What About the Innocents?
Over at True/Slant, I rebut the latest from Andrew McCarthy, the National Review writer who is one step away from declaring the lawyers for Gitmo detainees to be enemy combatants.
An excerpt:
Andrew McCarthy continues to write as though every detainee ever held at Guantanamo Bay is a member of al Qaeda. Nowhere does he acknowledge that some people designated as enemy combatants by the Bush Administration were actually innocent, or that some of the lawyers he is maligning deserve credit for helping to free innocent men. Had Mr. McCarthy’s preferred policies remained in effect, these innocent men would still be rotting in a Gitmo prison cell today. In that way, he transgresses against the core American principle that all men are endowed by their creator with an inalienable right to liberty.
Mr. McCarthy’s writing on detainee issues would be far more intellectually honest if he acknowledged rather than elided the existence of these innocent people.
The rest is here. It tackles specific passages in recent posts by Mr. McCarthy, and quotes him making one of the most odious statements I’ve ever seen in mainstream political discourse. His rhetoric is getting so extreme that even Mark Levin can’t believe it.
Great job, Conor. What’s really disgusting is that no one, not even pathetic Andy McCarthy, really thinks, in plain English, that there is a fraction of a degree of support for Al Quaeda in this country. It’s all weasel-talk and low-rent bureaucratic nonsense, with Goldberg throwing in Orwell, simply to appall those readers who have actually read Orwell.
The big question regarding Bush’s policies is whether they were chosen because of the ease in which demagoguery could occur or if it was the natural course of people like Cheney and Addington, e.g. men who believe they are clear-minded and tough, but are most at home being resentful middle-managers who enjoy jerking others around.
— Modulo Myself · Mar 15, 04:06 PM · #
The whole mess makes me think of Orwell, specifically the sub-text of McCarthy’s resentful whine about the lawyers who (successfully) asserted US constitutional protection for detainees the Bush Administration would rather have kept in legal limbo. He says, pretty specifically, that those so-and-so lawyers think they’re so smart. It reminds me of the dictum that suffuses much of Orwell’ writings on totalitarianism: if you propose to defend the indefensible, you must, in the end, make thought a crime. McCarthy makes the ludicrous charge that choosing to assert the protections of the United States Constitution and of international humanitarian law as incorporated into US federal law amounts to siding with al Qeada. Making that charge implies that no thought, no principle, no matters of rights really exist; only sides, and that American citizens have the duty to take the side of the current US administration with a complete suspension of critical thought (as long as the electorate returns a Republican, of course).
Ever since the failures of the Bush Administration, many American conservatives have acted as though they only have two choices: walk back or double down. Continually doubling down, and denying the policy failures and electoral rejection of many ideas tried in the Bush years, will leave American conservatives in a dead end. The future of American conservatism depends on a new and perhaps more creative generation that can interpret conservatism in new and more effective ways.
— John Spragge · Mar 15, 06:32 PM · #
Right on, Modulo-
I’d say writers like McCarthy are simply pandering to the ignorant. The sad thing is – most people appear to be ignorant.
— Ray Butlers · Mar 15, 09:41 PM · #
What does it say about National Review that they continue to publish McCarthy?
For the most part the writers at National Review appear to agree with him, often enthusiastically, promoting his articles and unhinged views.
There is a teeny, tiny bit of dissent at The Corner, but cheerleading is far more common. Or silence.
And they have Thiessen, too.
— Socrates · Mar 16, 12:57 PM · #
I’m glad this McCarthy thread gives you all a chance to declare your “I’m not a Cheney Conservative” bona fides.
Perhaps, Conor, you have the guts to follow the burgeoning story over the possible leaking of confidential CIA agent identities by ACLU lawyers for these Gitmo detainees?
http://blog.newsweek.com/blogs/declassified/archive/2010/03/19/holder-taps-fitzgerald-for-gitmo-photo-probe.aspx
— PN Peterson · Mar 22, 07:45 PM · #