On Justice, Terrorism, and American Hypocrisy

The Intelligent Independent watched the 60 Minutes report Sunday about a German national being held as a terrorist in Guantanamo, and we are having an extremely hard time controlling our anger. Murat Kurnaz told 60 Minutes about the years he had to spend in the infamous U.S. detention facility, where he was beaten, drowned, chained and hung from his arms for days on end, forced to go weeks without sleep, and generally having things done to him that, if true, all meet the dictionary definition (if not the "legal" definition) of "torture."

Mr. Kurnaz had never been associated with Al Qaeda, had never made any threats against the United States, and was just your average citizen of Germany, who simply happened to be interested in learning about Islam around the same time September 11 happened. Bad timing, for in the weeks and months after the attacks, everyone was on heightened alert. Security forces singled him out, took him from Pakistan, where he had been studying, to a detention camp in Afghanistan, and tried to beat information out of him. Problem is, he didn't have any information. He didn't even know what Al Qaeda was.

Unable to get anything out of him in Afghanistan, the United States -- the beacon of freedom throughout the world -- flew him to Guantanamo Bay in Cuba. There, he was mixed in with enemy combatants that were found on the field of battle. He became "Number 53," and he was stripped of all human dignity.

The United States government, chiefly commanded by President George W. Bush, did everything you might expect an of an Angry Superpower. As Dick Cheney said in a Meet the Press interview just after September 11, 2001, America would soon have to go into "the shadows," to "work the dark side... using sources and methods that are available to our intelligence agencies."

Much of America condones using "any means at our disposal," as the vice president said, to wring information out of terrorists in our midst. Unfortunately, most people don't stop to think that perhaps the people we have rounded up have absolutely nothing to do with terror. The Intelligent Independent is confident that most people in our fine nation would feel as disgusted, as revolted as we do, to hear that our country routinely tortures innocent people.

After Mr. Kurnaz had been in Guantanamo for over a year, United States security forces determined that he was not a threat, and that he had never made any anti-American statements or actions. They promised the Germans his release in 6-8 weeks.

He remained locked up for the next 3 1/2 years. His story is not a unique one.

If these allegations are true -- and there is much corroborating evidence and testimony from others, including American soldiers -- then the Intelligent Independent cannot express to you the rage that is filling up within us. Perhaps it is our legal training -- we studied law at Georgetown, where we learned about such American fundamentals as due process and a system of jurisprudential oversight and habeas corpus rights -- but our emotional side, upon seeing that 60 minutes segment, almost wants to hold President Bush and the rest of the administration accountable for war crimes, and put them on trial in The Hague. Look at history: people have gone on trial for less.

At least in the Hague, our administration's head honchos would have more rights afforded to them then the thousands of people American soldiers swept up in their antiterrorist hysteria, who were then hidden away in detention centers around the world which courts could not reach.

*

THESE ARE THE TACTICS of Soviet Russia under Stalin. These are not the tactics of a country founded upon freedom and the rule of law and the idea that all people are blessed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights. All people, not just those who were born in the United States.

The Intelligent Independent must apologize: he is thinking with his heart. He is actually letting his thought processes be informed by a sense of moral outrage. Moral outrage is good, but we should all strive to dissect the issues and allegations calmly and rationally.

Mr. Kurnaz may have been innocent, but he was acting in a fairly suspicious manner -- he was a foreigner in Pakistan who had recently become interested in Islam, grown a massive beard, and studied at a madrasah. The Intelligent Independent would definitely have characterized him as a "person of interest."

The Intelligent Independent would have questioned him. We would have held him in custody for days, maybe even weeks. (Not to give up our belief in procedural due process, but this was right after September 11, and we were trying to get information about Al Qaeda and Osama bin Laden, and sometimes due process must be temporarily suspended during times of war and emergency.)

That is where the Intelligent Independent would have veered away from the current administration's actions. We would not have beaten him. We would not have tortured him. We are one of those sentimental individuals who believes that human dignity is a universal right. If Mr. Kurnaz was firing at us across a battlefield, that is one thing. But he was picked up off a bus by Pakistani soldiers who claimed that we had paid them a bounty for "suspicious foreigners," and he was taken to a camp and beaten.

It is important right now to note that the American military has completely denied all allegations of mistreating the man. They claim his story is ridiculous and does not hold up to even the slightest hint of scrutiny. The Intelligent Independent tends to disbelieve the American military in this instance. There is too much corroborating evidence in the form of statements of others who experienced or witnessed similar actions and events. But even if we accepted as truth the American military's denial of any mistreatment, the fact remains that they have never explained why we kept Mr. Kurnaz imprisoned after military investigators had determined his innocence.

*

IT IS IMPORTANT to defend one's country from enemies intent on attacking us. It is important to be proactive in seeking out individuals who may have connections to terrorists. And it is important that, while we are doing these things, we stand by our principles and act as a model for the world. How would we feel if American citizens were swept up by, say, China, as it was looking for enemies and dissidents? How would we react if they simply took our citizens hostage, locking them up in secret prisons, denying them basic rights and torturing them for information? Touchy diplomatic issues aside, we would call for the heads of their leaders. Quite simply, we would demand justice. We would argue with Beautiful Rhetorical Flourishes that human dignity and fundamental due process rights apply to Americans throughout the world, no matter what government is holding them, no matter what crime they are accused of.

It is so easy for an American patriot to rationalize our actions. We are under attack! There are people around the world who want to kill us! The masterminds of the September 11 attacks will not rest, and we must seek out and find anyone who has information that can stop the next attack. Yes, some people's rights may be trampled upon, but we can not give every enemy soldier a lawyer just because we want to satisfy our own inconsequential ethical dilemmas. We can be idealistic, but we must be realistic: America must do what it needs to in order to secure the safety of all of its citizens.

It is so easy to rationalize, to treat others as potential enemies, as anti-American threats, as mere vessels that, with enough pressure, might give up some information that could help us. As Dick Cheney admitted admitted over six years ago, it is so easy to "work the dark side."

But we mustn't. America is above that. Other countries work the dark side. America was supposed to be a shining city on a hill. We were supposed to be a beacon of justice, a paragon of virtue for the rest of the world to look to and emulate.

Sometimes the ideal of freedom is hard to live up to, even for the country that preaches it most fervently. But if we cannot strive to live up to our own ideals, how can we expect that from any other country?

McCain: The Original Intelligent Independent?

The Left likes to vilify Senator John McCain as a right-wing nut whose goal, like Bush, is to forcibly spread freedom and democracy throughout the world, at whatever cost, by any means necessary. Intelligent Independents know that forced democracy is a contraction in terms.

In a bit of word play so transparent as to be laughable, the MoveOn crowd likes to refer to McCain not as "McCain," but as "McCain-Bush." Their goal, ostensibly, is to ascribe Bush's evil and heavy-handed foreign policy to McCain. Intelligent Independents do not fall for this, any more than we fall for the Right emphasizing Barack Hussein Obama's middle name in order to try to spread anti-Muslim fear, or calling him Osama as a stupid scare tactic. (NB: McCain doesn't fall for this either.)

Some on the Left go even further, not just linking McCain and Bush semantically, but in the case of the Huffington Post (which continues its long and rabid slide into irrelevancy), overlaying headshots of 4,000 dead American soldiers onto a picture of McCain and Bush laughing. Intelligent Independents know that such a perverse mural simply disrespects the lives of these soldiers in a cheap and offensive political stunt to attempt to connect John McCain to Bush to senseless death.

Yet McCain is not a right-wing nut. McCain does not share Bush's approach to foreign policy. Their ultimate goal of freedom and democracy and peace throughout the world might be the same (isn't that everyone's goal?), but their plans for carrying that out are fairly different.

(Oh wait, the Intelligent Independent just remembered that peace throughout the world is not everyone's goal. In our idealism, we sometimes momentarily forget that some people hate America, distort a religion whose name means "peace," and are trying to kill us.)

(Sorry, we get testy sometimes.)

As I was saying, painted as a Bushie by the Left, and derided by many on the right, McCain is actually one of us. In a foreign policy speech this week, McCain not only expressed his utter distaste for war and his desire for peace throughout the word, but also declared that "America must be a model citizen if we want others to look to us as a model," and went on to channel the words of one wise prophet, Uncle Ben, who taught us that with great power comes great responsibility.

Before anyone tries to connect McCain to Bush again, you might want to take a look at this snippet of McCain's speech:

Our great power does not mean we can do whatever we want whenever we want, nor should we assume we have all the wisdom and knowledge necessary to succeed. We need to listen to the views and respect the collective will of our democratic allies. When we believe international action is necessary, whether military, economic, or diplomatic, we will try to persuade our friends that we are right. But we, in return, must be willing to be persuaded by them.

Truer words have never been spoken. Those are words you might expect out of the mouth of the so-called "uniter," Barack Obama (who, Intelligent Independents have realized with scrunched brows, has the most liberal record in the U.S. Senate -- not exactly someone who appears willing to compromise with ideological adversaries). Definitely not the kind of thing you'd hear from the Texan.

Surprised? Don't be. McCain regularly earns the scorn of his party when he jumps across the aisle for a senate bill he believes in. Unlike many politicians, McCain's actions and words are actually one and the same.

But wait, it gets better:

We must fight the terrorists and at the same time defend the rights that are the foundation of our society. We can't torture or treat inhumanely suspected terrorists we have captured. I believe we should close Guantanamo and work with our allies to forge a new international understanding on the disposition of dangerous detainees under our control.

There is such a thing as international good citizenship. We need to be good stewards of our planet and join with other nations to help preserve our common home. The risks of global warming have no borders. We and the other nations of the world must get serious about substantially reducing greenhouse gas emissions in the coming years or we will hand off a much-diminished world to our grandchildren.

God, no wonder the Right hates McCain. Can you imagine those words (garbled or otherwise) ever coming out of the mouth of Dubya?

The Intelligent Independent is thrilled that the confirmed Republican candidate for president shows such a willingness to be thoughtful, to be a good world citizen, to hold true to values and yet remain open to being proved wrong. That is the mark of a True Intelligent Independent. Senator McCain, we commend you!

More Voting Problems in Ohio, As Per Usual

For a few mercifully brief years, the Intelligent Independent lived in Ohio, and so he is not surprised to learn that Ohio's voting problems are continuing. In what seems to have become an annual tradition, something is amiss with Ohio's voting procedures. Apparently the touch-screen voting machines used in Franklin County, Ohio, told some voters that a certain candidate's name had been withdrawn from the election. This was a true fact.

Untrue, however, was that election officials actually programmed the machines to say that. Also untrue is that every voter got the same message. Basically what we have here is a ghost, hacker, or possibly a Glitch in the Matrix, leading to complete and utter confusion about who in fact was running for office.

Again, the Intelligent Independent is not surprised, as the county seat of Franklin County is Columbus, home of the most anti-intelligent institution in the Union, THE Ohio State. I think we found our problem: a stray buckeye is jamming up the voting machines! Go Blue!

The Perils of Political Independence

It's not easy being a political independent during an election year. Everything you say ends up pissing somebody off. Most years, we can drift from group to group, pleasantly agreeing with what the extremists say because, after all, we are reasonable and we can usually find a grain of truth in even the most out-there arguments. More important, even the extremists are laid back during off years, and they don’t get too indignant when we say something that might otherwise infuriate them.

Election years change all that.

Take Barack Obama. The good senator gave a marvelous speech last week. He elucidated the problems of many minorities in this country, the resentments of many in the “majority” (NB: aren’t white people a plurality these days?), and he did his best to deflect attention from the ultra-incendiary Reverend Wright by imploring that the American public engage in a true dialogue. Imagine that! A true dialogue -- every Independent’s dream!

When I told my friends I loved Obama’s speech, I got two basic responses:

1. “Obama is a brilliant man and he is the one who can restore America’s dignity throughout the world. I'm so glad you are on our side!”
2. “You actually fell for that speech? Sure, Obama knows how to give a good speech, but the fact is he embraces a racist minister. I can’t believe you fell for that snake oil. Obama doesn’t care about change, and he doesn’t care about a true racial dialogue; he just wants to take the attention offered his own race problems.”

The first response was clearly given by Obama supporters. No surprise there. The second response is slightly more surprising: sure, conservatives were shocked that I had been hoodwinked. But Hillary supporters were equally, if not more angry at Obama’s words.

Here is a direct quote from a chat I had last week with an ardent Hillary supporter:

“The man promotes tolerance of another man who has basically advocated the overthrow of the government — I hardly think Obama’s speech was enough. I just think that if Obama were the Uniter he claims to be, he would have disassociated himself with that church and that crazy preacher a long time ago. And it makes me question his judgment. Some of you Obama people are maniacs and deluded.”

I had to remind my friend that I am a registered independent and not necessarily an “Obama supporter.” But when we independents express support for anything — any position, any candidate’s speech, any progressive or conservative idea — we’re guaranteed to be attacked by one of the extremes.

Especially during a vitriolic presidential campaign year. Nowhere is safe! The Left and Right hurl their talking point bombs at each other, everyone dodges each other’s points instead of listening and debating… and here we are, stuck in the middle, getting pelted by both sides.

Nobody wants to listen. Nobody wants to engage in a dialogue. Nobody, that is, except Independents.

That’s why I created IntelligentIndependent.com. There are plenty of sites out there aimed at crazy conservatives, and plenty aimed at crazy liberals — but where are the sites for all us crazy independents?

This will be a site for the oddball who is not only passionate about politics, but passionate about lively, spirited debate — and passionate about solutions, no matter which side introduces them.

Conservatives are right: sometimes the free market is the answer. Sometimes government intrusion is the problem.

And liberals are right: Sometimes corporate greed is harmful. Sometimes government assistance is the answer.

Politically independent doesn’t mean politically boring. Politically independent does not necessarily mean politically moderate. Politically independent means politically thoughtful. It means listening to all sides of an argument, exploring the length of the political spectrum, and only then making an informed decision.

Political independence means political intelligence. Let the intelligent independent discussion begin.