Worth Reading #1: David Schaengold: Torture Fatigue (March 25, 2010)
David Schaengold:
Torture Fatigue: Is the GOP really becoming the party of torture? For the past several years I have been assuming that the torture would eventually stop, that both parties would disown what had been done, and that we would return to being a country of people who believe that all men are endowed by their creator with certain inalienable rights. I felt especially hopeful when McCain, whose anti-torture stance was both adamant and personal, won his party’s nomination instead of Giuliani or Romney. The reaction to Bob Barr at CPAC, National Review’s refusal to call a spade a spade, Thiessen’s interview on EWTN, and a hundred other considerations have forced me to realize that this assumption was unrealistic. The GOP seems to becoming a party whose considered, institutional policy is that we should torture everyone the executive branch suspects to be a terrorist.... With the recent release of the OPR report, I feel obliged to weigh in again somehow, lest anyone mistake my silence for an iota of consent. But the battle seems fundamentally lost, and I have personally lost a good deal of the stamina required to make the same basic arguments over and over again.... Should we prepare to open a new front of the culture war? Are we ready to slog away for decades with the hope of convincing our compatriots that torture is a discredit to our country and a betrayal of our most basic political principles?
