Do The Freakin Math

Liberals and conservatives alike frequently rely on limited evidence, personal experience, religious beliefs or gut emotions to determine solutions for complex problems. From immigration to global warming - taxes to terrorism - or health care to free trade - analytical study is rare. Science based policy making isn’t the way of Washington. And the consequences are catastrophic. Change is urgently needed. Just do the freakin’ math.

Thursday, December 11, 2014

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 9th, 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.