11 April 2009
9/11 Should Not Change Our Mentality
Mackubia Thomas Owens is wrong to conclude in his April 11-12, 2009, Wall Street Journal OpEd article that 9/11 should have changed the America’s mentality when it comes to the treatment of criminals. The failure of the Geneva Conventions to address modern international terrorists does not excuse the U.S. from honoring our own principles of humane and civil behavior. Our own standards are not defined by treaty.
Luckily for Timothy McVeigh, he was quickly found to have been a disaffected loner, and so not subjected to coercive interrogation methods. But would the U.S. government have been justified in using water boarding to prevent further violent protests by the SDS and other radicals it imprisoned in the 1970s after for bombing public buildings? Would they have been exempt from that and other unusual treatment techniques solely because they were U.S. citizens? Or are our enforcement and defense actions constrained more strictly by our conscience as the person responsible for taking them than by the identity of the person against whom they are aimed?
Mackubia Thomas Owens is wrong to conclude in his April 11-12, 2009, Wall Street Journal OpEd article that 9/11 should have changed the America’s mentality when it comes to the treatment of criminals. The failure of the Geneva Conventions to address modern international terrorists does not excuse the U.S. from honoring our own principles of humane and civil behavior. Our own standards are not defined by treaty.
Luckily for Timothy McVeigh, he was quickly found to have been a disaffected loner, and so not subjected to coercive interrogation methods. But would the U.S. government have been justified in using water boarding to prevent further violent protests by the SDS and other radicals it imprisoned in the 1970s after for bombing public buildings? Would they have been exempt from that and other unusual treatment techniques solely because they were U.S. citizens? Or are our enforcement and defense actions constrained more strictly by our conscience as the person responsible for taking them than by the identity of the person against whom they are aimed?
Comments:
Post a Comment
