Saturday, December 27, 2008

Treasonous intellectuals

From Glenn Greenwald:

http://www.salon.com/opinion/greenwald/2008/12/24/torture/index.html

Here are Tufts University Political Science Professor Dan Drezner and Stanford Philosophy Professor Joshua Cohen demonstrating how good-hearted, profoundly reasonable, oh-so-intellectually sophisticated Americans diligently struggle with -- torture themselves over -- what they have convinced themselves is the vexing question of whether our leaders should be considered "war criminals" by virtue of . . . . having committed unambiguous war crimes:




Here's a 2004 critique of similar apologies for torture by "human rights expert" Michael Ignatieff:

http://www.columbia.edu/~lnp3/mydocs/fascism_and_war/Treason.htm

The moral and intellectual decay of American and Western European intellectuals over the past couple of decades will deserve scrutiny by scholars of future generations. Just as we try to understand what made Martin Heidegger an obedient stooge of the Hitler regime, others will try to figure out what makes a Harvard "liberal" pimp for torture.