You want a bottom line?

If "it's not what America does" or "it's not right" doesn't work for you, how about this? "What goes around comes around."

As Dan Froomkin writes in White House Watch today:

And Karen J. Greenberg writes for TomDispatch.com that in the case of the four Iranian-Americans being detained, Bush's "frantic, fear-filled, information-impoverished, but stubbornly defended policy" on detainees held by the United States "has finally blown back on America's own citizens. . . .

"President Bush is correct. These detentions represent a travesty of justice and a violation of the rules of conduct among nations. It is horrifying that these Americans, who are engaged in foreign affairs at non-governmental and scholarly levels, are held, seemingly without recourse to law and certainly without respect for international rights.

"But there is another disturbing reality here which must be faced. In numerous ways, the U.S. has robbed itself of the right to proclaim the very principles by which these prisoners should be defended. Though President Bush and his spokespersons may not see it, their past policies have set a trap for the government -- and for Americans generally. More than five years after setting up Guantanamo, and then implementing national security strategies based upon torture, secret prisons, and illegal detentions, the Bush administration has managed to obliterate the moral high ground they now seek to claim in relation to Iran."

Yeah.

Maybe that's the only reason some people can accept. If we do it to them, they can do it to us. And they will. And we won't have a leg to stand on when we complain.

Because it doesn't magically turn right just because it's us doing it.