National Review has another excellent article about the Terri Schiavo controversy, as Andrew McCarthy weighs in on the court's plan to remove Terri's feeding tube. McCarthy took a lot of flack early in the war on terror for questioning our outright ban on torturing terror suspects. His e-mail overflowed with indignation from people who lectured him on descending to the level of the savages we oppose.

If so, McCarthy asks today, how do we explain the treatment Florida has in mind for Terri Schiavo?

On Friday afternoon, unless humanity intervenes, the state of Florida is scheduled to begin its court-ordered torture-murder of Terri Schiavo, whose only crime is that she is an inconvenience. ... It will not produce a scintilla of socially useful information. It will not save a single innocent life. It is not narrowly targeted on a morally culpable person — the torture-victim is herself as innocent as she is defenseless. It is not, moreover, meant to be brief and non-lethal: The torture will take about two excruciating weeks, and its sole and only purpose is to kill the victim. ...

In this instance, though, deafening is the only word for the silence of my former interlocutors — -civil-liberties activists characteristically set on hysteria auto-pilot the moment an al Qaeda terrorist is rumored to have been sent to bed without supper by Don Rumsfeld or Al Gonzales (something that would, of course, be rank rumor since, if you kill or try to kill enough Americans, you can be certain our government will get you three halal squares a day).

Not so Terri Schiavo. She will be starved and dehydrated. Until she is dead. By court order.

As McCarthy states, not a single life will be saved by this torture, nor a single threat to our nation neutralized. Instead of being done to protect the lives of all Americans, it has only one purpose -- to kill someone guilty of nothing more than remaining stubbornly and inconveniently alive. I had not considered this position before McCarthy's essay, but he captures a gross dichotomy in our approach to justice. Be sure to read the entire essay.

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» Andrew McCarthy Weighs in from Conservative Friends
Andrew McCarthy writes an article today about the Terri Schiavo case in which he wonders where all the civil rights protesters are. [Read More]

Tracked on March 17, 2005 1:53 PM

» Unless Humanity Intervenes from Balance Sheet
Andrew McCarthy writes in National Review Online of the torture death awaiting Terri Schiavo. Mr. McCarthy was put on the e-mail rack for writing that situations could arise in which torturing a "morally culpable person" could be justified under court... [Read More]

Tracked on March 17, 2005 7:04 PM

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The United States Congress frantically continues working to reconcile two ultra-late-term abortion bills before Congressmen go home for the Easter holidays, the Jawa Report's Washington bureau chief reports. The Senate has a narrowly focused bill that ... [Read More]

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