Response to "Are Videotaped Beheadings Covered By Geneva?"

It's difficult to respond to Coulter's column this week (September 20, 2006) because, well, she doesn't say much of substance, just makes slurs and throws insults.

This week's big news is the give-and-take between the White House and Republicans on the legalization of “harsh interrogation techniques” what some call torture. Coulter describes the desire to avoid inhumane treatment and assure justice as "[being] treated like Martha Stewart facing an insider trading charge."

The three Republican Senators currently fighting the White House receive this treatment:

McCain, along with Sen. Lindsey Graham and Sen. John Warner — or, as the Times now calls him, the "courtly Virginian" ("fag-hag by proxy to Elizabeth Taylor" being beneath his dignity these days) — want terrorists treated like Americans accused of crimes, with full access to classified information against them and a list of the undercover agents involved in their capture.

Senator John Warner is a World War II veteran and a former Secretary of the Navy. Coulter referred to him, instead, as a "fag-hag."

The Graham/Warner/McCain bill does not ask that prisoners be given "a list of the undercover agents involved in their capture." Even so, is it so reprehensible to allow someone -– who is innocent until proven guilty, as Coulter ought to know — access to the evidence being used against them? As consitutional lawyer Glenn Greenwald put it: (emphasis added)

Advocating minimal due process protections for military commissions before people are executed for being "terrorists" cannot honestly be described as "giving rights to terrorists" because they are not terrorists solely by being accused — and anyone who describes it as such is engaged in deceit and distortion, not "framing" techniques or political spin.

Coulter continues by saying:

There hasn't been this much railing about the mistreatment of a hostage since Monica Lewinsky was served canapes at the Pentagon City Ritz-Carlton Hotel while being detained by the FBI.

This reference to Lewinsky has absolutely nothing to do with this issue. Does Coulter have some sort of contractual obligation to mention Clinton's affair once in every column? We suspect it is mentioned because it is an emotional hot button for her mostly-Republican audience.

The ultimate failure of her argument can be seen here:

But being nice to enemies is an idea that has never worked, no matter how many times liberals make us do it. It didn't work with the Soviet Union, Imperial Japan, Hitler or the North Vietnamese — enemies notable for being more civilized than the Islamic savages we are at war with today…

If the Democrats and the four pathetic Republicans angling to be called "mavericks" by The New York Times really believe we need to treat captured terrorists nicely in order to ensure that the next American they capture will be well-treated, then why stop at 600-thread-count sheets for the Guantanamo detainees?

This is what's knows as a straw man argument, in which Coulter deliberately misrepresents her opponent's position to make it easy to refute. Far from suggesting that we "be nice" to terrorists the real issue is: if we want to be considered a civilized society, there are things that we must refuse to do, no matter how angry we are and no matter how badly we wish revenge. To do otherwise is to lose our soul as a nation.

Coulter says she is a devout Christian. One can only wonder how she would react if some bearded hippie told her that we should not only be nice to our enemies, but love them as well.

September 24th, 2006 Posted by Eric | no comments
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