Mistaken Identity

In an essay in this week's Newsweek, Stuart Taylor, Jr., argues that Obama shouldn't act too hastily upon calls for him to close the Guantanamo Bay detention center, where 250 people are still being held without charges or any semblance of due process after up to 7 years for some of them, or to heed calls from individuals and human rights organizations here and abroad to ban "moderately coercive interrogation methods that may (or may not) violate international law against 'humiliating and degrading treatment.'" On reading that I had to glance back at the byline, thinking maybe this had been written by Charles Taylor.

As Andrew Sullivan wrote on Saturday, "throughout human history, human beings have known what that line (torture) is, and the West was constructed on a disavowal of ever crossing it again. Why? Because a society that endorses torture commits itself not to limiting, but to extinguishing human freedom. And a protection of human freedom in its most minimal form is what our entire civilization is premised on." People like Taylor who try to smear that line contribute to the degradation of our society, or our nation's honor.

In related news, John Brennan has removed his name for consideration by Obama as either CIA Director or Director of National Intelligence, in no small part due to opposition to his appointment as voiced by Sullivan, Glen Greenwald, and others. Their opposition was based on Brennan's support for torture as practiced by the Bush Administration.