Tuesday, January 5, 2010

The Inherent racism of the Torture Debate...

From Andrew Sullivan:

(And for the record, I prefer Stephanie Miller's "Crotch Bomber" reference.)

Bloggers have had a great time exposing the inconsistency on the pro-torture right. Why should Umar Farouk Abdul Mutallab be tortured as an enemy combatant while Richard Reid was prosecuted by civilian authorities under Bush? Isn't the unconscious truth obvious? One has an English name; the other has a very foreign-sounding Muslim name. One was born in Bromley and one in Kenya. One is "us"; the other is "them". And it is much easier to torture them than to torture us. It just seems to me that this distinction has no moral, legal or strategic basis.