Congressman Dana Rohrabacher seems to have inherited Bob Dornan's old job of being the looniest guy in the House of Representatives. The other day, at a meeting of the House Foreign Affairs subcommittee, he was trotting out the old line about how anyone who disagrees with his positions must hate America. At one point when the audience moaned at one of the sillier things he said, he told them, "Well, I hope it's your families, I hope it's your families that suffer the consequences." At one point, he said the following…
…we are at war, and we've got to make sure that we do not let go fifty terrorists who will go out and plant a bomb in London and kill 20,000 people in order to protect that one person who we arrested accidentally because his name was the same.
I don't fully disagree with this position…but the problem is that we don't just arrest the wrong people. Sometimes, we arrest and torture the wrong people. I don't think we should be torturing anyone. I have yet to hear an argument that it accomplishes anything positive at all, let alone anything that justifies losing the moral high ground. But if there is a reason to torture, it probably won't apply to torturing the wrong person.
Should we tolerate torturing the wrong person just because they have the same name as the right person? I don't know…but I do know it's an easy position to take if your name is Dana Rohrabacher. Somehow, I don't think he'd feel quite the same way if his name was Bob Johnson or Joe Smith.