War on Terror, Patriot Act, War in Iraq

War on Terror, Patriot Act, War in Iraq

I've added to what I wrote yesterday so some of today's post may be familiar. Most of what is expressed here is, obviously, just my opinion. It is based on my own personal interpretation of the news reports I've seen and books that I've read on the subject. I hesitate to post anything about these topics because my opinions are pretty strong - and they're also pretty mixed up. I'm finding that in order to say what I really want to say, I must accept that what I write is not always going to come out as a nice metaphorical story about wasps and hornets. I have decided to accept that. I hope that all of you can too.


The War on Terror

Please bear with me long enough to read a few quotes from others before I begin my post:

"Fighting terrorism is like being a goalkeeper. You can make a hundred brilliant saves but the only shot that people remember is the one that gets past you."
--Paul Wilkinson, British scholar

"How to defeat terrorism? Don't be terrorized. Don't let fear rule your life. Even if you are scared." --Salman Rushdie, "In Fear"

"The best way of avenging thyself is not to become like the wrong-doer."
-- Marcus Aurelius Antoninus, Roman Emperor, 161-180 AD

I feel strongly that governments should work to prevent terrorist acts before they occur. Government intelligence agencies working hand in hand with the military and the police should do all that they can to ensure that suspected terrorists are investigated, and that known terrorists are brought to justice. By "brought to justice" I mean that known terrorists should be arrested and tried if possible, or killed if necessary, before they are allowed to take more innocent lives. I would hope that we would treat suspected terrorists the way that we would treat suspects in any crime in the United States. Innocent until proven guilty should be the standard. In my opinion, it is human life that is sacred, not just the human lives of our fellow countrymen. Our government should treat the life of the citizens of the world with just as much respect as it affords to our own.

My heart does not bleed for anyone who would take an innocent human life in order to make a political statement. There are many grey lines in any fight against terrorism because the world is cloudy and connections are more often blurred and unclear than not. The problem when we start saying that it's ok to kill in extreme circumstances in order to protect human life is that a doorway has then been opened for the government machine to barge through without tact or caution; and unfortunately that machine often does not mind its manners. Our government, when it makes decisions that lead to the loss of innocent human life, is making a political statement of its own.

My fear is that the option to kill, if considered acceptable, will be used when it is the easier option, but not necessarily when it is the right option, or as the absolute last resort. I do not want to hinder the right of my government to protect me from somebody who truly would kill me randomly just because I'm an American. At the same time I do not support the right of my government to take another human life without just cause. I also think that every human life is just as precious as my own. Taking an innocent life because somebody, somewhere, in some office thought that that person may have been a terrorist, is inhumane and unjust. It should not be acceptable for innocent foreigners to die in our fight against terrorism.

The situation after 9-11 with suspected terrorists who had been rounded up by the U.S. military and other organizations, languishing in prisons around the globe with no charges against them and without public release of their names was a violation of basic human rights. If any other country were ever to try to do the same kind of thing in the United States to U.S. citizens - there would be an uproar and retaliation, and rightly so. No amount of added security or supposed intelligence value makes it acceptable to imprison hundreds of innocent people for years in order to find out who the bad ones are. If there is no other way - then it would be better to discover each terrorist one by one as they make themselves known through their actions. It is not right to violate basic human rights in order to protect ourselves.

The whole way in which we've dealt with suspected terrorist detainees as if they were not prisoners of war is, in my opinion, abominable. The laws regarding the treatment of prisoners of war were instituted in order to ensure that enemies deal with each other in a humane way. Is it ok for us to treat not only known terrorists, but also suspected terrorists in a manner that is inhumane in order to get information? You may say that the terrorists are not going to treat us humanely when they attack, and therefore extreme measures must be taken. I would argue that we lower ourselves to the terrorists' level when we do inhumane things to anyone, and we help to justify their actions in their minds as well.

I think that there needs to be a self imposed limit to what we can do to the enemy in order to gather intelligence. Maybe there should be a slightly different standard for what is acceptable treatment, depending on whether suspected or known terrorists are being interrogated; but I feel that observing and honoring basic human rights should be the enforced standard in every case. When innocent people end up beaten up, or are forced to pile themselves up nude in humiliating poses for a U.S. service member's camera, or are discovered dead without cause, basic human rights have been violated, and I think that a case can be made that war crimes have been committed.

The Patriot Act

" They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety. " -- Benjamin Franklin, "Historical Review of Pennsylvania"

It scares me that recent polls seem to indicate that the American people are willing to give up some of their sacred freedoms in order to gain some security. The government should be allowed to monitor and surveil criminals and suspected terrorists; but they should not be able to track all of us and all of our activities just because that makes it easier to determine who the criminals and suspected terrorists are. Why should every last one of us be treated as if we were a suspect?

We are all responsible, to some degree, for the actions of our government, our military and those of the corporations that our government employs to do much of our dirty work for us abroad. In my mind ignorance of the facts is not an excuse. The United States of America is leading the war on terror throughout the world and if you are a citizen of the United States then you have a vested interest in finding out what is going on and whether or not you support what we're doing and how we're doing it. If you don't agree with what we're doing and how - then do something about it! If you don't, who will?


The War in Iraq

I would like to share one more quote with all of you. Many of you may know it, others may not. I will share who the quote is from at the end of this post.

" Allow the President to invade a neighboring nation, whenever he shall deem it necessary to repel an invasion, and you allow him to do so, whenever he may choose to say he deems it necessary for such a purpose -- and you allow him to make war at pleasure. If today, he should choose to say he thinks it necessary to invade Canada, to prevent the British from invading us, how could you stop him? You may say to him, 'I see no probability of the British invading us' but he will say to you, 'Be silent; I see it, if you don't.'"

The war in Iraq is a war we chose to fight; but it is not a war that had to be fought. It has never been simply about winning the freedom of the Iraqi people, and it has never been simply about fighting terrorism or dealing with an immediate threat to our security. We went in saying that Saddam Hussein's regime in Iraq was an immediate threat. Whatever Iraq is now, it is because we created it; not only did we ask for it, we demanded it.

The U.S. opened a Pandora's Box when we chose to fight a preemptive war. Now any nation that wants to fight a war at any time with another country need only say that it fears that the other country is a threat. That justification, (and the prerequisite possession of WMD), gives many other nations in the world all the justification that they would need to invade the United States (if they thought that they could do so successfully).

The next time that we have real, actionable intelligence about an actual threat to our security, we will have a difficult time backing up our claims with that intelligence because of the way that we went about trying to convince the U.N. to go to war in Iraq with what turned out to be faulty intelligence. We wasted an ace that we held in our hand in that round.

The war in Iraq did not become a part of the war on terrorism until after we had invaded and lured the terrorists in. Before that the war in Iraq and the war on terrorism should have been considered two separate things. Did we plan to lure the terrorists into Iraq so that we wouldn't have to fight them at home? How's that for helping the Iraqi people? More innocent Iraqis will die than needed to in Iraq because we brought the War on Terror to their doorstep.

A war that was just about freeing the Iraqis could have been better fought at a different time, without making up false justifications to go in. If the only way that our government could get the American public to support sending our military into Iraq was to allow it to believe that Saddam played a part in what happened on 9-11 and that his WMD stockpile posed an immediate threat to our society, then the war in Iraq should have never happened in the first place because neither of those justifications was true.

Despite what you may think of me or my position after reading all of this, I want all of you to understand that I really do hope for a decent outcome in Iraq - and freedom for all of the Iraqi people. I support our troops who are just following the orders of their elected government. We need to do all that we can to help the Iraqis secure their freedom, to help make Iraq a stable place, and to keep our soldiers who are there safe. Now that we're in Iraq - we can't leave it, and there are some things that we just can't avoid now due to the choices that we've already made.

Here's to a free, secure, democratic, self-governed Iraq. I'd love to see that reality someday. I hate that we've gone about achieving that goal in this way. I don't believe that the ends justify the means - but since we can't change the means, let's at least pray for a decent end.

Here is that quote again:

" Allow the President to invade a neighboring nation, whenever he shall deem it necessary to repel an invasion, and you allow him to do so, whenever he may choose to say he deems it necessary for such a purpose -- and you allow him to make war at pleasure. If today, he should choose to say he thinks it necessary to invade Canada, to prevent the British from invading us, how could you stop him? You may say to him, 'I see no probability of the British invading us' but he will say to you, 'Be silent; I see it, if you don't.'" --Abraham Lincoln