James Baker on Torture Memos: We're Not a 'Banana Republic'

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James Baker spews we're not a "banana republic"--but boy sure did behave like one with torture. This not just "criminalizing" policy differences", but in fact a matter of prosecuting DOCUMENTED war crimes and human rights violations. Innocent Iraqi and Afghani civilians, as well as Guantánamo Bay detainees, were not just tortured but killed as well documented in the Academy Award winning documentary "Taxi to the Dark Side". What makes the U.S. look really silly was paying rewards to Taliban and Al Queda posing as members the Aghani military for turning in innocent civilians, and the arms purchased with the rewards used against U.S. troops.
What these policies did do was to set a precedent for future U.S. politicians to disregard international and U.S. laws (remember the "nation of laws" thingy) for the sake of political expediency.

steve of WV 1:42PM April 29, 2009

I think the King of Jordan put it well. People though out the Middle East are looking to see if the rule of law is real or not in America. Just like many of our closet friends, that stopped working with us on intelligence issues, are wondering if America has turned a corner or not. McCain is a good example of someone saying they are against torture, but do not want anyone held accountable nor want talk about it.
Amazing and real.
Let's see... I read that there had been over 400 Armed Services cases against military personnel... and 4000 dead US people overseas, 100,000 dead Iraqis, and 2,000,000 refuges
Nothing like torture to try and get a link to justify the Iraq war!!!! Sure torture works...

john of CO 10:27PM April 28, 2009

"...we are not a banana republic, and we ought not be in the business of criminalizing policy differences."
How true.
But isn't the institutionalized late-modern idea of a human person primarily an emotional thing? And don't so-called "post"-modernists disclaim objective truth, and insist that all "truth" is subjective? So isn't it fitting that academic wisdom would fall into self-fulfilling prophecies, and come increasingly to define reality according to their private, emotional inclinations? The esoteric crap that passes as intellectual work in many humanities departments today is a symptom of the after-the-fact intellectual backfilling that's required when principles are subordinated to feelings.
To those on the left, THEIR doctrines and policies aren't mere doctrines and policies-- they're FUNDAMENTAL TRUTHS OF ETHICS. At least lefties behave that way. Of course, they wouldn't admit that there are anything like fundamental truths, because they have so much invested in the method of insisting that such things are culturally relative, at least when criticizing conservatives.
Hey, where's the outrage?

bob of MA 2:02PM April 28, 2009