When does liberty die? The day we allow it...

to become the enemy of security... or so it would appear we have decided.

It used to be that we felt that part of securing our liberty was being a free and open society. It also used to be that we felt that being the "Shining City on the Hill," meant we stood for something, we wanted to be the best and strongest example of justice, fairness, openness and freedom. There was a fairly famous case of an MIT student (if memory serves) writing a plan/blueprint for a nuclear device (in the mid-1970's). Initially, the FBI, or NSA, or DSA and/or some apparatus of the government decided to go after the student, they demanded to know where he'd gotten his information, and how dare he publish such a thing (insert exasperated gasp here).

His answer was that he'd gotten the information from publicly available sources, at the library, in magazines, in trade journals. etc.. So whatever agency it was, backed off on the "You breached security" position. It then condemned the guy for publishing, but he simply replied that he provided it as a research paper for his school, the school put it in public space. The paper was pulled down by the school - but the furor died down. This was considered a classic case of what the price and benefits are of living in a free society, sometimes things you might rather keep secret are available, but better that than squelching the free exchange of ideas, the open expression of dissent, and the discovery of uncomfortable truths.

In another example, there was a reasonably famous Soviet spy who said that gaining information about the west didn't require much espionage, "All you have to do is read the paper." - that used to be a badge of honor for free societies, we were different from the Soviets or Communist Chinese because we EMBRACED our openness, not in spite of it.


We seem to have travelled far from there. During the Reagan years, the President's men (John Poindexter, Bill Casey and Oliver North) moved to undermine the ability of an unfriendly Congress to check the power of the President by de-funding the President's actions - a perfectly legitimate act of Congress, and a perfectly improper act of sedition by men sworn to uphold the Constitution first and foremost.

We have made it much worse, though, in the past 8 plus years (i.e. since 2001) including yesterday's decision by President Obama to squelch photos and stories of abuse by CIA and Army interrogators of prisoners held by us.

Under Bush - as craven a Presidency to be sure as has ever disgraced our history - people like Dick Cheney, Condolezza Rice and Alberto Gonzalez gave cover, after the fact, to abuses they endorsed. Abuses which were not the last stage of interogation when all other methods had failed, and abuses which were not at the time they started approved by Counsel - even the putrescent Counsel which the WH used. The justification they are now using is that, "It worked." I've already written about the fact that a. Torture never was said not to get information, so that's a strawman and I won't go into it further here than is necessary, but some of it is necessary to put into context this reply.

Torture, as Jesse Ventura said to Larry King two nights ago (on water-boarding), will get you to say that you are Brittany Spears, it will get you to say anything. I met a man, named Gerald Jenecho (if memory serves), when I was in Naval ROTC in 1983 - he was the current Captain of the Battleship Iowa. He had served in Vietnam, had been captured, and spent 8 years as a POW in North Vietnam at the infamous Hanoi Hilton. He was hung by rope strung under his armpits, with his hands tied behind his back, for days on end. The pain, for those of you who know some physiology, was understandably excruciating - for those of you who may not, you have many nerve endings in your armpits, and so such a position was very painful and enormously effective - and his comment in the speech he gave to my class was simply this, "Under Torture, you will divulge information, what you chose to divulge, however, we learned, can be lies. Artfully crafted lies, lies which if you were found out to be lying would cost you, perhaps your life, but lies." It would have been legal under the Gonzalez memorandum, to use this same technique at Gitmo - as it didn't 'rise to the same level of pain as death or losing a limb."

However, my point is water-boarding may have worked to get some useful information, but it undoubtedly also got us a bunch of lies which compromised both whatever we got from the prisoner and, for that matter, other prisoners because lies would contradict what another prisoner might have truthfully told us - AND took much, much longer than other methods - gaining much less information while doing so. So, in fact, it didn't work - but that's not really EVER been the question.

The question, the point, the issue, is exactly what Obama brought up yesterday. Disclosing our conduct will lead to a damaged reputation of the United States in the world, with moderates, with moderate Muslims and non-Muslims alike, it will endanger our troops, it will put lie to our past attempts to bring to justice criminal regimes (and the criminals within them) for human rights violations - and so, it's a lose-lose situation, it sucks, but per President Obama, that's the situation.

However, as bad as that sounds, Obama is wrong.

In the long run, bringing our own people to justice shows that we believe in the rule of law, exposing our excesses helps, not hurts, the chances that this will not be repeated - it will damage our reputation, but it can also be used to enhance it. We have the chance to say, "A free society does not hide from the truth. A free society punishes wrong-doers, and lives up to the ideals it stands for. Being a shining city on the hill means shining a bright beacon on the dark corners of the world, even if that dark corner is in your own back yard." While it might expose our troops to injustice, we will have the moral fortitude and standing to say, "Yes, it happened, and you know what, those people were punished and their conduct condemned. We didn't hide from the truth, we confronted it - now do the same yourself." In short, we disarm people like Bin Laden by proving we in fact are better than the lies he tells. If we hide behind a risk of 'security breach' we become no better than the regimes of Idi Amin, or Pol Pot, or Mao, which we roundly repudiated for torturing their citizens and lying about it or covering it up. If on the other hand, we confront it, then we show, much like the story of Harold "Breaker" Morant, that we stand for the better part of man, we don't succumb to fear when we are afraid.