Tuesday, May 11, 2004

Below I indulge in the pleasure of working through Matthew Yglesias' reasoning.
Far far away in another part of Washington and another moral and intellectual universe, Senator Inhofe was showing the depths of human mental depravity. "I'm probably not the only one up at this table that is more outraged by the outrage than we are by the
treatment ... These prisoners, you know they're not there for traffic violations. If they're in cellblock 1-A or 1-B, these prisoners, they're murderers, they're terrorists, they're insurgents. Many of them probably have American blood on their hands and here we're so concerned about the treatment of those individuals."

Joshua Marshall notes Inhofe's indefensible equation of "accused" and "guilty". I'd add that insurgents should not be treated as war criminals let alone tortured. I think that Iraqi insurgents are making a terrible mistake, but the legal case is simple. There country was invaded and occupied, they are fighting the occupiers, this makes them belligerants not criminals. Some insurgents may have become criminals by killing or torturing prisoners. An insurgent fighting the occupiers of his country is the moral equivalent of a murderer or a terrorist.

Also, of course, it is morally unacceptable to torture someone just because they are a terrorist murderer.

Even criticizing Inhofe makes me feel complicit in his depravity.

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