Lost Our Moral Bearings

CARY, N.C. — A quick review of The Associated Press a few moments ago had rendered me momentarily speechless. One item notes that the president is “Open to prosecuting Bush administration officials who devised the legal authority for gruesome terror-suspect interrogations, saying the United States lost ‘our moral bearings’ with the use of the tactics.”

This just two days after White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel told reporters that the administration had no interest in prosecuting CIA officials and one day after the president himself traveled to the CIA to stage a photo opportunity for himself where he assured the CIA employees he “had their back.” The audacity of the president is seemingly endless.

I, for one, might assert that the 19 terrorists who hijacked airplanes filled with innocent civilians and crashed them into buildings and an open field, killing 3,000 Americans in one day, had lost their moral bearings. I might further assert that terrorists who gruesomely behead Americans while they are still alive and circulate a videotaped recording of same have lost their moral bearings and possess a depravity of the heart to participate in such inhumane treatment of captured Americans.

But no, rather than recognize that the memos in question prove that the United States government undertook significant safeguards to ensure that we did not torture captured combatants, the president and many in the media insist that torture took place. I’m sorry — being in a confined box with a caterpillar for two hours is child’s play compared to an American having his head removed slowly with a dull knife while being filmed. Which is more torturous and evil?

The same law enforcement mentality which lulled America into complacency and opened her to attack has returned to 1600 Pennsylvania Ave. and most of the mainstream media. Sept. 11 was clearly our fault, right? The country really isn’t at war with terrorists, is it? All the fault of the Bush administration, don’t you understand?

I wish the new folks in power in the White House would wake up to the reality that these terrorists really are trying to kill us and they are really at war with us. I hope this happens sooner rather than later. Unlike the adoring throngs in the media and in foreign capitals overseas — the president must understand that terrorists could care less about his popularity — they seek to destroy our way of life simply because we are Americans.