A small step - but a step

Who do you think wrote this in a column published on Sunday

Are Americans OK with using religious humiliation as tools of war?

How about religious torture?

After listing several of the reports obtained by the ACLU of physical and emotional abuse inflicted on prisoners in US military custody in Iraq, the author goes on to say that

[g]ranted, these are only allegations. But there are a lot of them - enough to fill this whole page, never mind this column. That is too many to dismiss as unfounded. Too many to shrug off as the deeds of a few rogues on the night shift. And too many to make excuses for in the name of political or ideological loyalty.

That last sentence should be a hint that the author is no lefty, antiwar activist, human rights advocate. And indeed he is not. He is Jeff Jacoby, arch-conservative columnist for the Boston Globe and Townhall.com. And he has come to face something I suspect he would rather not.

As regular readers know, I write as a war hawk. I strongly support the mission in Iraq. I voted for President Bush. I believe the struggle against Islamist totalitarianism is the most urgent conflict of our time.

But none of that justifies the administration's apparent willingness to countenance - under at least some circumstances - the indecent abuse of prisoners in military custody. Something is very wrong when the Justice Department advises the president's legal adviser that a wartime president is not bound by the international Convention Against Torture or the US laws incorporating it. Or when that legal adviser tells the Senate, as Alberto Gonzales did last week, that "there is no legal prohibition under the Convention Against Torture on cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment with respect to aliens overseas."

If this were happening on a Democratic president's watch, the criticism from Republicans and conservatives would be deafening. Why the near-silence now? Who has better reason to be outraged by this scandal than those of us who support the war? More than anyone, it is the war hawks who should be infuriated by it. It shouldn't have taken me this long to say so. [emphasis added]

It's all too easy, especially for those of us who live towards the ends of the political spectrum, to downplay, to overlook, to ignore, even to outright deny wrongs done in pursuit of goals of which we approve. It takes a certain degree of intellectual courage to identify, even more to condemn, the injustices committed by those we support.

Jeff Jacoby has come to a point where his heart demands that he say "yes - but not at that price." He has admitted to himself that lines have been crossed that should never be crossed even in service of a cause he supports. In so doing, he has reclaimed some part of his humanity that had been buried in the tomb of expediency. I say, with absolutely zero sarcastic intent, good for him.