If preliminary findings are correct, if you are to blame for our inhumanity towards mankind…
If this is true, then you will be directly responsible for endangering American troops, for making Americans unsafe at home and abroad, for giving our enemies propaganda and purpose. The ‘next 9/11’ will be on your head, just as the blood of innocent Iraqis is on your hands.
For the sake of your honor and your dignity and your damn spirit, I hope that the ACLU is wrong.
If they are right, may the God whose named you’ve used to sell war and death, have mercy on your soul.
Chances are good that the people who voted for him will find a way to dismiss this as meaningless, and go back to their moral superiority. Fuck 'em if they do.
I don’t believe I’m that out of touch, I don’t think that Americans would put up for other Americans being tortured.
I think that your average American would have a visceral reaction to finding out that their neighbor down the block was dragged off at night by the local police and tortured for information.
I think that visceral reaction might translate into action once it was released that a good portion of American citizens had been whisked up and tortured for information, and they were innocent from the begining.
I think that any politician who ordered the torture of American citizens would be tossed out of office, and possibly tried with crimes, so fast his or her head would spin.
I can’t figure out why there isn’t the same reaction with Iraqi civilians.
I hope that you’re wrong.
And if I was given to faith I would pray, too.
I trust that there are inteligent, good, honest, honorable people who vote republican.
I trust that when they say they care about moral values that they’re telling the truth.
So I have to believe that some of them will care, that not-torturing-innocent-civilians is as basic a moral precept as one can come up with.
I can’t bring myself to believe that.
If only because it is so shortsighted and dangerous to enflame the passions of millions upon millions (perahps billions) of people who didn’t like us very much in the first place.
If, only in our own selfish interest, it is far smarter to help keep socieities stable, especially those with a large percentage of their population being young, male, and angry. (One might even argue that helping all civilizations flourish and prosper is in our direct selfish interest, but I digress)
Even if we weren’t dealing with the fact that actions like this highten the risk of other terrorist actions on American soil, I can’t bring myself to believe that so many Americans don’t give a shit about right and wrong, about torture and innocence, as long as they’re getting a few extra dollars in their wallets or gallons in their tanks.
I think an American politician could easily get away with ordering the torture of a citizen–what would happen is that no one would call it “torture.” Instead, there’d be a barrage of Orwellian word play: Torture? Never! It’s simply a standard interrogation technique that involves mild discomfort. If there was any debate at all, the debate would be over what constitutes “torture,” and it would quickly turn away from the ethics of any actual situation. The idiots on the left would start making comparisons to Nazi Germany; the idiots on the right would say that crushing testicles with a pair of vise-grips is just a standard “stress position” and was certainly not torture (and by the way: you’re an un-American hippie freak). Cable news ratings would go up for a couple weeks, and then someone would leak a video of Paris Hilton sucking off 3 guys at once. 3 guys? Can you believe that Paris Hilton? What? That torture thing? It was like–weeks ago wasn’t it? And didn’t it turn out that it wasn’t really torture and the guy, like, totally deserved it anyways?
yes, they will care that after the fact the people were innocent, however, my prediction is that the justification will go somewhat along these lines:
The War Against Terrorism is a non standard war against an enemy that clouds itself in secrecy, therefore:
Standard tactics will not work, standard rules (G.C etc) do not apply (remember, they’ve already asserted this).
In order to safeguard American lives, it is necessary to gather as much “intelligence” as possible to thwart the goals of (pick one: insurgents, terrorists, Al Q, Taliban, evil -doers).
It is unfortunate that at times mistakes will be made and the wrong people will get swept up in our goal, but we must safeguard American lives quickly, and well, war is hell and innocents often get hurt.
None of this, mind you, justifies torture, nor addresses the basic problem that officially sanctioning torture puts American lives in danger, world wide (IMHO).
There is a type of mentality that believes that evil doers deserve whatever happens to them- I see it all the time, the resurgence of chain gangs, increase in fines, fees, penalties, life long consequences for any criminal event etc. (for example, folks who believe that any criminal conviction should result in a complete loss of voting rights for the rest of their lives, “they should have thought of that” ).
To me, that’s short sited thinking pretty much universally. Who was it that suggested that a civilization is best judged by how they treat their criminals? In any event, in this case, by sanctioning torture (even assuming that they’ll only get the ‘right’ folks) we:
provide a persuasive recruiting tool for Al Q et al.
Loose all right to demand that other entities treat our citizens justly
loose our moral perogative to suggest to other entities that they’re behaving in a less than moral way.
sign away any realistic hope that an American who has been captured won’t be tortured.
I really really, really hope that the source is wrong.
This is one thing that, well, confuses and upsets me recently.
For the first time in my life, I’m beginning to feel embarrased to be an American. But the phrasing on that isn’t quite right. It’s more like I feel like any time I’m talking to someone outside of the states I have to preface it with “But I’m not one of those kind of Americans.”
I don’t like having to explain myself, I don’t feel right having to justify my citizenship, and to a degree I’m angry at the rest of the world for viewing us that way even though, to a large extent, correct.
It is only so easy to look at the litany America’s disasterous imperealistic geopolitical moves: Allende toPinochet to the Shah to…, war and coup below the equator, war and coup all the way to the far east, from the School of the Americas to drug smuggling to fighting drug smugglers
Damnit… sometimes it seems like too much to ask for America to be what it was, what it should be.
Ah well.
On preview: I’ll get back to y’all later, ciao for now.
Because people want to believe that our government and our troops are trying their best to do what is right in all cases, and when we do things wrong it was a well-intentioned mistake, nothing more. When evidence comes out that our country tortured people we want to believe the victims were all terrorists or insurgents to a man, and thus deserved it even if we technically shouldn’t have done it. If more evidence comes out that we did in fact grab up some shopkeepers and cab drivers along with everyone else, we want to believe that it was an unavoidable mistake.
People want to believe we can do no wrong, and because of this it’s not hard to muddy the waters so they can.
Yep. When the prison torture came out, the standard response was: “why don’t you complain about the insurgents blowing up things?” You see, if they are bad, anything we do just slightly less bad is okay.
This is what passes for moral values in America these days.
I cannot understand how someone would want to turn this into a reference to an election that is gone and part of history. My God, if these allegations are in anyway true, we have gross human rights violations going on by the country that is allegedly bringing “freedom”.
To heck with politics, WHO can justify, mitigate or excuse these types of actions. There are criticisms again and again about people who draw references to more extremist fascist notions when issues like this are discussed (Godwin), BUT do people like you understand that a country and culture do not suddenly become fascist. They slowly erode rights away so that it always sounds reasonable to the majority so that the minority is not powerful enough to stop it.
These allegations assert that we are committing atrocities against other people in the world and this is coupled by the fact that already in our country we have multiple states that changed their Constitutions to actually discriminate against a certain group of people and deny them the same rights as others.
And you, bring up some stupid, bullshit, asinine and, BTW, sexist statement (notice the panties and bitch comment, thereby implying females being weak and crying) to refute any discussion of the latter.
Provide some discussion about whether or not this happened, because honestly, FUCK BUSH, BUT, I hope to God this did not happen. This is because we have issues here that go beyond one man or the single sexist, homophobic and bigoted notions of people like you on the SDMB.
We have the the very essence of the freedom and ideals that I believe represent this country. Quite frankly, I refuse to yield them to assholes like you and I will not be found in the corner crying as you so put it, I will be in the face of the fascists every step of the way.
I just had to post a LOL on that one. A sad and solemn LOL, but nonetheless, you make a very poignant statement that emphasizes what I am trying to convey. Where do we, TRUE AMERICANS, who love freedom, draw the line?
I never thought that I would be placed in a position to defend the little fuckwit that is running our country, but I do not believe that he would have ever issued such an authorization. This stupid twit is not Richard Nixon, he does not command the respect of his minions enough to issue such an order and believe that he is doing the right thing. Bush has simply created an environment where sadistic bastards can get away with torture by claiming such actions are necessary for “National Security” and the simple-minded glorious leader will approve these transgressions after the fact. If Rove or Cheney whisper in his ear that this is the right course to pursue in order to preserve American dominance, then Bush will go along, but I doubt that there will be any evidence of an actual order to pursue such a strategy. Maybe I am just overly naive!