From the Gestapo to the White House

Critics will no doubt say I am accusing the Bush administration of being Hitler. I'm not. There is no comparison between the political system in Germany in 1937 and the U.S. in 2007. What I am reporting is a simple empirical fact: the interrogation methods approved and defended by this president are not new. Many have been used in the past. The very phrase used by the president to describe torture-that-isn't-somehow-torture - “enhanced interrogation techniques” - is a term originally coined by the Nazis. The techniques are indistinguishable. The methods were clearly understood in 1948 as war-crimes. The punishment for them was death.

When George W. Bush and his gang of minions and admirers say 9/11 “changed everything” this is the kind of thing they apparently mean.

Just the other day, Vice President Cheney derided the Constitution and the Geneva Conventions at West Point:

He portrays the Geneva Conventions and the Constitution as devices by which al Qaeda can defeat the United States. The effect can only be to undermine respect for both Geneva and the Constitution among West Point cadets and the military in general. In the current debate, Cheney is using a West Point graduation to urge the military to support his disavowal of Geneva and his interpretation of a unitary executive in which the president has indefinite dictatorial powers with respect to “enemy combatants” in the war on terror. Invoking Geneva and the Constitution in a time of war, Cheney implies, is only something terrorists or terrorist-supporters would do.

Are the Democrats too busy running their election campaigns to notice any of this, too busy trying not to appear “soft” on “terrorists”? Screw them.

A few days ago a WWII vet took me politely to task for a comment of mine he interpreted as opposing all wars, and reminded me of the sacrifices made to prevent us from having to “speak German” today. Well, I don't oppose all wars, and to me as well as to many of my generation WWII is still the Good War. And I hope he, if he reads this, will join me in the sense of outrage and betrayal I feel over the situation we find ourselves in today.

9/11 indeed changed a lot of things - some for the better, some for the worse. But it did not cancel the Constitution, and it did not change what's right and what's wrong.

Link: The Daily Dish: Cheney At West Point
Link: The Daily Dish: “Verschärfte Vernehmung”
Thanks to Spiiderweb™, Balloon Juice