We’ve watched the press pretend to beat their breasts for “not asking the tough questions of Bush” in the time leading up to the invasion of Iraq. That’s a distortion; they asked plenty of questions and made plenty of noise, and in the “rush to war” – which took so long any nation could have spirited their weapons somewhere else – the administration went to the UN twice, and the Democrat leadership, from Bill Clinton on down re-iterated what they’d said since 1998: Saddam had WMD, and in the face of 9/11, he could not be allowed to keep them.

You don’t have to agree with the invasion of Iraq or the reasoning behind it, but the constant revision of history that has become commonly accepted is a bit irritating.  It never ceases to amaze me that people can forget what actually happened just 6 years ago.

The link between Iraq and 9/11 was not that Iraq was involved in 9/11, but that in the aftermath of that terrorist attack, we needed to be proactive against our enemies.

Gee, for a party that prides itself on nuance, that finer point was sure lost in translation.

And now we’re stuck with the bumper sticker mentality that Bush lied, forgetting, of course, that the previous administration supported everything that President Bush thought about the potential threat of Iraq.  (Lots of Democratic quotes on the matter in the link contained in the block quote above.)

Missiles fired from suspected US drones killed at least 15 people inside Pakistan today, the first such strikes since Barack Obama became president and a clear sign that the controversial military policy begun by George W Bush has not changed.

Security officials said the strikes, which saw up to five missiles slam into houses in separate villages, killed seven “foreigners” – a term that usually means al-Qaeda – but locals also said that three children lost their lives.

From the comments:

Another president, another child killer.
dave, london, uk

Business as usual for the US President, I see.
Sam Carter, London, UK

Hope! Change! The world will love us!

On a side note, maybe the foreign policy of the Obama Administration won’t be a complete disaster.

Said Ali al-Shihri traveled to Iran “to purchase carpets for his store” in Saudi Arabia. He was captured and accused of meeting with a group of extremists in Iran and helping them get into Afghanistan. He denied knowledge of any terrorists or terrorist activities, and he “related that if released, he would like to return to Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, wherein he would reunite with his family.” [Paraphrased from NYT, link below]

It’s stories like these that fuel the outrage over the US detention of terror suspects.

Said Ali al-Shihri was one of the lucky ones. He was released from Guantánamo Bay in 2007 and passed through a Saudi rehabilitation program. He was then released.

Only, there’s one complication.

The New York Times reports today that Mr. Shihri is now the deputy leader of Al Qaeda’s Yemeni branch.

The emergence of a former Guantánamo Bay detainee as the deputy leader of Al Qaeda’s Yemeni branch has underscored the potential complications in carrying out the executive order President Obama signed Thursday that the detention center be shut down within a year.

The militant, Said Ali al-Shihri, is suspected of involvement in a deadly bombing of the United States Embassy in Yemen’s capital, Sana, in September.

I can’t help but wonder if maybe President Bush was right not to close the detention facility.

It’s a pity the New York Times didn’t see fit to report this sort of thing when he was the one facing the “potential complications” of shutting the place down.

I was really glad to see this. Normally his posts are very thoughtful and thought-provoking, so the post I linked to yesterday really left me wanting more. In this post, he gives several reasons why the US should not use torture, instead of just defaulting to the emotional response.

In addition to that, he closes with some very important food for thought…

As political scientist Glenn Tinder once wrote, the human being is both fallen and exalted, sacred and yet morally degraded. These two aspects of humanity cannot be separated. A fact, Tinder admits, that is “hard for common sense to grasp.” Indeed, it is almost impossible to grasp when we try to apply this concept to our enemies. We often fall for one of two extremes.

The “liberal” position, for example, tends to be overly empathetic in an attempt to understand and “humanize” our foes. But this is just one of the ways in which we can err. The “conservative” position, which seeks retribution and dehumanizes our opponents in order to distance them from ourselves, can be just as dangerous, particularly for those who must carry out this war.

We must never hesitate to defend our culture, our future, and our lives against those who seek to destroy us. The liberals’ appeal to tolerance and understanding in the face of such an enemy is suicidal. The conservative position, which is willing to face up to and address the evil of terrorism, provides a more adequate approach.

Yet the conservative position must never forget that the evil comes not just from the actions of “subhuman vermin” but from the heart of a fallen, sacred yet degraded, human being. If we are to preserve our own humanity we must not forget that our enemy differs from us in degree, not in kind.

He closes with an interesting perspective…

But torture should always be illegal and the price of breaking this law should be so high that we can expect that it will be used only in the most absolutely urgent of circumstances.

Because the torture victim must bear the cost of incredible pain and even death, the benefits to the torturer must worth bearing some of the costs. Torture must not be cheap. But if the “ticking-time bomb” scenario is real, the interrogator should be willing to pay the price–even if it means his own death–to protect the lives of the innocent.

Any thoughts?

To start with, a FOX News reporter did an investigation into what waterboarding is. This is not a pro/con report. It is a video demonstration of how the technique is done.

Just as I decided that this was an issue that I should spend some time on, I read a post on Evangelical Outpost entitled, “Our Tortured Silence: The Shameful Response of Christians to Waterboarding.”

As you can guess, Joe Carter does not support waterboarding.

Much to my disappointment, however, Carter does not present a well-reasoned argument. He merely insults the writer of a pro-waterboarding article and claims that torture is un-Biblical.

Inclined to be opposed to torture and to take at face value the oft repeated liberal view that no credible intelligence ever comes from torture, I was surprised when I read the article that Carter was opposed to and found that the US government has obtained credible information using the waterboarding technique.

If I was to take the premise that no credible intelligence comes from torture as true, along with the premise that credible intelligence was obtained using waterboarding, wouldn’t I have to conclude that waterboarding is not torture?

It looks like a form of torture to me. I mean, what else would you call it?

The only option left is to declare one of my premises to be false. If it is false that torture does not produce credible intelligence information, and in fact it does, that sure does undermine the most reasonable argument against the use of torture.

Just a side note here, that a civilized people should not use torture is not a reasonable argument. It is an emotional argument. If we based our laws on whether or not a practice makes some people feel icky when presented with a detailed description, we would have to end legalized abortion, now wouldn’t we?

So where does that leave waterboarding?

The answer is, I don’t really know. I think it is disturbing, but that in and of itself is not a reason that it should not be done.

I also think that if when used it has led to the arrest of terrorists and/or thwarted terrorist plots (ie plans to kill people. Kill people. Remember we are talking about trying to stop people from being killed here. This isn’t just an exercise in sadism.), it might be necessary. I say this in the context of the Deroy Murdock article.

So what do you think? I really would like to hear some discussion on this.

One caveat, I will not be responding to any commentors that engage in name-calling. I hate to sound so matronly, but, well, that’s what I am. It is possible to have a discussion or debate without resorting to the base tactic of insulting your opponent. Think of it an an intellectual exercise. Witty sarcasm, when used sparingly, will be tolerated. Probably even laughed at.

(Note: Joe Carter followed up with another post, which I blogged about here.)