Last week in Milwaukie, Oregon, a police swat team killed a hostage taker who threatened to kill a woman and her two young children. As the man peeked out a window the SWAT team simply shot him. The next day, in Pascagoula, Mississippi, a mother ran into her son's room to tell him there was someone breaking into her bedroom window. The son grabbed his handgun and, as the man was climbing through the window, shot and killed him. Police said; "At this point, our investigation...indicates the homeowner and residents acted appropriately". Two weeks ago, Navy Seals killed three of four "pirates" who held Richard Phillips hostage on a small boat in the Indian Ocean. The "pirates" were Somalian teenagers.
As is normal procedure, each of these situations will result in an "after action" report to insure that the police, the private citizen, and the military acted legally. No major public announcements will be made. As with 99% of these situations, the actions will likely be deemed legal and proper. No apologies will be made to the families of the deceased. No public proclamations will declare to the world that we have lost our moral bearings because of these legally caused deaths Torture memos show we lost our moral bearings. However, what if a group of citizens thought these actions were immoral and were elected or appointed to office in each of these jurisdictions? Would it be right to investigate the reasoning behind the laws which caused these deaths in order that those responsible could be prosecuted? For example, it could be hypothesized it is more humane to use technology which does not kilI, but still stops the assailants. Did the legal authorities in these venues consider that when writing and interpreting these laws? If not, why not? Unless the names of the police, et. al. were Bush or Cheney, I doubt even Pelosi, Leahy, Holder or Obama would think pursuing such action would be a good idea.
This is so obvious that it is a waste of time even writing it. But how does this conceptually differ from the can of worms Obama opened last week regarding waterboarding? Except with waterboarding the perpetrator is not killed. How many of those Somali teenage pirates would have chosen waterboarding over a bullet in the head if given the opportunity? The president said he would not prosecute the actual waterboarders, but would consider prosecuting those who formulated the legal decisions which permitted the actions. Talk about "change". If waterboarding is so clearly wrong, why should the CIA operatives not also be prosecuted? Since when is "just following orders" a defense against moral and legal wrong doing? If it is not so clearly wrong, why are we even entertaining this nonsense? If he wants to change the policy, change it. He was freely elected, the last I noticed. But trying to pull a retroactive coup by criminalizing past administration policies is absurd. I assume he will bring back all the Clinton guys as well for their support of Rendition.
Obama has created a whirlwind of confusion. As with so many of his unprecedented policies, he appears to be "moon walking" this issue. That is, he appears to be moving in one direction when he really is moving in another Moon Walk Collection. The conventional wisdom on the "torture memos" is he is trying to back off all together. I'm not so sure. Even so, how does he even consider this in the first place? He considers it because he is ideologically in agreement with it, despite its political unpopularity. While it has become indecent to speak of this in polite company, does any one remember that he used to know two guys named Wright and Ayers? The far left has also grown impatient with Obama as he has not moved fast enough on Iraq or even Guantanamo. So they are pushing hard on this issue, lead by "black helicopter" hedge fund billionaire, George Soros.
Soros always opposed the war on terror and after 9/11 argued it should have been treated as a criminal matter. In Byron York's review of Soro's book "The Bubble of American Supremacy" we learn much about Soros' world view Leisure & Arts - WSJ.com. According to Soros, when we attacked Afghanistan, the US became a "victim turned perpetrator". People like Soros never expend any energy on the cruelest of governments such as North Korea, the Taliban, Castro, or Venezuela. Their venom is saved exclusively for the United States. Why? Soros believes that Bush and Cheney were at the center of a neoconservative conspiracy to literally take over the world. Soros spends an absurd amount of time in his book on the "Project for a New American Century", a DC based neoconservative "think tank" which is the supposed intellectual core of the conspiracy. Soros believed that 9/11 provided the perfect excuse to put this plan into action. He compared the Bush administration to Nazis and expressed alarm the public did not see the danger. Of course, this view is probably shared by 20-30% of the public today.
Today, the Wall Street Journal links to an American Spectator article detailing the Soros involvement in this controversy Soros Show Trials. A new group called "The Commission on Accountability" was created to front this movement. The American Spectator calls it a PR hoax created by George Soros. 19 member groups are signatories, most of which have argued that the Bush administration should be investigated. Soros' name appears nowhere on the broadly distributed press release, but the Spectator provides evidence Soros is the key financial supporter. He has also been a major financial supporter of Obama's.
People like Soros, Wright, and Ayers have been prominent influences in Obama's political career and their views are now infiltrating into the direct governance of our nation. As I have written before, They Are Who We Thought They Were. Obama is still portrayed as some center left pragmatic "progressive" politician by most of the media that is not Fox News. Meanwhile we are witnessing the most unprecedented and radical policies ever proposed or enacted by an American president. He is forcibly socializing the financial and automobile sector, proposing absurdly sized spending deficits, and generally creating a significantly larger role for the government over all. It is not enough for him to repeatedly apologize to the world for America having elected George Bush twice, but he now has to also make a mockery of our military and CIA as well. Polls indicate less support for his policies than they do for the individual. At some point, his moon walk dance illusion will get old.
This article will be followed a refutation of certain objections I have observed on "waterboarding", which I believe are "inconsistent" and "incoherent" relative to other explicit values we take for granted.
Posted by: Law of the Bad Premise | April 30, 2009 at 02:55 PM