I mean sure, kill him. But for god sakes, be nice about it.
God I hate this Wittes fuck. His response to Greenwald is to call him a Jacobin and say that "Greenwald is not part of the same conversation as I am" and that Greenwald has a "very ugly eagerness to attack honorable people," unlike Wittes, who just has "a preference for civility and decency."
This is Wittes' whole pose. He is just honestly trying to resolve "wrenchingly difficult questions." Its says it right there on the masthead: "hard national security choices." He's not a bad guy, he doesn't even want some of the things he advocates! Its just that these are difficult questions and figuring out what to do is very hard and requires lots of serious consideration by serious people, like Wittes (who has no law degree, but went to Oberlin, where all well-known assholes attend).
As it turns out, these "hard national security choices" seem to be whether to kill people or imprison them without charges for life, and exactly how much of the 4th amendment to carve out. Proposing that we follow the constitution, or make some attempt at all to align our conduct with the principles that illuminated the document to which we claim allegiance - as Greenwald proposes - is not serious.
That Wittes' entire life is dedicated to determining exactly how to traduce the guarantees of the constitution seems not at all to have occured to him.
6 comments:
His "work" is full of gems. E.g.:
Faced with...a security situation in Yemen that does not favor the repatriation of large numbers of that country’s nationals, the administration has so far lapsed into paralysis.
Apparently we should inter all (non-terrorist) Yemen nationals in GTMO. You know, for their own protection 'n shit.
Fuckin' Obies. Always causing trouble.
yo, La Rana, i got a very 'nice' email from Benjamin Wittes this morning. in response to a blog post i cribbed mostly from you. hit me up on email if you're interested in a forward.
Hey La Rana. I'm interested in this definition of justice/ justification of punishment debate that you've written about in the past. Where should I start?
I assume you are referring to this. On theories of punishment, you could do worse than this. Traditionally you have two camps, utilitarianism, which calls Beccaria and Bentham its founders, and retributivism, which starts in Kant or the Bible, depending on how you count. For definitions of justice you are looking at the history of philosophy. You can learn a shit ton from various rabbit holes at teh Wikipedia.
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