A recent contributor to the Letters to the Editor page of the Omaha World-Herald contends that our use of torture in fighting the war on terror is not wrong, because even if we stopped, "the terrorists would not be appeased."
Perhaps. But that misses the larger point. We as a country, even though we have the biggest arsenal and are uniformly considered the remaining superpower in the world, cannot afford to "got it alone."
Everybody needs friends and allies. If our government's official policy continues to be we can do whatever we like because our cause is good, we make the following potentially fatal errors: (1) we lose the moral high ground. If we don't stand for something better, and act consistently with what we say we believe, we ARE no better--and thus offer the world nothing unique that merits our continued survival. (2) We alienate the people who otherwise would gravitate toward us and help us. After Hugo Chavez called Dubya "a Devil" in his speech at the UN, no one in the UN challenged him or otherwise stood up to defend us. Domestic politicians who normally have no use for Dubya had to carry the torch for the USA--and even though Charles Rangel (HR, D-NY) spoke out strongly against Chavez's remarks, what Rangel said really came down to "you have no right to criticize him--that's our job." [A real domestic politics triumph for Rangel. He is being patriotic, because "discord stops at the border." We present a united face to the world. But he still didn't minimize his political differences with Dubya, either. Brilliant!--Ed.]
I just hope that the gang of Dubya doesn't go so far in damaging the USA's moral leadership standing with the rest of the world that no one can bring us back. Note that I am not holding my breath.
2 comments:
Yeah, see, he's still got 2 more years to go. So how long will it take to undo 8 years of throwing W's weight around? 50? 100? Another catastrophic terrorist attack to get sympathy? What will it take?
Cristi
Scarier still: if the radical rich right-wing self-important twits like Pete Ricketts get elected, it won't be over in 2 years, either.
Even scarier: people I still consider friends (and used to consider intelligent) tell me they are going to vote for Ricketts because they bought into his attack ad calling Ben Nelson a "Clinton-Kerry Democrat."
They also seem to think that Nelson started the negative ads first . . . though that one from Ricketts is the first negative ad I saw.
It may be irrelevant anyway--if Dubya and his minions have already stalled long enough, it will be impossible to undo the global warming damage he and his Big Oil buddies have already done.
Maybe we should put God back in the schools--we're going to need Divine Intervention if things keep going the way they're going!
[That last was only a bit tongue-in-cheek.--Ed.]
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