[Vision2020] Gitmo

[Andreas Schou]

> Individual rights are important. Very important. But understand, they are
> not more important than rights of an entire nation to be safe and free from
> being blown up at work, school, or home.

Donovan --

Individual rights and the rule of law are, in fact, more important
than the "right" to be safe and free from being blown up. Americans
die in hurricanes and of heart attacks; they die of bee stings and car
bombings. We die whether or not our government fights terrorism, but
the way in which we live and die is shaped in no small part by the
actions of our government.

Our nation has made a conscious decision that we are to be a liberal
democracy and not an autocratic security state. This has costs, and
like virtually all of the costs of government action, from Medicare
deductibles to Army Corps of Engineers levees to free speech, these
costs are measured in human lives.

It's popular to talk about the way in which our military pays the
price for the freedoms which we take for granted. But not enough
Americans are willing to shoulder the burden of American civilian
deaths for our principles. I'm fairly sure those deaths have happened.

A competent antiterrorism policy, based around the principle that had
prevented foreign terrorist attacks on American soil for fifty years,
could have prevented 9/11. A policy of arbitrary detention of
immigrants from Arab nations could quite likely have done likewise,
though it would have likely spurred more and worse attacks. We chose
not to do that. Rightly so.

Guantanamo is an attempt to covertly renegotiate the social contract
that states that there are certain things which we will not do: that
we will not torture or arbitrarily detain people; that we will treat
our enemies with respect whether or not they deserve it, because of
the code we live by, rather than the way they would treat us were our
situations reversed.

I would object less if it were done out in the light: if we had made
no attempts to deny what we were doing. But this attempt to undercut
the Constitution and the Geneva Convention under cover of secrecy,
"for our own safety," corrupts our culture without forcing us to have
a conversation about the risks we are willing to take for the
principles that lie at the very heart of our culture.

-- ACS