Lifted from the comments.

[elfs]

fallenpegasus asked: So how did we handle this issue in our past wars?

Prior to the Convention, disgracefully. Until recently, we have done better. Not perfectly, but well enough to be regarded as an example. We did admirably in World War II and the Korean War. Our treatment of Iraqi soliders in Gulf War I is something for which we can be proud.

This is about living up to our principles, not our history. If all we wanted to do was be as good as our past, we'd still be slaveholders. It was in the name of Jeffersonian principles that we signed on to the Geneva Convention; we're abandoning it out of expediency and the quest for "a little security", out of ignorance (McCain, who voted for torture, said the White House has declined to tell him the techniques being used so he doesn't know what he just voted for), and out of cynicism (The repubs are gleeful that they have something to beat the dems over the head with this season. This vote was an election ploy, for Buddha's sake!).

I'm a libertarian because I believe that the unaccountable power of the gun is an inherently corrupting power. I'm a libertarian because I believe that being free to choose creates a marketplace of competition and cooperation that ultimately generates socially desireable outcomes. From those beliefs come a simple collection of principles that guide how I write, teach... and vote.

The betrayal of those principles is now on brutal display. And I am not happy about it.

I agree with Chomsky on one thing: there is no reason to believe that a relationship exists between the way a country treats its citizens, and the way it treats outsiders. I once hoped that the principles of American civility (if not democracy) would, over the years, evolve to embrace more and more outsiders. Instead, those principles have now crumbled and the tyranny we were capable of inflicting on others-- even if we were not already doing so-- has now been authorized by law to be inflicted upon ourselves.

The terrorists have acheived their most desired aim: American liberty is dead. We may not become dhimmis, but we have become something worse: we live in world where Susan Matthews's books are not a warning, but a how-to manual.

I believe:

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed. That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.

Comments

[technoshaman.livejournal.com]

Liberty isn't dead yet... we've recovered from worse. She is, however, going to need several units of blood, reconstructive surgery, and quite a few years at the tender mercies of a physical terrorist therapist...

Did I say that out loud? Pardon, my Freud must be showing....

And, ye gods and little fishies, I hope that blood isn't literal. Sweat I can deal with. Maybe even a few tears.

I take it the novel you cite ends up with the protagonist, ahh, misbehaving?

[elfs.livejournal.com]

No. That's the problem. The protagonist is a professional torturer for the interplanetary state known as The Judiciary. Of the three novels I read, he acheives only minor victories in the name of humane justice while he continues to conduct "interrogations" (written in a way that is pure carnography) and spirals down into self-destructive alcoholism. I gave up. I don't know if he ever became redeemed or not. I stopped caring.

[technoshaman.livejournal.com]

Suckitude.