SYNDICATED COLUMN: America on Trial
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Right-Wingers Have Reasons to Worry About Trying KSM One of my favorite books is by a conservative. Every American should read Stephen L. Carter’s 1996 primer on ethics, “Integrity.” Carter writes that integrity requires doing the right thing, “even at personal cost.” In the world of politics, the example of Al Gore’s father comes to my mind: a senator from Tennessee, Al Gore, Sr. openly opposed segregation and the Vietnam War even though he knew his outspokenness would cause him to lose his 1970 reelection campaign. Faced with the choice between integrity and expediency, Republicans are taking the low road. Principles? Only when they’re convenient. Never mind the Constitution, the Geneva Conventions or common decency—on the question of what to do about POWs rotting away at Guantánamo Bay concentration camp, right-wingers’ concerns are purely practical. We are talking, of course, about Attorney General Eric Holder’s decision to try Khalid Sheikh Mohammed in federal court in Manhattan, within walking distance of…
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