Torture and Drones are both unAmerican

Michael Gerson's’ “Occam” analysis of “the release of the Feinstein report on CIA interrogations” wasn’t ‘Occam’ enough!   His assertion that our nations use of torture and drones (“Acceptable tools of War” Washington Post, Dec 9^th, 2014) is based on dangerously flawed.  The simplest reason for explaining a desire to expose our nation’s crime of torturing suspects wasn’t “guilt, hypocrisy and betrayal”.  It’s because it was simply wrong.   Harming people without a fair trial is also simply un-American.  And, as even the highest ranking intelligence, military and elected officials now realize.  Having done it only increases our security risks.

Gerson claims that both torture and drone strikes of suspected terrorists was “following the exact letter of the law” “deemed lawful by the attorney general” and “authorized by the President”.

Gerson obviously doesn’t understand that the three essential elements needed to give the ‘rule of law’ (which our nation claims to based on) its legitimacy.  The laws must be made and enforced by a democratic process, applied equally to all, and, most important, protective of a basic set of inalienable rights.  Two of those are the right to life and freedom from torture.

When innocent people die because they are suspect or someone close to them is suspect, that violates the basic notion of what we believe is civil and moral.   Approving any ‘tools of war’ that ignore these vital elements of legitimate law, simply to protect ourselves, is not only cowardly.  It should be criminal.  And those responsible be they torturers, Presidents, or trigger pullers should be held accountable.  Doing the government’s work inside or around the beltway, in Ferguson, MO, or in Fallujah, Iraq should not make one immune to just law.