What's Worse?
We have this detainee (or torture) bill going through that liberals and Andrew Sullivan are going crazy over. "We can't let the executive have so much power," they say. "It is a moral catastrophe," they say.
I remember hearing about a pre-9/11 story in which an Israeli intelligence officer was told of the Bin Laden threat to America and he said coldly, "You must kill this man." An American general smugly responded to the Israeli, "We're Americans, we don't do that." As if assasinations and strategic killing were beneath us. That we were somehow morally immune from making such choices. That we have the best of both worlds - we don't torture a) because it's morally wrong and b) because it doesn't yield useful intelligence. We would love for this to be true. And we tell ourselves it is true. Assasinations of terrorists are "beneath" us. In the long term, it's better not to sully our own morals and reputations and get involved with that ugly and dirty world.
What's worse? Playing dirty to win or cloaking self-righteousness in moral certitude.
1 comment:
"Playing dirty to win or cloaking self-righteousness in moral certitude."
Bill Clinton spent the 1990's trying to kill Bin Laden. He did all he could short of an invasion of Afghanistan, which nobody, Republican and Democrat, would have supported. I don't know where you got you're general's quote, but he's wrong: we were trying to kill him.
More to the point, why do you insist on boiling things down to two choices? And two false choices?
Where is the acknowledgement of the collateral damage that sending the CIA around the world to enter other soverign nations and assasinate people will have possibly negative consqequences? You don't come anywhere near discussing the full context of the following quote, but you are willing to mock people who hold these views:
""We can't let the executive have so much power," they say. "It is a moral catastrophe," they say."
If anything, it seems to me you are unwilling to enter the dirty world of exploring the full consquences of your own views, preferring to stay above the fray and diss both sides.
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