Phil Brennan
Tuesday, Oct. 23, 2001

Torture? Just what can they be thinking? Is the spirit of Leventi Beria, Stalin's chekist hatchet man, alive and well in the U.S. Or that of Heinrich Himmler, Hitler's Gestapo chieftain?

Think about it for a minute. The United States of America, now launched on a crusade to eliminate all forms of terrorism, about to embark on another brand of terrorism -- the kind that evoked screams nightly in the grisly basement of the Lubyanka or the torture chambers of dozens of Gestapo headquarters or concentration camps.

Torture! All in the name of democracy, goodness and decency.

Shall we resort to hanging these detainees by their wrists tied behind their backs, ripping their arms from their shoulders? Or perhaps gouge out an eye or two. How about reviving the rack, or using electrodes on their genitals.

After all, this is war, and as we know, all's fair in love and war. Especially in war against terrorists.

Isn't it?

Maybe I'm making too big a thing about this. Perhaps the suggestion isn't a trial balloon some frustrated loonies in the intelligence community floated -- an idea that's going nowhere.

But that's not the point.

The very idea that this kind of horrific tactic can be openly discussed in government and the media strikes me as a warning sign that we'd better take a few minutes to think about our present state of mind and the kind of people we are.

A few weeks ago I warned against the idea of making all Americans -- you , me, everybody -- carry a national ID card. That hallmark of a full-fledged police state is still what is known as a "viable option" -- it's still on the table, given new impetus by Sept. 11.

Up there in the seat of all wisdom, in the name of fighting terrorism, Congress is playing around with our civil liberties as if they were some kind of gift generously granted to us by a beneficent government and revocable at the whims and caprices of the national legislature.

Some of the provisions of the anti-terrorism bill should strike fear in the hearts of every American devoted to the concept of individual liberty.

Check out Paul Weyrich's open letter to Congress at http://www.pvbr.com/Issue_1/edit.htm or at his website http://www.freecongress.org for an idea of what these people are considering foisting upon us.

This nation has survived countless wars and economic disasters, and we've come through it all without throwing away what makes us what we are -- the freest people on the face of the earth.

We even got through a civil war that killed 500,000 Americans and tore the nation asunder. And we still emerged with our liberties intact.

As serious as is our present situation, it can be dealt with without forever changing the very nature of the United States of America as the land of the free. We are -- hopefully -- still the home of the brave. We can take whatever comes without resorting to measures that are beneath a free people.

I'm fully aware that everybody's on edge, what with anthrax spores filling mail boxes around the nation and most of us still in shock over what happened to thousands of our fellow Americans on Black Tuesday. At times like these the fact that the panic button is being pushed regularly comes as no surprise.

But before we react to all of this with undue haste and take risky steps meant to preserve the nation we love, we had better be damned sure that we don't destroy what we're trying to save -- our storied liberties, our right of privacy, our spirit of generosity, our humanity, our inherent goodness.

Above all, let's have no more talk about torture. Even considering it reduces us to the level of the evil men we are fighting to bring to justice.

Surely we are a better people than that -- aren't we?

Phil Brennan is a veteran journalist who writes for NewsMax.com. He is editor & publisher of Wednesday on the Web (http://www.pvbr.com) and was Washington columnist for National Review magazine in the 1960s. He also served as a staff aide for the House Republican Policy Committee and helped handle the Washington public relations operation for the Alaska Statehood Committee which won statehood for Alaska.

He can be reached at pvb@pvbr.com.

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