Gonzales Must Go
Forget the politics, forget how you feel about the people grandstanding against him. Read what the man has written, and think about where we are in history. Yes, it's part of his job to speculate, to lay out hypothetical scenarios in memos. But at this point we need someone spotless in that position. He's the wrong man.
America -- and Bush especially -- for the last three years have been much more focused on action than on message. (That's the key difference betwee us and the Europeans: focus on results vs. focus on process). But our message has to catch up to our actions. And this is one we ought to send.
Send it not just to our friends who are worried about us, but to our enemies of the day. Will it go better or worse for U.S. men and women who work in Iraq if the Iraqis think the U.S. allows torture of POWs? Did it go better or worse for the Japanese in the Pacific when stories of prisoner abuse got back to the U.S.? I'm comparing the reactions, not drawing an equivalency of the acts.
The Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo allegations can be picked apart. Is putting a panty on a man's head torture? No, I don't think so. You can pick it apart the way the defense did in the Rodney King beating. Frame by frame, snippet by snippet. Is this particular blow excessive force? Is this a prod or a kick? But then you put it all back together again, and the totality is the reality.
In other words, I'm adding my "ditto" to Michael Totten and especially to Belgravia Dispatch, which has an extensive, link-filled post on the topic. Gonzales is the wrong man for this job in this time.
America -- and Bush especially -- for the last three years have been much more focused on action than on message. (That's the key difference betwee us and the Europeans: focus on results vs. focus on process). But our message has to catch up to our actions. And this is one we ought to send.
Send it not just to our friends who are worried about us, but to our enemies of the day. Will it go better or worse for U.S. men and women who work in Iraq if the Iraqis think the U.S. allows torture of POWs? Did it go better or worse for the Japanese in the Pacific when stories of prisoner abuse got back to the U.S.? I'm comparing the reactions, not drawing an equivalency of the acts.
The Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo allegations can be picked apart. Is putting a panty on a man's head torture? No, I don't think so. You can pick it apart the way the defense did in the Rodney King beating. Frame by frame, snippet by snippet. Is this particular blow excessive force? Is this a prod or a kick? But then you put it all back together again, and the totality is the reality.
In other words, I'm adding my "ditto" to Michael Totten and especially to Belgravia Dispatch, which has an extensive, link-filled post on the topic. Gonzales is the wrong man for this job in this time.
Labels: Alberto Gonzales, torture
