Wrongness and Evilitude

There are three items that have shown up on my feeds that I thought I'd post here.

I've just read that Robin Cook is dead. Chris Bertram at Crooked Timber linked to his resignation speech, in which he gave reasons why Britain should not have gone to war with Iraq, and announced that he was resigning as Leader of the House of Commons because of the war. I hadn't read this speech before and it makes a simple and powerful case. If only they had listened.

Another item is the leaked e-mails about the rigged Guantanamo Bay tribunals (via Leiter Reports). If anyone, anywhere still believes that these people (held, if not in breach of any law, then in breach of common decency) will receive a fair trial before an impartial court, they are either stupid, naive or wilfully deceiving themselves.

Finally, this piece about the motivations of the young men who carried out the attacks in London makes a point that everyone seems to be trying their hardest to ignore. Terrorism is "the use of violence and intimidation in the pursuit of political aims." Whether it is perpetrated by states (the U.S., Britain, Spain, Australia and friends in their Afghani and Iraqi adventures) or private individuals (the young men in London), violence and intimidation turned to political ends is terrorism. Just as they are terrorists, so too are we.