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Consequences of fear

In October, here in Spokane, former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice told us the torture that she and the Bush administration approved wasn’t wrong or immoral because the Department of Justice said it was legal.

Apparently, when President George W. Bush, Vice President Dick Cheney, Rice and Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld entered the White House, they simply checked their conscience at the door and had no need of a personal sense of right or wrong. Lies about weapons of mass destruction and other false reasons for the Iraq War soon followed.

I remember when the worst thing you could say about a country was that it used torture, and people were outraged to hear of it. Now, according to the Pew Research Center, the majority of Americans support the use of torture against terrorism suspects.

Maybe it’s time to look ourselves in the mirror and realize how fearful we are, and what we have become as a result of that fear.

Tom Charles

Spokane

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