As a fellow writer, I’m sure you believe in the power of words. Every day, millions of words push and prod politicians to take action. Getting the words right is the sine qua non of a cogent argument. It can make the difference between actions that help vast populations and actions that lead to utter disaster.
Our newspapers have a responsibility to bring us the best words. When they bring us words that may well lead to disaster, they have a responsibility to put that in context. Many papers simply publish a column from column A alternating with a column from column B and think they have it covered. The local paper in our new abode here in the state of Washington (known as The Peninsula Daily News) publishes columnists like Cal Thomas and Maureen Dowd.
Usually, this passes without comment. But in Thomas’s column last week some amount of oversight seemed to be missing. What he suggests is that we abandon our principles to torture people in the name of “war”. Publishing this column without counterbalancing it with at least an editorial explaining why he’s full of bunk strikes me as irresponsible.
Cal Thomas suggests that Obama is afraid to use the word “war” and that he is making a mistake to send the latest Al Qaeda dupe for a civilian trial. He tells us (mistakenly, I think) that the majority of Americans want us to torture captives to get some kind of information out of them.
When this appeared in the local paper, I got on my electronic horse and sent the editor a response. He declined to publish it, although he was nice enough to give me a call. The reason, he said, is that they can’t go over 250 words on the LTEs. I can understand that small papers (and this is, let’s be honest, a very small paper) don’t have unlimited paper to spend on comments. However, the Thomas column runs to over 650 words and it is riddled with misinformation and dangerous proposals. It realistically takes more than 250 words to set it right. I will give you my reply and you can decide for yourself. Here it is:
Cal Thomas, writing in your paper (“Obama ho-hum about terrorist threats”, 7 January 2010), calls for a new approach after complaining that President Obama isn’t acting as if we were at war. Probably he hasn’t noticed, but we are no more at war than we have been for the last 60 years.
If Mr. Thomas wants a war, then he should get Congress to declare one. Otherwise, the term has little meaning. We’ve been fighting the “war on poverty” since the ’60s, with little discernable progress. If the use of the term were as all-powerful as Mr. Thomas implies, we would all be swimming in wealth.
The people Mr. Thomas would have us fight have no hope of defeating the U.S. To compare them with the Nazis or Japanese of World War II is the worst kind of spurious. Those countries warranted a war and Congress declared war on them. A bunch of misguided people hiding in far corners of the earth with big dreams and small means will never defeat this country, provided we have proper intelligence and take proper police actions.
But, thinking like his could do us in. He is proposing that we torture people we have in our custody, and he complains that Abdulmutallab is being given a fair trial in American courts. Perhaps a remedial civics lesson would help him out. People have rights. It is a measure of the legitimacy of a government whether that government observes those rights. What Mr. Thomas is proposing would de-legitimize our government.
Would it make us safer? No, of course not, as ample evidence shows. People that are tortured go out of their way to mislead and harm their tormentors, while those that are given civilized treatment often cooperate. How would you react if someone tortured you?
Fortunately, the people who founded this country had their heads about them. They understood tyranny from first-hand experience in a way that Mr. Thomas apparently doesn’t. They constructed a system that protects our rights and chartered our country with explicit language that makes this kind of inhumane proposal illegal. The principles behind that Constitution are what make us a nation; something neither common ancestry nor shared economy can. The common heritage of those principles is what makes us Americans.
If 58% of our voters think that some kind of torture is acceptable, then that is a sad state of affairs. Your paper could help address this problem by providing accurate information on constitutional rights and why they are important. A commentary on Cal Thomas’s column and why it is outside mainstream American thinking on this issue would be a good start.
My response is shorter than the original column. Could I squeeze it down? Yes, of course. But cutting it in half just won’t do.
I put it to this editor that I’d publish my response on the Web if he didn’t want to publish it. I’ve managed that, I think.
But, really, even these 440 words don’t do this justice. I’m sure that if you read this closely you’ll have many questions. (I’m prepared for comments. I’m under no illusions that I’ll get very many, what with earthquakes and earth-shattering legislation on healthcare.) Herewith, notes:
The new approach Mr. Thomas calls for is this:
What is required is a new approach that seeks not accommodation, but victory. Without it, more lives will be lost. Dictionary.com defines “war” as “a conflict carried on by force of arms, as between nations or between parties within a nation.” Calling it something else doesn’t alter the reality.
Is it clear what Thomas wants? He doesn’t spell it out. That’s because if you read what he complains about and assume the opposite, what you have is a policy that is so repugnant on its face that the concerned reader would reject it out of hand. Among those complaints:
… the president isn’t fighting — or speaking — as if we are at war. He first called the attempted bombing an “incident.” In his Saturday radio address, the president finally, if belatedly, tied the attempted attack to al-Qaida’s branch in Yemen. Still there is great reluctance by this administration to state the obvious. President Obama and his Cabinet apparently believe that by not calling it a war, it becomes something less.
A new Rasmussen Poll shows a majority of Americans think this war should be fought in a different way. According to the poll, 58 percent of U.S. voters believe Abdul Mutallab should be subjected to waterboarding and other enhanced interrogation techniques in order to obtain useful information.
During World War II, we did not establish schools of Nazi studies at American universities. Neither did we seek to understand Japan’s Shinto religion, which elevated Emperor Hirohito to the level of a god. We cared nothing about any of that. We carpet-bombed German cities and dropped two nuclear bombs on Japan.
In summary, call this a war, torture captives, and carpet-bomb someone. Or use nuclear weapons.
(I might note, in passing, that the Rasmussen poll would be accurate if one American voter thought waterboarding was okay and millions of voters thought that “enhanced interrogation techniques” were things like speaking roughly to suspects. By stating it this way, Thomas makes it sound like the vast majority of Americans want Abdulmutallab tortured until he reveals where Osama bin Laden is hiding. I’m pretty sure, on this basis, that his proposal is to have suspects tortured.)
Of course, taking on Cal Thomas on Daily Kos is like stepping on a bug. It doesn’t count for much. But, in the bigger picture, this person is calling for destroying democracy and wiping out constitutional rights. This is not something that can be allowed to get traction. If the editors won’t call him out and if they can’t allow their readers to call him out due to space limitations, then I’ll call him out here. What he’s trying to do would de-legitimize the U.S. government. This isn’t a position that any large percentage of Americans can support.
Personal Note: We’ve moved from California to a little town in Washington near Port Angeles. I was without Internet access for about six weeks. However, I survived. If any of you live on the Olympic Peninsula, send me a note!