Germany has issued arrest warrants for 13 CIA operatives. It seems they kidnapped a German citizen, flew him to Afghanistan, and interrogated him. The victim claims he was tortured. The Secretary of State has allegedly apologized for the incident since it was mistaken identity.
Imagine that. The wrong guy.
Can we go one step further and say that the same thinking that led to kidnapping the wrong people on foreign soil may have led to the wrong people being interrogated elsewhere?
The issue is systemic. The thinking is endemic. "Everything has changed since September 11." Not our allies, it seems. Not the legal structure of the world. Not the need to communicate with others about our intentions in a bid to get their cooperation.
Just as Russia can't kill on foreign soil and get away without consequences, the U.S. can't kidnap people and interrogate them in other countries. Maybe this is all just leftover Cold War ego.
1 comment:
No, this is a whole new era and level of ego. Increasingly, public opinion polls in the USA and the rest of the world show that more and more people just want the Bush era to be over with. They can not take much more.
Central and South America have swung to the left. I think that some of that trend is directly related to Bush.
The Democrats took back the Congress, and may well take the White House even if they run Obama or Clinton.
The Bush backlash has only just begun.
We are supposed to be a nation of law. Everyone says this anyway. So if we ARE a nation of law, that means we ought to try very hard to not break it. Bush seems to think he can ignore any domestic or international law just because of the war. He can not. He is starting to find that out now. We ARE a nation of law. And we must obey this law if we expect anyone else to do the same.
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