One of our nation's founding fathers — one of the chief architects of the American Revolution, Benjamin Franklin — once said, "Those who would give up Essential Liberty to purchase a little Temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety."
One of our country's most respected military commanders, and our first President, George Washington, wrote in a letter on the proper conduct of troops, "While we are contending for our own liberty, we should be very cautious not to violate the rights of conscience in others." In regard to a group of British-allied Hessian soldiers captured during the Revolutionary War, Washington ordered, "Treat them with humanity, and let them have no reason to Complain of our Copying the brutal example of the British Army in their treatment of our unfortunate brethren."
In 1777, in the midst of war, future American President John Adams wrote to his wife Abigail, "I know of no policy, God is my witness, but this — Piety, Humanity and Honesty are the best Policy. Blasphemy, Cruelty and Villainy have prevailed and may again. But they won't prevail against America, in this Contest, because I find the more of them are employed, the less they succeed."
In his speech yesterday at the American Enterprise Institute, former Vice President Dick Cheney said:
It is much closer to the truth that terrorists hate this country precisely because of the values we profess and seek to live by, not by some alleged failure to do so. Nor are terrorists or those who see them as victims exactly the best judges of America’s moral standards, one way or the other.
Critics of our policies are given to lecturing on the theme of being consistent with American values. But no moral value held dear by the American people obliges public servants ever to sacrifice innocent lives to spare a captured terrorist from unpleasant things. And when an entire population is targeted by a terror network, nothing is more consistent with American values than to stop them.
Dick Cheney is wrong.
We cannot protect the ideals our nation was founded on — values enshrined in our Constitution — by compromising those ideals. We cannot deepen our commitment to civil liberties, promote the ideals of democracy, or defend human rights by violating the civil liberties and human rights of prisoners of war, or by allowing our government to commit unconstitutional actions against the will of our people.
This is not to say that the American government has not previously violated our own publicly held values in a misguided attempt to protect them. Sadly, American leaders have fallen short of the ideals inscribed in the Declaration of Independence and our Constitution time and again. Even John Adams signed the Alien and Sedition Acts, in violation of the First Amendment right to free speech.
But patriotic American citizens rightly spoke out against these laws' violation of our Constitution and our values, and later leaders rightly abolished them.
In fact, every time the leaders of the United States of America have compromised our most cherished ideals in the name of protecting them, history — that adjudicator George W. Bush and Dick Cheney so often appeal to — has judged their actions wrong. And for good reason.
By Cheney's own twisted logic, we ought to repeal the Eighth Amendment of the United States Constitution — the one that protects American citizens against cruel and unusual punishment — immediately. Because as we all know, there have been and will continue to be attacks against American people by domestic terrorists who are American citizens, like Ted Kaczynski or Timothy McVeigh. And if "no moral value held dear by the American people obliges public servants ever to sacrifice innocent lives to spare a captured terrorist from unpleasant things," that means that under Cheney's moral system, domestic terrorists who are citizens should also be subject to torture.
And why stop there? If no moral value held dear by the American people obliges public servants to sacrifice innocent lies when terrorism is in question — if, as Cheney says, "in the fight against terrorism, there is no middle ground," why should public servants be obliged to protect freedom of speech, freedom of assembly, or freedom of religion of American citizens when investigating terror?
Why should public servants be obliged to protect the speech of Americans who oppose government policies, when Americans who speak out against the government may be "inflaming anti-American sentiment" abroad? Why should the United States government allow anyone to gather in any place of worship, when we know that some terrorists — like abortion clinic bombers, for example, plot terrorism there?
In his speech, Cheney said, "And when [terrorists] see the American government caught up in arguments about interrogations, or whether foreign terrorists have constitutional rights, they don’t stand back in awe of our legal system and wonder whether they had misjudged us all along. Instead the terrorists see just what they were hoping for – our unity gone, our resolve shaken, our leaders distracted. In short, they see weakness and opportunity."
If that is such a danger, then why should Tax Day Tea Party protesters be allowed to assemble to criticize Obama's stimulus package (or whatever it was they were protesting), when their criticism of America might encourage people abroad to think that our nation is weakened by dissent?
If we, as a nation, decide to continue following Dick Cheney's dark moral path to national "security," we will not find our liberty waiting for us at the end. Nor would we, who had willingly, knowingly destroyed our ideals from within, deserve to find it.
I'm so glad you mentioned domestic terrorists like McVeigh and Kaczynski. We never did find the "weaponized anthrax" mailer, did we? (Though a mentally unstable scientist at the CDC I think was ultimately pegged as the one, and he might've committed suicide before he could be tried.)
I also count among domestic terrorists bombers of abortion clinics.
Posted by: cynematic | May 26, 2009 at 03:03 AM