Double standard?
OK, I admit it-- this from Glenn Greenwald's column was news to me today:
Sigh. I remember the good old days when "conservatism", among other things, stood for moral absolutes. Perhaps even then torture wasn't on the list, who knows? But before 1968 and My Lai-- back in my idealistic, conservative youth-- I would certainly have assumed that "we" never did things like that. Because we were Better Than That. Now I suppose that we never were, and never have been, to be honest.
But I still think we ought to try.
Apparently, James Taranto of the Wall Street Journal doesn't think that, as Greenwald points out. And that paragon of Christian morality, Glenn Reynolds, finds that [our] "silence is complicity" (a mercifully brief post, at least) when it comes to Al Qaeda, but he doesn't really seem to mind complicity in our national disgrace, here in the land of the wiretapped and the home of the chickenhawk. (Because of course, we're better-- even though there is less and less reason for this claim-- and being better makes whatever we do right, don't you know.)
Tell me again who loves this country? Greenwald puts it well and succinctly:
[Update]
Speaking of Christian morality, see this post on torture and such at the delightfully named World O' Crap. I like the last paragraph.
Ugh. But apparently the reason that I hadn't heard it is that it wasn't covered much in the dear old MainStream Media, nor by liberal bloggers like Greenwald or our own inestimable WallDon. This, I now learn, in turn clearly means that the MSM and those d**n liberals are as usual favoring our enemies, no matter how despicable, while strenuously covering and attacking similar abuses and torture by American agencies and forces.Last week, the U.S. military -- in what it called an "al-Qaeda safe house in Iraq" -- found "an assortment of crude drawings depicting torture methods like 'blowtorch to the skin' and 'eye removal.'"
Sigh. I remember the good old days when "conservatism", among other things, stood for moral absolutes. Perhaps even then torture wasn't on the list, who knows? But before 1968 and My Lai-- back in my idealistic, conservative youth-- I would certainly have assumed that "we" never did things like that. Because we were Better Than That. Now I suppose that we never were, and never have been, to be honest.
But I still think we ought to try.
Apparently, James Taranto of the Wall Street Journal doesn't think that, as Greenwald points out. And that paragon of Christian morality, Glenn Reynolds, finds that [our] "silence is complicity" (a mercifully brief post, at least) when it comes to Al Qaeda, but he doesn't really seem to mind complicity in our national disgrace, here in the land of the wiretapped and the home of the chickenhawk. (Because of course, we're better-- even though there is less and less reason for this claim-- and being better makes whatever we do right, don't you know.)
Tell me again who loves this country? Greenwald puts it well and succinctly:
The reason that it is news that the U.S. tortures, but not news that Al Qaeda does, is because Al Qaeda is a barbaric and savage terrorist group which operates with no limits, whereas the U.S. is supposed to be something different than that. Isn't it amazing that one even needs to point that out?Amen, brother Glenn. There is no double standard here; just one: torture is wrong; a crime against humanity.
[Update]
Speaking of Christian morality, see this post on torture and such at the delightfully named World O' Crap. I like the last paragraph.
posted by ChiTom | 3:43 PM
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