Justice or Vengence? - A Message to the Religious Right

The moral quality of a nation, Churchill said, "can be measured according to how well it treats those subject to its criminal laws. " In the wake of the sentencing of Saddam, I reflect on the "trial". By any reasonable measure, this was a farce. The situation and personalities aside, the Blind Lady of Justice was momentarily unmasked to serve alterior motives. In a very Nuermberg-esque trial, the obviously guilty was condemned through accusation and public opinion. Reference Noam Chomsky's 2004 article here. While I do not weep excessively for Saddam, I am concerned about the precedent that has been set regarding Enemies of the State. If Bush's Military Tribunal trial system is adopted, we could see many more people lose their basic civil rights, and US citizens could be affected. Some of this has already begun. For those unfamiliar with the case of Lynne Stewart, read at your own risk. All United States military personnel swear an oath when they join the service. As part of that oath, they swear to “support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic.” They also swear to “obey the orders of the President of the United States.” Unfortunately, in this case, these two portions of the oath are mutually exclusive. The Constitution must take precedence over the President. Almost incredibly, we are also engaged in a dispute as to the right to torture suspected Enemy Combatants. Amid general outrage from the world at large, the President has amended his message. He recently stated: “I want to be absolutely clear with our people, and the world: the United States does not torture. It’s against our laws, and it’s against our values. I have not authorised it — and I will not authorize it.” So, the US doesn't torture. We instead engage in “alternative interrogation techniques” or “coercive interrogation” or “harsh interrogation methods” or simply "questioning". How, exactly, these methods differ from "torture" is not entirely clear. In fact, it is not at all clear. Techniques used currently by our government (i.e. Waterboarding) were considered torture when used by the KGB in Soviet gulags. For us, however, it is an "alternate interrogation technique". It all sounds so Orwellian. His essay, Politics and the English Language, is particularly poiniant in the following stanza: “A mass of Latin words falls upon the facts like soft snow, blurring the outline and covering up all the details. The great enemy of clear language is insincerity. When there is a gap between one’s real and one’s declared aims, one turns as it were instinctively to long words and exhausted idioms, like a cuttlefish spurting out ink. In our age there is no such thing as ‘keeping out of politics’. All issues are political issues, and politics itself is a mass of lies, evasions, folly, hatred, and schizophrenia. When the general atmosphere is bad, language must suffer.” The relevance of this essay, written in 1946, cannot be over-stated. ADDED 12/13/06 - A friendly reader hooked me up with this fine piece of journalism. Some more interesting stuff I didnt know. We must ensure the sanctity of the justice system, no matter how reprehensible the offenses. All people are entitled to equal and rigorous protection under the law, even those we despise. To do any less is to become, slowly but inexorably, like them. From St. Augustine to a civil judge in the year 412 C.E., Fulfil, Christian judge, the duty of an affectionate father; let your indignation against their crimes be tempered by considerations of humanity; be not provoked by the atrocity of their sinful deeds to gratify the passion of revenge, but rather be moved by the wounds which these deeds have inflicted on their own souls to exercise a desire to heal them...