mean many things – and perhaps one of the things it means is that preemptive war was going to be STRESSED with more agressiveness in light of those 3,000 murdered New Yorkers.
After all, a policy can be a greater emphasis on something just as well as it can be a new thing…
In any event, I approve of the concept, whether explicit as with Iraq and the Cuban Missile crisis, or implicit as in first-strike nuclear capabilities, and yes, the Monroe Doctrine, in my view, as well…for if the Monroe Doctrine didn’t contain an implicit threat, it wasn’t much use, was it?…
Maybe I’m stretching it with that last one, but the point of this whole overlong thread is that Bush didn’t take some radical departure after 9/11 – he just went to the trouble to make clear what our strategy and policy would be…
By the way, I’m only teasing about the overlong bit…I enjoy the give and take…but I do have to call it a night!…
Wow, talk about coming late to the party – I’ll only add in another excellent book pertaining to this subject: The Savage Wars of Peace – Small Wars and the Price of Power, by Max Boot.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/046500721X/qid=1142612785/sr=2-1/ref=pd_bbs_b_2_1/102-5241045-2547341?s=books&v=glance&n=283155
This is an excellent primer on the history of the United State’s unilateral and preemptive actions in wars that have mostly been forgotten over time. It would appear that many of the current President’s critics seem to have overlooked our country’s long history in launching such actions under the auspices of national defense.