The biggest political story over the next 48 hours is likely to be the Senate Intelligence Committee's report this week on the torture of CIA prisoners during the Bush era. And even before its official release, folks are already preparing for a fight. "A long-awaited Senate report condemning torture by the Central Intelligence Agency has not even been made public yet, but former President George W. Bush's team has decided to link arms with former intelligence officials and challenge its conclusions," the New York Times says. But it's quite possible that the political fallout -- domestically -- could be small. After all, many Americans have already made up their minds on these interrogation practices long ago. But the real immediate impact could be overseas, with the Obama administration bracing for the report to produce violence and unrest directed at U.S. embassies and western personnel in the Middle East.
Source: NBC News
There is much to unpack here, but let's begin with the claim that there will be unrest overseas as a result of the report being published.
I have no doubt that there will be some measure of trouble abroad because of the Committee's report, but that does not impress me enough to argue that the report should be buried. Whatever unrest we face will largely be our own government's fault for choosing these so-called "interrogation techniques" in the first place!
The chickenhawks, seeming to subscribe to the "it's not wrong if the US government does it in the name of national security" school of thought, have already come out of the woodwork to cluck about how the report should not be released. "They're animals!" said several people commenting on the NBC Nightly News' Facebook page in reference to our terrorist enemies.
I have likely said this before but I will say it again: I don't give a damn what it is someone (supposedly) did to merit being waterboarded - if we tortured, we broke international law. And if we broke international law, I want to know about it.
It's not enough to simply say that we're the "good guys" - we have to actually act like it. Treating our enemies like animals and using internationally banned "interrogation techniques" on them are things that terrorists do. Have we truly been so scared by the threat of terrorism that we want to devolve into using some of the tactics from their playbook to succeed in the "war on terror"?
You become what you hate.
There is one final angle to this that I find most interesting. Many of the same people who are so trusting of the government's actions in the name of national security are some of the same people who usually don't trust the 'gubmint' as far as they can smell it.
The government wants to make dietary suggestions to beat the obesity epidemic? That's BIG GUBMINT RUN AMOK! The government wants to act as though it's above the law in the realm of national security matters? What could go wrong?
