Hilzoy comments on Bill Frist’s latest moves:
Wow. After all sorts of unspeakable bills have passed the Senate under his leadership, here is where Bill Frist is finally going draw the line: he will not allow limitations on the administration’s ability to torture people, or to violate treaties our country has solemnly sworn to abide by. Making it illegal for CIA officials to keep people standing for 40 hours, or to hold them in rooms cooled down to 50 degrees while dousing them with water, or to deprive them of sleep, even when a pretty impressive array of intelligence officials say that these techniques don’t work, and an even more impressive group of retired generals say allowing them would put our soldiers at risk: that’s just too much for him to swallow.
Meanwhile, Carpetbagger pulls a quote.
McCain’s resistance to Bush’s plan is also drawing fire from so-called religious leaders in the conservative movement. The Rev. Louis P. Sheldon, chairman of the Traditional Values Coalition and a vocal supporter of the administration’s proposal, said, “This very definitely is going to put a chilling effect on the tremendous strides he has made in the conservative evangelical community.”
Reverend Sheldon is saying that evangelical Christians will abandon McCain because he opposes torturing people, or putting them to death after a trial where they were not allowed to see the evidence against them. I hope Reverend Sheldon is wrong. I would hope for more acknowledgment of Jesus’s message about turning the other cheek, doing unto other as you would have them do to you, and the blessedness of peacemakers.
I don’t expect that anyone can live up to the ideals that Jesus laid out. We certainly need to be vigilant about protecting our national security. But torturing people and using kangaroo courts is not the way to do it, and it certainly is not Christian. Or, it shouldn’t be.
