We Haven't Changed -- and We Don't Need To Change

Andrew Sullivan's taken up the issue of America condoning and authorizing torture and abuse of detainees, to the point where it's almost a tad obsessive. I admire him for taking a strong stand on the issue. While I am at best uncomfortable with the use of torture for interrogation, I also have a much different threshhold than Sullivan for what constitutes torture. But that's not the issue at this time. Sullivan has been rather disappointed (or so it appears) that most Americans seem rather blase to the idea of alleged terrorists being subject to coercive treatment and even torture, and said "America is not the America it once was." Stephen Green does a good job refuting this position...

I don't begrudge Sullivan his opinion. It's his, and I've watched him ably create and defend it. However, when he claims that our rough treatment of rough characters "is not the America it once was," he's displaying an almost-willful misunderstanding of America's wartime mores. In WWII, German POWs were accorded proper respect. Those few Japanese who surrendered were largely not.

Why the difference? Germany declared war on us before attacking; Japan didn't. When a German soldier showed the white flag, he usually meant it; a Japanese solider usually didn't. Germany treated American POWs according to the Geneva Conventions. Japan treated American POWs to the Bataan Death March.

Today we're faced with an enemy who never signed onto the Geneva Conventions. An enemy who hides in plain clothes among civilians, who wages war against civilians, and who began this war with a surprise attack.

While reading that last paragraph, maybe your mind wandered. Maybe your brain recoiled, and was haunted by questions. "Do we live perfectly by the Geneva Conventions?" "Don't our soldiers sometimes hide in civilian homes?" "Weren't we asking to be attacked?" "Didn't they attack us by the only means at their disposal?"

If you asked yourself those things, you're certainly no Jacksonian.

But millions of Americans - probably a wartime majority - do hold by Jackson's traditions. We try to play fair, and mostly we succeed. But we will not play fair with those who refuse to honor the rules of the game. In fact, we think it speaks pretty well of us that those Gitmo prisoners are being treated as well as they are.

Sometimes, we even wonder if maybe we've gone a little too soft - if maybe we shouldn't be taking prisoners at all.

I'm with Green right now. I'm not worried about us losing our humanity yet. I'm more worried about being too compassionate to our enemies. Winning the war and playing by the rules of civilization are not always mutually exclusive, but I'm more worried about the former than the latter.