NEO-CONS ATTACK IRANIAN ELECTIONS, BASH OBAMA FOR WILLING TO TALK WITH IRANIANS

Charles Krauthammer writes in today's The Washington Post:

"That's the problem with Obama's transcultural evenhandedness. It gives the veneer of professorial sophistication to the most simple-minded observation: Of course there are rights and wrongs in all human affairs. Our species is a fallen one. But that doesn't mean that these rights and wrongs are of equal weight.

"A CIA rent-a-mob in a coup 56 years ago does not balance the hostage-takings, throat-slittings, terror bombings and wanton slaughters perpetrated for 30 years by a thug regime in Tehran (and its surrogates) that our own State Department calls the world's "most active state sponsor of terrorism.""

So it seems that together with Elliott Abrams in today's The New York Times the strategy of neo-cons like Abrams and Krauthammer is to bash both Obama and Iran. The one thing these guys could not stand is a genuine dialogue with Teheran securing peace between the U.S. and Iran, a development that both Abrams and Krauthammer and fellow American neo-cons would be against. Their whole game plan of demonizing Iranians and Iran would be halted and any opening for Israel to bomb Iranian cities would be eliminated.

Abrams tries to diminish the importance of today's Iranian elections. He calls them not democratic, not offering any real choice, doomed to fail.

Writes Abrams:

"Mr. Ahmadinejad’s defeat would probably be welcomed abroad as a sign that Iran is moving away from his policies, but Iran’s policies aren’t his — they are dictated by Ayatollah Khamenei and his supporters in the Revolutionary Guard and Basij paramilitary. In fact, a victory by Mr. Ahmadinejad’s main challenger, Mir Hussein Moussavi, is more likely to change Western policy toward Iran than to change Iran’s own conduct. If the delusion that a new president would surely mean new opportunities to negotiate away Iran’s nuclear program strikes Western leaders, solidarity might give way to pre-emptive concessions."

Both Abrams and Krauthammer resent that Obama has admitted U.S. complicity in the overthrow of a democratically elected Iranian government in 1953. For them, it calls into question American exceptionalism, the doctrine that the U.S. can do no wrong.

Writes Krauthammer:

"Distorting history is not truth-telling but the telling of soft lies. Creating false equivalencies is not moral leadership but moral abdication. And hovering above it all, above country and history, is a sign not of transcendence but of a disturbing ambivalence toward one's own country."

From the above paragraph, the reader is left wondering in what psychological state Krauthammer finds himself. He accuses Obama of "disturbing ambivalence towards one's own country," as if overture to Iran and acceptance of Iran's elections as fair and democratic indicate ambivalence towards being an American. Someone help this poor guy with counselling.

TORTURE ALWAYS WRONG ALTHOUGH SOME REPUBLICANS WOULD ALLOW IT

Charles Krauthammer, writing in today's The Washington Post, seems to think that the ethics of torture depend on the situation at hand. In other words, torture is not an absolute evil. Sometimes it is good, sometimes bad, it all depends. Therefore what Bush and Cheney and the rest of their gang did to KSM (183 times on the waterboard) or Zubaydah (over 80) was not intrinsically evil. Rather the situation at that time called for torturing these guys because there could have been a "ticking time bomb."

I reject this situationist ethic. Torture is always wrong and always evil because it tries to achieve common good by sacrificing the rights of the individual. Everyone has the right to be free from Cheney's "harsh interrogation methods." Even the suspected terrorist.

By the way, let's subject Krauthammer to the "test of water." In the days of the Inquisition, sometimes churchmen suspected Widow Jones of being in consort with the devil. They subjected her to the water board, and lo and behold, she confessed that she was indeed a witch. This process must have occurred thousands of times all over medieval Europe. (So much for Sen. Graham's silly assertion that waterboarding has worked for the last 500 years, so it must be good.)

But now let's give Krauthammer a chance on the board. Hey Charlie, we suspect you were the 20th hijacker. So tell us all you know or else. Here's the first cup of water. We won't stop until you admit your complicity and conspiracy.

How long before Krauthammer cries mama and confesses? I bet within 10 seconds.

CONDEMN TORTURE IN ALL CASES

When you think that Republicans and conservatives have sunk as low as possible in matters of Guantanamo and Abu Ghraib, along comes Washington Post columnist Charles Krauthammer and endorses torture in two situations, the ticking time bomb and the high value prisoner.

In arguing for torture, Krauthammer misunderstands the nature of American democracy. The U.S. Constitution incorporates basic human rights of the individual. The Constitution does not endorse rights for the majority. Rather it accords a bill of rights for each person. Each individual in the U.S. and more broadly in the world has a right to be free from torture, from being killed, wounded, threatened, beat up. A government or a state must not use its superior power to do any of these things. This is what individual constitutional rights mean - freedom from the overarching infringement by the state.

Mr. Krauthammer, would you justify torture during the 400 years of Inquisition in Europe? Suppose you were a churchman and believed that a certain person was involved in witchcraft or Satan worship. Suppose you honestly believed that witchcraft gravely harmed little children's chance for eternal salvation. Would you permit the wrack? How about the test by water? Or perhaps the hot irons?

Furthermore, if you allow a government or state to use torture in the ticking time bomb scenario, what happens if you perform your dark science on the wrong guy? Would your torture be justified? Of course the answer is NO!

And it would be just as wrong if you tortured the right guy. Torture is never acceptable, never okay. Mc Cain says bizarrely in my opinion that it is not about them, rather it is about us. I disagree. It is all about the person you say it is okay to torture. It is about his or her human dignity, his personhood, his individual humanity. Torture deeply offends human rights, and I reject Krauthammer's arguments that it should be allowed in certain cases.