Screw Human Rights for Terrorists! (unless they're ours)
Well, it’s been a while since I’ve ticked people off with a political discussion. I reckon it’s about time…
I try not to live in an echo chamber. That is to say that having conversations with people who agree with all of my opinions is both simple and unchallenging, and so often times I try not to limit myself to it. What this means to me specifically is that I try to at least occasionally get into discussions with people who are much more conservative than I am. I concede that there is the possibility that they may at some point be able to deliver a reasonable point that I hadn’t considered or, at the very least, can give me some insight as to why they feel as drastically different as I do about certain things.
The reason I bring this up is because I was recently involved in an online discussion about Obama, and while Obama doesn’t always make me do cartwheels about all his decisions (“What do you mean I can’t buy cloves?!?”) I have always been a bit mystified about why reasonable people think that he’s quite the radical, dangerous monster that they try to paint him as.
Now, financial politics notwithstanding (because I do think that fiscal arguments against him are ones that could reasonably be made) one of the more puzzling pieces of evidence that people give for why Obama is such a ‘left wing radical’ is his treatment of detainees. In both this discussion and others I’ve read, people have proposed that the closing of Guantanamo, giving fair trials to Al Qaeda suspects and being concerned about torture and human rights violations are ludicrous and radical acts. Terrorists, it seems, should not be treated like regular criminals. Treating them like regular criminals is an outrage.
Well… okay. Fine.
Yesterday, as many of you know, Scott Roeder was convicted to 25 years to life for the killing of abortion doctor George Tiller. So where’s the outrage?
By any reasonable yardstick Scott Roeder was a domestic terrorist. This is not just hyperbole; let’s look at the facts. Roeder was motivated by religious extremism. He was part of two larger organizations (the Montana Freemen and the Sovereign Citizens Movement) who consider themselves enemies of the American government. He and his pro-life extremist cronies target American buildings (hospitals), often with the intention of detonating explosives and indeed Roeder himself was caught with a makeshift bomb back in 1996. Most importantly, he successfully murdered George Tiller.
Scott Roeder was a terrorist, just as sure as any Al Qaeda operative. They have the same motive, the same behavior and, in the end, the same outcome.
So why aren’t people shouting that Scott Roeder should have been kept in detainment? Why aren’t we water-boarding Roeder, asking him to give us the plans of other ‘Sovereign Citizens’; who they’re planning on killing next and what buildings they’re planning to bomb? Why aren’t we profiling people who are extreme pro-life activists, putting them on no-fly lists and dragging them in for questioning?
The only difference that I can see between Al Qaeda and the ‘Sovereign Citizen’s Movement’ is that one is made up of brown Muslim terrorists and one is made up of white Christian terrorists.
You can argue that the difference is that we’re actually in a war with Al Qaeda, and while that’s true, that makes Roeder’s motivation even more shameful. Despite people’s insistence that we’re in a ‘culture war’, we don’t actually have troops stationed in the homes of pro-life extremists.
Now, of course I’m not advocating that we drag pro-life extremists into custody and start torturing them for information or taking away their right to trial. But I don’t think we should do that with foreign terrorists either. Yes, Al Qaeda is dangerous. Yes we are at war with them, and yes that means we should go above and beyond the means that we would go with normal criminals. But I think those means should be espionage and stealth, not torture and Guantanamo Bay. Like Nietzsche always said, “Take care when you fight monsters…” blah blah blah…
Now maybe you think I’m wrong on the last point. Maybe you think that extremists should be dealt with using extreme measures. Fair enough. But if that’s the case, then shouldn’t we be interrogating Scott Roeder right now? And if you don’t think so, perhaps you should think long and hard about why you think he’s so different.
I try not to live in an echo chamber. That is to say that having conversations with people who agree with all of my opinions is both simple and unchallenging, and so often times I try not to limit myself to it. What this means to me specifically is that I try to at least occasionally get into discussions with people who are much more conservative than I am. I concede that there is the possibility that they may at some point be able to deliver a reasonable point that I hadn’t considered or, at the very least, can give me some insight as to why they feel as drastically different as I do about certain things.
The reason I bring this up is because I was recently involved in an online discussion about Obama, and while Obama doesn’t always make me do cartwheels about all his decisions (“What do you mean I can’t buy cloves?!?”) I have always been a bit mystified about why reasonable people think that he’s quite the radical, dangerous monster that they try to paint him as.
Now, financial politics notwithstanding (because I do think that fiscal arguments against him are ones that could reasonably be made) one of the more puzzling pieces of evidence that people give for why Obama is such a ‘left wing radical’ is his treatment of detainees. In both this discussion and others I’ve read, people have proposed that the closing of Guantanamo, giving fair trials to Al Qaeda suspects and being concerned about torture and human rights violations are ludicrous and radical acts. Terrorists, it seems, should not be treated like regular criminals. Treating them like regular criminals is an outrage.
Well… okay. Fine.
Yesterday, as many of you know, Scott Roeder was convicted to 25 years to life for the killing of abortion doctor George Tiller. So where’s the outrage?
By any reasonable yardstick Scott Roeder was a domestic terrorist. This is not just hyperbole; let’s look at the facts. Roeder was motivated by religious extremism. He was part of two larger organizations (the Montana Freemen and the Sovereign Citizens Movement) who consider themselves enemies of the American government. He and his pro-life extremist cronies target American buildings (hospitals), often with the intention of detonating explosives and indeed Roeder himself was caught with a makeshift bomb back in 1996. Most importantly, he successfully murdered George Tiller.
Scott Roeder was a terrorist, just as sure as any Al Qaeda operative. They have the same motive, the same behavior and, in the end, the same outcome.
So why aren’t people shouting that Scott Roeder should have been kept in detainment? Why aren’t we water-boarding Roeder, asking him to give us the plans of other ‘Sovereign Citizens’; who they’re planning on killing next and what buildings they’re planning to bomb? Why aren’t we profiling people who are extreme pro-life activists, putting them on no-fly lists and dragging them in for questioning?
The only difference that I can see between Al Qaeda and the ‘Sovereign Citizen’s Movement’ is that one is made up of brown Muslim terrorists and one is made up of white Christian terrorists.
You can argue that the difference is that we’re actually in a war with Al Qaeda, and while that’s true, that makes Roeder’s motivation even more shameful. Despite people’s insistence that we’re in a ‘culture war’, we don’t actually have troops stationed in the homes of pro-life extremists.
Now, of course I’m not advocating that we drag pro-life extremists into custody and start torturing them for information or taking away their right to trial. But I don’t think we should do that with foreign terrorists either. Yes, Al Qaeda is dangerous. Yes we are at war with them, and yes that means we should go above and beyond the means that we would go with normal criminals. But I think those means should be espionage and stealth, not torture and Guantanamo Bay. Like Nietzsche always said, “Take care when you fight monsters…” blah blah blah…
Now maybe you think I’m wrong on the last point. Maybe you think that extremists should be dealt with using extreme measures. Fair enough. But if that’s the case, then shouldn’t we be interrogating Scott Roeder right now? And if you don’t think so, perhaps you should think long and hard about why you think he’s so different.