National Review editor Rick Lowry asks:
Would someone be fit to be attorney general of the United States if he had once said, "I think there are probably very few people in this room or in America who would say that torture should never, ever be used, particularly if thousands of lives are stake"?He then tells us:
By the standard Democrats are using to oppose the nomination of Judge Michael Mukasey as attorney general, the answer would be "no." In fact, whoever endorsed torture so explicitly would be relegated to the moral outer darkness.With respect for Lowry, a journalist I admire, Senator Whitehouse is doing much more than fulminating against Mukasey.
Lucky for him, Sen. Chuck Schumer, who made the above comment during a June 2004 Senate hearing on terrorism, is a member in good standing of the Senate Democratic leadership.
Mukasey is not so fortunately situated. He's only a respected federal judge whose hallmark is a painstaking commitment to the law. He would never, as Schumer did, endorse violations of U.S. law, the Constitution and Common Article 3 of the Geneva Conventions.
Mukasey has been absolutely clear that torture is illegal and wrong.
But he won't say that the interrogation technique of waterboarding -- which simulates drowning and induces instant, resistance-breaking panic in detainees -- constitutes torture.
On this basis, Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse, a Rhode Island Democrat, fulminated against Mukasey, "Will we join that gloomy historical line leading from the Inquisition, through the prisons of tyrant regimes, through gulags and dark cells, and through Saddam's torture chambers?"
It’s the United States Whitehouse is talking about. And it’s America’s enemies and their enablers Whitehouse knows will use his words against us.
He knows that just as Senator Ted Kennedy knew at the time of Abu Ghraib his charge Saddam’s prisons had been re-opened under American management would help further inflame Middle East sentiment against America.
Lowry continues:
Reasonable people can consider waterboarding torture, defined by federal law as an act "specifically intended to inflict severe physical or mental pain or suffering." Obviously if waterboarding weren't so horrifying, it wouldn't break detainees so quickly.What most Senate Democrats are now doing with the Mukasey nomination reveals their priorities: Put political interests first and use any opportunity that comes along to hurt the President.
But common sense suggests that the practice belongs in a murky space short of unambiguous torture.
Journalists have volunteered to be waterboarded, something they would never do in the case of such infamous torture methods as pulling out fingernails. Both the Army and Navy use waterboarding in their survival and resistance training. […]
The Senate had a chance to settle the question in September 2006 when Sen. Ted Kennedy offered an amendment to declare waterboarding and other coercive interrogation techniques a violation of Common Article 3 of the Geneva Conventions. His amendment lost 46-53.
So Senate Democrats are now demanding that Mukasey declare waterboarding a violation of Common Article 3 when the Senate declined to do the same just a year ago.
America’s interests? Speaking responsibly about what our country does and stands for? Acknowledging they would support waterboarding in cases where it was their personal safety that was at great risk?
You know the answers to those questions.
I’m not an R, but I can’t be a D.
Lowry’s entire column is here at RealClearPolitics.com
3 comments:
Many, if not most, of the Democrats in congress hate President Bush so deeply they are willing to damage or destroy America in order to hurt George Bush. Yet these same people will keep a straight face when they publicly bemoan "partisanship" in politics.
Your ending phrase "I’m not an R, but I can’t be a D."...is simply brilliant. It states so succinctly a sentiment I have long felt but haven't expressed so well. Thanks for the phrase...I hope you don't mind if I quote you...
I am an R and I do understand the many failings of my party. I must ask how you can expect to reform anything by rejecting the major parties when there is no creditable alternative. All 50 Governors are members of those parties. 99 of the 100 Senators are, and Bernie Sanders is just an honest Democrat by calling himself a Socialist. If you can give me a better choice, I will gladly take it but independents and minor party members just avoid trying to reform a vehicle that might lead to change.
To sit above the battle and condemn both sides may be satisfying, but it does not affect the outcome. Unless you can present an alternative that might have some influence on the country, rejecting both major parties provides self satisfaction at the cost of any opportunity to influence the government.
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