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It is important to praise them to the hilt, and to recognize their courage and integrity--because they have acted in such a brilliant, organized, public and effective way, on this vital issue--but it is also important to understand that they are not rare. And that is the most wonderful thing of all. It has not gotten a lot of media attention (surprise, surprise--witness this very group, whom many of us never heard of before), but there have been numerous instances of military people opposing wrongful, criminal and/or stupid policies of the Bushwhack regime, often at risk of their careers, maybe even of their lives, over the last eight years. I hope somebody who knows more about it than I do is making a list for future Medals of Honor. The military jag lawyers come to mind, who fought a long, hard, dangerous, internal battle against torture and indefinite detention. And Capt. James Yee, who suffered intense persecution, and his career was destroyed, for merely trying to bring some minimal humanitarian values to the treatment of prisoners, as chaplain at Guantanamo Bay.
I would include those who have refused to return to Iraq and/or fled to Canada, which military people might not agree with, but I am a civilian and have different standards. I rate moral courage higher than, or at least equal to, physical courage. Someone who refuses to kill in an unjust cause, and refuses to obey illegal orders, takes as much of a risk, if not a much higher risk, than someone who just obeys orders, no matter what. Many who have fled to Canada are just kids--very young soldiers--who were not avoiding conflict or danger--they signed up for it!--but who became revulsed at what they were told to do, or saw others do. Their high ethical standards, at such a young age, are our strength as a nation, not a weakness. There are also instances of experienced soldiers who have refused to go back, and taken an even harder road--turned themselves in. Which brings me to this matter of the "24" scenario, and I would like input on this...
If you were in a position of power and authority, and were faced with an excruciating dilemma--such as dramatized in "24," for instance, you know fairly certainly that a nuclear bomb is about to be detonated over Los Angeles, you have one of the terrorist planners in custody, whom you have good reason to believe knows where the bomb is, and you have very little time to do anything about it, what do you do? You may feel that you have to choose between breaking a law--torturing that prisoner--and the horrible deaths of millions of other people. It may well be that torture mostly produces useless intelligence--as many have averred--but you are out of options (or you think you are). You make your decision. You order the torture of that prisoner. In one of these "24" scenarios, as I recall, the torture in fact failed to produce the location of the bomb and the bomb went off (and millions were killed). But whatever the outcome of your decision, if you have committed an illegal act to save millions of people, in my opinion the standard should be that you admit it, afterward, and take the consequences. You go public. You throw yourself on the mercy of the people and the legal system. You admit the crime, and you go to jail, if that is the legal judgement of your action. Thus, the rule of laws and not men is upheld. Thus, democracy and the Constitution, are upheld and revered. Thus, order is restored. You sacrifice yourself to the rule of law. If you are a brave and patriotic citizen, that is what you do--even if the judgement against you is wrong, in your opinion.
Possibly you will be forgiven, and the consequences of your illegal act waived. Possibly you will get amnesty, or never be prosecuted. You don't know. The important thing is that you reveal your action publicly, explain yourself and take the consequences, whatever they are. And thus, the dilemma of "our safety versus our values"--as President Obama put it, in his inauguration speech--is resolved.
There is the law. And there is you and your judgement of the situation. If the situation is that dire, with that much at stake, it is a rare and inhuman situation, with pressures almost beyond the ability of human beings to endure. You throw the dice, and you take what fate has to deal out. You do not shrink from the consequences. You uphold and honor the law, so that order can be restored and the greatest good achieved.
What the Bush regime created, instead, was a highly dishonorable and disordered rampant disregard for the law, in secret, using every means to avoid the legal consequences of their actions, with, at best, dubious motives for their actions (and orders), and, at worst...well, we don't know. What were the real purposes of widespread torture and indefinite detention, of general roundups of people, many of them innocent of any offense, and including children? God knows. The "24 scenario is no apologia for what these cowardly men-in-suits did. If what they did was justified, where are the records of those facts and those decisions? There are no records at Guantanamo Bay. Either they have been destroyed, or they kept no records. They have thus removed themselves entirely from the rule of law, and order cannot be restored. If "keeping us safe" is what they were doing--and I have great doubts about that--then restoration of the rule of law--the highest value that we hold, because the rule of law IS safety, in most circumstances--should be of the highest importance to honorable public servants and truly patriotic leaders.
And there is an even greater problem, for us as a society. In understanding the "24" dilemma, we come up against an "Iron Curtain" of secrecy that has clouded our government for a very long time. Dreadful crimes have been committed under this dark cloud, most of them unjustified and very much not in our interest, as a people, but certainly in the interest of war profiteers and big corporations. I rather liked and approved of "24" because it turned this secret government inside out, and spilled its guts on nationwide TV. (And was a rather riveting drama as well--especially the first season; after that, the constant adrenalin rush became a bit tiresome--and the "blondes in peril" episodes were really tiresome.) It wasn't a very politically conscious show. Its targets were wide of the mark, as to the fascist/corporate greed devils behind most of our troubles. But it did reveal the treachery, treason and miasma of illegality and criminality lurking behind our apparent democracy. It was rather like a serious "Men In Black": The unaccountable men and their secret government vs. all of the rest of us (contemptuously described as "civilians"). "Men in Black" is the hilarious version of it. "24" is the version for those without a sense of humor.
If you knew, for certain (as Will Smith learns, in "Men in Black") that extraterrestrial people, aliens, were using Earth as a "way station," and fighting a war amongst themselves that gravely imperiled humanity, would you join a secret organization of powerful men, and commit all sorts of extra-legal actions, to keep Earth from getting blown up? (God, it is funny!) What hath the CIA wrought, behind our backs? What have they been up to? The reality of that is not funny. And it has led straight to the horrors of Guantanamo Bay and the secret U.S./Bushwhack prisons around the world.
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