The Crossed Pond

Here’s something I assume all of our readers have gotten to by now, but it’s important enough to pimp. With any luck, it’ll reach every corner of the blogosphere, and we’re happy to do our part.

The premise is, of course, that we’ve taken our cues on how we treat detainees and suspects from The Gestapo, The Soviets, the Khmer Rouge. In many cases, our policy is either directly lifted from the Nazis, or not very far removed. The Godwin Principle doesn’t apply here; the point is so obvious that it’s beyond refutation, the parallel so exact that it’s blatant to all willing to look honestly at it. The only defense left of our pro-torture policy (and it is pro-torture, and it is policy), is either insultingly unconvincing head-in-the-sand mitigation, or some kind of mealy-mouthed moral relativism (add that to a long list of corrosive liberal principles co-opted and now championed by the Republican party). The last cowardly refuge of the pro-war apologists is the 1% principle–as long as we’re 1% better than Nazi war criminals or crazed Islamofascist terrorists, we’re all right. The response to that is so obvious and clear that I’m not even going to bother writing it out. At this point, as Rojas has mentioned, torture is one of the few issues where shrillness is needed. The pro-torture position is so unworthy of respect or even de facto validation as a reasonable perspective as to not even merit discourse (and Rojas is about as big a fan as discourse as can be imagined). It deserves to be shouted down and shamed. It’s underpinnings dragged out into the light and thrust in all our faces. Period.

Nobody is better on this point than Sully, whatever else you may think of him (we think pretty highly of him). As far as this blog goes, consider us part of the choir.