# Obama Kicks Bush Torturers in the Nuts **URL:** \ **Category:** The BBQ Pit\ **Created:** [April 16, 2009, 9:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/obama-kicks-bush-torturers-in-the-nuts/493338 "2009-04-16T21:24:27Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 18
**Author:** ![Gangster\_Octopus](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/a8b319/32.png) [@Gangster\_Octopus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Gangster_Octopus)\ **Post date:** [April 23, 2009, 4:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/obama-kicks-bush-torturers-in-the-nuts/493338/341 "2009-04-23T16:21:07Z")
Bush said, “We do not torture”. That’s good enough for me. ---
**Author:** ![Ocean\_Annie](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/o/8797f3/32.png) [@Ocean\_Annie](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ocean_Annie)\ **Post date:** [April 23, 2009, 6:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/obama-kicks-bush-torturers-in-the-nuts/493338/342 "2009-04-23T18:16:50Z")
> [@Really\_Not\_All\_That\_Bright](#): > > Really? Think about how many times you hear people say, “we should just nuke the whole Middle East,” and mean it. > > Do you really think that someone who’d snuff out the lives of half a billion people so they wouldn’t have to see them on the news anymore would have a qualm about having one or two people tortured so they wouldn’t have to take off their shoes at airports? I know. It was wishful thinking. ---
**Author:** ![buttonjockey308](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/bcef8e/32.png) [@buttonjockey308](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/buttonjockey308)\ **Post date:** [April 23, 2009, 10:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/obama-kicks-bush-torturers-in-the-nuts/493338/343 "2009-04-23T22:34:27Z")
> [@ElvisL1ves](#): > > Easy enough. The UN Convention Against Torture, to which the US is a signatory, defines it: > > “any act by which severe pain or suffering, whether physical or mental, is intentionally inflicted on a male or female person for such purposes as obtaining from him, or a third person, information or a confession, punishing him for an act he or a third person has committed or is suspected of having committed, or intimidating or coercing him or a third person, or for any reason based on discrimination of any kind, when such pain or suffering is inflicted by or at the instigation of or with the consent or acquiescence of a public official or other person acting in an official capacity. It does not include pain or suffering arising only from, inherent in, or incidental to, lawful sanctions” > > Clear enough for ya? Not really. Define Severe. I’m honestly not being pedantic, but your severe and my severe are different. We can agree that chopping off fingertips is severe, but is violating cultural ideals or customs considered ‘severe’? [QUOTE=Elvis] There’s also the Army interrogation manual, which btw is consistent with our legal obligations following our signatory status, if you want to know what’s allowed and what’s not in actual practice. [/QUOTE] We HAVE to follow what we say we ‘won’t’ do with a manual for the people who aren’t supposed to do it, that doesn’t mean we won’t do it if we need to. [QUOTE=Elvis] The attackers all died in the attack. Except for Osama and the \*true \*AQ conspirators, and Bush gave that one up long ago. [/QUOTE] Hardly. We’ve spent the last 30 years breeding attackers and the last 7 years have been no different. The nation-building, regime changing and generally sticking our nose where it doesn’t belong has created the next generation of radicalized attackers. [QUOTE=Elvis] But taking you at your meaning, Americans don’t have “the stomach” to become bad guys ourselves. We like to think we’re better than the worst. The fact that we have done so anyway fills most of us with revulsion and a desire to clean up the mess as best we can. [/QUOTE] No, we don’t. Further, we don’t have the stomach to allow our bad guys to deal with their bad guys. We like to think we’re better than the worst, but we’re not, we’re only different. In cases like this where we face a determined, desperate and faily well funded enemy that is using guerilla tactics and is not afraid to kill innocents with impunity. To say you’re repulsed doesn’t go far enough, nor does it address the truth. We can’t do a thing about what we’ve already done, we CAN fix the future and how we exist in it, still, we can’t do THAT until the people that hate us, also have either enough respect or enough fear of us. Since our wicked western ways don’t allow respect, fear is the next option. Unless of course you have another solution. [QUOTE=Elvis] And turn far, far more people into “hornets” themselves, in case you hadn’t noticed. Cheney’s actions have made many more people hate us and that has made us less secure. [/QUOTE] Agreed. Still, how to fix it? We will be attacked again. It’s not an if, it’s a when. Not because of Obama, not because of any party or person, but because we’re soft. We don’t quite have the resolve that our enemies do. Either we can break that resolve or buy it, and if we buy it, then they’re pissed off and rich. Bad combination. [QUOTE=Elvis] Claiming that there is no applicable definition, implying that there may not be any actions that are off-limits, is not only factually false (see above) but morally repugnant. [/QUOTE] I didn’t SAY any and all actions are permissible. I said that there are methods that work and ones that don’t. [QUOTE=Elvis] Look at the Abu Ghraib photos and try again. [/QUOTE] Frankly, the Abu Ghraib photos don’t break my heart. Not to say I approve or am in anyway condoning it, but cruel? Perhaps a little bit, but rising to the level of torture? Not so much. ---
**Author:** ![Der\_Trihs](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/der_trihs/32/233_2.png) [@Der\_Trihs](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Der_Trihs)\ **Post date:** [April 23, 2009, 11:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/obama-kicks-bush-torturers-in-the-nuts/493338/344 "2009-04-23T23:12:32Z")
> [@buttonjockey308](#): > > Hardly. We’ve spent the last 30 years breeding attackers and the last 7 years have been no different. The nation-building, regime changing and generally sticking our nose where it doesn’t belong has created the next generation of radicalized attackers. Ah, another standard right wing argument. “They all already hate us as much as humanly possible, so nothing we do can make it worse !” Wrong. We have created new enemies where there were none before, and discredited our cause. Foreigners are not the borglike hive mind you are implying, they are NOT all our enemy, nor do they all hate us as much as humanly possible. But we’ve spent the last 7 years making sure not only that more would hate us, but that they are right to do so. > [@buttonjockey308](#): > > Further, we don’t have the stomach to allow our bad guys to deal with their bad guys. Oh, please. We’ve slaughtered and we’ve tortured. We have all the compassion of rabid dogs and we’ve shown it. > [@buttonjockey308](#): > > We like to think we’re better than the worst, but we’re not, we’re only different. In cases like this where we face a determined, desperate and faily well funded enemy that is using guerilla tactics and is not afraid to kill innocents with impunity. To say you’re repulsed doesn’t go far enough, nor does it address the truth. We can’t do a thing about what we’ve already done, we CAN fix the future and how we exist in it, still, we can’t do THAT until the people that hate us, also have either enough respect or enough fear of us. Since our wicked western ways don’t allow respect, fear is the next option. Unless of course you have another solution. We could stop conquering and torturing people. But you’ll never admit that as a solution, because that would require admitting that many of our enemies are right to hate us. That quite a few of them are in the right, that we are in the wrong, and that our “wicked Western ways” have nothing to do with why most of our victims hate us. > [@buttonjockey308](#): > > Agreed. Still, how to fix it? We will be attacked again. It’s not an if, it’s a when. Not because of Obama, not because of any party or person, but because we’re soft. If American isn’t what you call “soft”, then it is evil and SHOULD be destroyed. ---
**Author:** ![ElvisL1ves](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/5daacb/32.png) [@ElvisL1ves](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ElvisL1ves)\ **Post date:** [April 23, 2009, 11:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/obama-kicks-bush-torturers-in-the-nuts/493338/345 "2009-04-23T23:35:19Z")
> [@buttonjockey308](#): > > Not really. Define Severe. I’m honestly not being pedantic No, merely evasive. You’re looking for a way to say we didn’t do it, without being too blatantly dishonest about it. > [@](#): > > We HAVE to follow what we say we ‘won’t’ do with a manual for the people who aren’t supposed to do it, that doesn’t mean we won’t do it if we need to. The manual constitutes orders. Torture methods have to be specifically ordered to countermand that. Yes, it matters. > [@](#): > > Hardly. We’ve spent the last 30 years breeding attackers and the last 7 years have been no different. The nation-building, regime changing and generally sticking our nose where it doesn’t belong has created the next generation of radicalized attackers. Is that what you’re calling our invasion and destruction of Iraq, and the killing of hundreds of thousands of its people, most of whom have family members who didn’t hate us before but do now? Do you see any connection with the heavy \*growth \*in AQ membership since we started fighting them? Any connection at all? > [@](#): > > We like to think we’re better than the worst, but we’re not, we’re only different. Don’t fucking dare include anybody but yourself in that “we” shit. That’s a fucking lie. > [@](#): > > In cases like this where we face a determined, desperate and faily well funded enemy that is using guerilla tactics and is not afraid to kill innocents with impunity. A typical rhetorical device, lumping and depersonalizing an opposition into a monolithic and implacable The Enemy. Civilized people see through that one pretty easily. > [@](#): > > To say you’re repulsed doesn’t go far enough, nor does it address the truth. We can’t do a thing about what we’ve already done We can stop being bad guys. Yes we can. You clearly don’t want to, based on all these lame excuses, but yes, we can stop. > [@](#): > > we can’t do THAT until the people that hate us, also have either enough respect or enough fear of us. Which is it, respect or fear? Fear is off the board, they don’t have a reason for anything but hate. Respect can be earned, by acting civilized. There is, fortunately, some evidence that we’ve started - including by stopping the use of torture. [qutoe[Since our wicked western ways don’t allow respect, fear is the next option. Unless of course you have another solution. [/quote] I have an option for _you_. Educate yourself. Learn a little bit about the world. Maybe take a psych class and a history class once you get to college. Get to understand how people really work in the real world. Put down the fantasies. Then maybe you won’t post such disgusting bullshit. quote]We will be attacked again. It’s not an if, it’s a when. Not because of Obama, not because of any party or person, but because we’re soft. [/quote] No, because we’ve given too many people too much reason to hate us. We’ve established too well that force is the only language many of us understand. Your “contributions” here are evidence of a widespread refusal to think of anyone else as actually human, just like us - that attitude towards others breeds the kind of response in them that you claim to be inevitable. > [@](#): > > [We don’t quite have the resolve that our enemies do. Either we can break that resolve or buy it, and if we buy it, then they’re pissed off and rich. Bad combination. Try this: Tell us who these “enemies” are. No more of this faceless, monolithic lumping; tell us who their decisionmakers are, how they got into those positions, what their goals are. Then maybe it can become possible to discuss with you how to affect their actions. > [@](#): > > I didn’t SAY any and all actions are permissible. I said that there are methods that work and ones that don’t. But none that are just immoral, that make us no better than these “enemies” you despise. > [@](#): > > Frankly, the Abu Ghraib photos don’t break my heart. Not to say I approve or am in anyway condoning it, but cruel? Perhaps a little bit, but rising to the level of torture? Not so much. What would you think if you were one of those prisoners? That you were taking part in a “fraternity prank”, like Limbaugh says? Or something else - what? Remember that those are real people, almost exactly like yourself. What would you think? ---
**Author:** ![Sailboat](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/sailboat/32/461_2.png) [@Sailboat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sailboat)\ **Post date:** [April 24, 2009, 1:08am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/obama-kicks-bush-torturers-in-the-nuts/493338/346 "2009-04-24T01:08:31Z")
> [@buttonjockey308](#): > > Frankly, the Abu Ghraib photos don’t break my heart. Not to say I approve or am in anyway condoning it, but cruel? Perhaps a little bit, but rising to the level of torture? Not so much. So you’re prepared to submit to it yourself? ---
**Author:** ![Squink](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/b5e925/32.png) [@Squink](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Squink)\ **Post date:** [April 24, 2009, 2:12am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/obama-kicks-bush-torturers-in-the-nuts/493338/347 "2009-04-24T02:12:48Z")
A little more stalling on the part of the US might be worthwhile, just so we can see the evildoers [del]kidnapped[/del] extraordinarily rendered\* and flown to France for trial: > [@](#): > > European and U.N. officials are increasingly saying that if the United States does not prosecute what appears to be a violation of the Convention Against Torture, to which the United States is a signatory, then European prosecutors may initiate prosecution themselves. > **[washington independent game](http://washingtonindependent.com/)** > > home made city upgrade game about boarding houses, telegraph offices, casinos, federal offices, printing presses, docks, land, carriage works, munitions, hotels. * * * \*not like what happens at the hog processing plant, but like what the CIA does to foreigners they don’t like. ---
**Author:** ![gonzomax](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/e8c25b/32.png) [@gonzomax](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/gonzomax)\ **Post date:** [April 24, 2009, 2:34am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/obama-kicks-bush-torturers-in-the-nuts/493338/348 "2009-04-24T02:34:21Z")
> [@buttonjockey308](#): > > Not really. Define Severe. I’m honestly not being pedantic, but your severe and my severe are different. We can agree that chopping off fingertips is severe, but is violating cultural ideals or customs considered ‘severe’? > > We HAVE to follow what we say we ‘won’t’ do with a manual for the people who aren’t supposed to do it, that doesn’t mean we won’t do it if we need to. > > Hardly. We’ve spent the last 30 years breeding attackers and the last 7 years have been no different. The nation-building, regime changing and generally sticking our nose where it doesn’t belong has created the next generation of radicalized attackers. > > No, we don’t. Further, we don’t have the stomach to allow our bad guys to deal with their bad guys. We like to think we’re better than the worst, but we’re not, we’re only different. In cases like this where we face a determined, desperate and faily well funded enemy that is using guerilla tactics and is not afraid to kill innocents with impunity. To say you’re repulsed doesn’t go far enough, nor does it address the truth. We can’t do a thing about what we’ve already done, we CAN fix the future and how we exist in it, still, we can’t do THAT until the people that hate us, also have either enough respect or enough fear of us. Since our wicked western ways don’t allow respect, fear is the next option. Unless of course you have another solution. > > Agreed. Still, how to fix it? We will be attacked again. It’s not an if, it’s a when. Not because of Obama, not because of any party or person, but because we’re soft. We don’t quite have the resolve that our enemies do. Either we can break that resolve or buy it, and if we buy it, then they’re pissed off and rich. Bad combination. > > I didn’t SAY any and all actions are permissible. I said that there are methods that work and ones that don’t. > > Frankly, the Abu Ghraib photos don’t break my heart. Not to say I approve or am in anyway condoning it, but cruel? Perhaps a little bit, but rising to the level of torture? Not so much. [CNN.com - More images of abuse at Abu Ghraib - Feb 15, 2006](http://www.cnn.com/2006/WORLD/meast/02/15/abughraib.photos/) You did not see the pictures. You just saw the ones released in America. There were a lot more and the nastier ones were not shown here. This article describes a few of them. They did not get them all in Australia either. It was much worse. ---
**Author:** ![Lemur866](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lemur866/32/434_2.png) [@Lemur866](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lemur866)\ **Post date:** [April 24, 2009, 2:41am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/obama-kicks-bush-torturers-in-the-nuts/493338/349 "2009-04-24T02:41:11Z")
It’s kind of funny how the torture-supporters think. They’ve got the idea that America is pretty much on the verge of collapse, that our people are weak, that we can’t compete against the real tough guys of the world. They think the Taliban and Al Qaida are the wave of the future, and America is doomed unless we become more like them. Forget George Washington and Thomas Jefferson and Abraham Lincoln. They were pussies who didn’t understand what it takes in the real world. ---
**Author:** ![Der\_Trihs](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/der_trihs/32/233_2.png) [@Der\_Trihs](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Der_Trihs)\ **Post date:** [April 24, 2009, 2:59am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/obama-kicks-bush-torturers-in-the-nuts/493338/350 "2009-04-24T02:59:34Z")
> [@Lemur866](#): > > It’s kind of funny how the torture-supporters think. They’ve got the idea that America is pretty much on the verge of collapse, that our people are weak, that we can’t compete against the real tough guys of the world. > > They think the Taliban and Al Qaida are the wave of the future, and America is doomed unless we become more like them. Forget George Washington and Thomas Jefferson and Abraham Lincoln. They were pussies who didn’t understand what it takes in the real world. America has a cultural tendency to assume that ruthlessness and evil are more effective; even when we restrain ourselves we think of it in terms of self sacrifice, not that being good is more effective as well as more moral. We tend to automatically assume that things like torture or dictatorship are more effective & efficient without actually checking. ---
**Author:** ![Ocean\_Annie](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/o/8797f3/32.png) [@Ocean\_Annie](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ocean_Annie)\ **Post date:** [April 24, 2009, 3:00am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/obama-kicks-bush-torturers-in-the-nuts/493338/351 "2009-04-24T03:00:14Z")
> [@Squink](#): > > A little more stalling on the part of the US might be worthwhile, just so we can see the evildoers [del]kidnapped[/del] extraordinarily rendered\* and flown to France for trial: > [washington independent game - build up the town again](http://washingtonindependent.com/40163/pressure-mounts-for-enhanced-interrogation-prosecutions) I would rather the United States deal with this issue. Those, particularly in the media, who think this matter is embarrassing to the United States and therefore should be quickly stepped over may want to consider the embarrassment of the international community prosecuting a former POTUS and his administration. Initially, I thought any attempt to prosecute Bush or members of his administration would be too damaging to American society, too much for the American people. I have changed my mind. As a society, this deplorable chapter in history needs to be acknowledged and those responsible need to be held accountable. The fact that an American citizen was denied his civil rights, held for over three years and tortured is all the evidence needed to show how dangerously close all Americans came to surrendering their rights to tyranny. ---
**Author:** ![buttonjockey308](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/bcef8e/32.png) [@buttonjockey308](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/buttonjockey308)\ **Post date:** [April 24, 2009, 4:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/obama-kicks-bush-torturers-in-the-nuts/493338/352 "2009-04-24T16:47:49Z")
> [@Der\_Trihs](#): > > Ah, another standard right wing argument. “They all already hate us as much as humanly possible, so nothing we do can make it worse !” Wrong. We have created new enemies where there were none before, and discredited our cause. And we re-make those enemies with every new administration. Those that are determined to hate us will do so regardless of our alleged morality or lack of it. [QUOTE=Der Trihs] Foreigners are not the borglike hive mind you are implying, they are NOT all our enemy, nor do they all hate us as much as humanly possible. But we’ve spent the last 7 years making sure not only that more would hate us, but that they are right to do so. [/QUOTE] I’m not saying “foreigners” I’m saying “enemies”. Al Qaeda, Taliban etc. I would love to travel to countries like Afghanistan or Iraq/Iran, with the kind of history that exists in that part of the world, it would be incredible. Further, there is more than enough evidence that says the average citizen of those countries WANT a democratic society, to be free to do, to think, to be. The problem isn’t the citizen, the problem, as I’ve said are the radicalized fundamentalists. Not too long ago 19 men brought a nation of 300 million to a fucking standstill, and we saw what were reported to be average citizens dancing in the streets as the the NYC skyline burned. It’s hard for most people to get beyond that and creates hate in OUR country where before there was only indifference. [QUOTE=Der Trihs] Oh, please. We’ve slaughtered and we’ve tortured. We have all the compassion of rabid dogs and we’ve shown it. [/QUOTE] Of course we have. We just don’t like to believe we’re doing it because we have a supposed morality to try and live up to. [QUOTE=Der Trihs] We could stop conquering and torturing people. But you’ll never admit that as a solution, because that would require admitting that many of our enemies are right to hate us. That quite a few of them are in the right, that we are in the wrong, and that our “wicked Western ways” have nothing to do with why most of our victims hate us. [/QUOTE] We could, hell, we SHOULD but we can’t and we won’t. Our enemies are dead right to hate what our government has done, but let’s be realistic for a moment and admit that no matter WHAT we do, there is an element of radicalized fundamentalists who will hate us because we allow drinking, or because we allow women to lead or because we have money. Pick a reason, you’ll find a group. This has gone on for 40 years and will continue until we reach the tipping point. It will be ugly for everyone by then. > [@Der Trihs](#): > > If American isn’t what you call “soft”, then it is evil and SHOULD be destroyed. Not sure I understand this, explain. ---
**Author:** ![Jack\_Batty](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/jack_batty/32/3201_2.png) [@Jack\_Batty](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Jack_Batty)\ **Post date:** [April 24, 2009, 5:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/obama-kicks-bush-torturers-in-the-nuts/493338/353 "2009-04-24T17:12:40Z")
> [@buttonjockey308](#): > > And we re-make those enemies with every new administration. Those that are determined to hate us will do so regardless of our alleged morality or lack of it. This is a sticking point for me. If our “enemies” are going to hate us regardless of whether we are moral or immoral (for lack of better terms), then why the hell would we ever choose to be immoral? ---
**Author:** ![Maeglin](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/8baadc/32.png) [@Maeglin](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Maeglin)\ **Post date:** [April 24, 2009, 5:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/obama-kicks-bush-torturers-in-the-nuts/493338/354 "2009-04-24T17:17:43Z")
> [@Jack\_Batty](#): > > This is a sticking point for me. If our “enemies” are going to hate us regardless of whether we are moral or immoral (for lack of better terms), then why the hell would we ever choose to be immoral? It also kind of raises the question of why they hate us in the first place. It’s not because of our freedom. ---
**Author:** ![Really\_Not\_All\_That\_Bright](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/e8c25b/32.png) [@Really\_Not\_All\_That\_Bright](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Really_Not_All_That_Bright)\ **Post date:** [April 24, 2009, 5:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/obama-kicks-bush-torturers-in-the-nuts/493338/355 "2009-04-24T17:31:10Z")
> [@Maeglin](#): > > It’s not because of our freedom. It’s because they cancelled _Baywatch_. ---
**Author:** ![FinnAgain](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/finnagain/32/12500_2.png) [@FinnAgain](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/FinnAgain)\ **Post date:** [April 24, 2009, 5:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/obama-kicks-bush-torturers-in-the-nuts/493338/356 "2009-04-24T17:40:42Z")
> [@Maeglin](#): > > It’s not because of our freedom. Is that an oversimplification? Of course. Are there other factors? Sure. Is it accurate to state that a major motivation of some Jihadis is the perceived opposition of Western values to Islamic fundamentalism? [Hell yes.](http://www.smithsonianmag.com/history-archaeology/presence-feb06.html) > [@](#): > > Before Sayyid Qutb became a leading theorist of violent jihad, he was a little-known Egyptian writer sojourning in the United States, where he attended a small teachers college on the Great Plains. Greeley, Colorado, circa 1950 was the last place one might think to look for signs of American decadence. Its wide streets were dotted with churches, and there wasn’t a bar in the whole temperate town. But the courtly Qutb (COO-tub) saw things that others did not. He seethed at the brutishness of the people around him: the way they salted their watermelon and drank their tea unsweetened and watered their lawns. He found the muscular football players appalling and despaired of finding a barber who could give a proper haircut. As for the music: “The American’s enjoyment of jazz does not fully begin until he couples it with singing like crude screaming,” Qutb wrote when he returned to Egypt. “It is this music that the savage bushmen created to satisfy their primitive desires.” > > Such grumbling by an unhappy crank would be almost comical but for one fact: a direct line of influence runs from Sayyid Qutb to Osama bin Laden, and to bin Laden’s Egyptian partner in terror, Ayman al-Zawahiri. From them, the line continues to another quietly seething Egyptian sojourning in the United States—the 9/11 hijacker Mohammed Atta. Qutb’s gripes about America require serious attention because they cast light on a question that has been nagging since the fall of the World Trade Center: Why do they hate us? > > […] > > Still, Qutb’s contempt for America was not as simple as some people might now imagine. He did not recoil from political freedom and democracy, as, say, President Bush might expect from a jihadi theorist, nor did he complain about shades of imperial ambition in American foreign policy, as writers on the left might suppose. Regarding the excesses of American culture—vulgarity, materialism and promiscuity—Qutb expressed shock, but it rang a bit hollow. “The American girl is well acquainted with her body’s seductive capacity,” he wrote. “She knows seductiveness lies in the round breasts, the full buttocks, and in the shapely thighs, sleek legs and she shows all this and does not hide it.” These curvy jezebels pursued boys with “wide, strapping chest[s]” and “ox muscles,” Qutb added with disgust. Yet no matter how lascivious his adjectives, the fastidious, unmarried Egyptian could not convincingly portray the church dances and Look magazines he encountered in sleepy Greeley as constituting a genuine sexual “jungle.” > > […] > > Sayyid Qutb cut short his stay in America and returned to Egypt in 1951 after the assassination of Hassan al-Banna, founder of the nationalist, religious and militant movement known as the Muslim Brotherhood. Over the next decade and a half, often writing from prison, Qutb refined a violent political theology from the raw anti-modernism of his American interlude. Virtually the entire modern world, Qutb theorized, is jahiliyya, that barbarous state that existed before Muhammad. Only the strict, unchanging law of the prophet can redeem this uncivilized condition. Nearly a millennium of history became, to the radicalized Qutb, an offense wrought by the violence of jahili “Crusaders” and the supposed perfidy of the Jews. And Muslim leaders allied with the West were no better than the Crusaders themselves. Therefore, Qutb called all true Muslims to jihad, or Holy War, against jahiliyya—which is to say, against modernity, which America so powerfully represents. > > This philosophy led to Qutb’s execution in 1966. Proud to the end, he refused to accept the secular Egyptian leader Gamal Abdel Nasser’s offer of mercy in exchange for Qutb’s repudiation of his jihad. Nasser may have silenced a critic, but the martyrdom of Sayyid Qutb accelerated his movement. The same year the philosopher was hanged, according to journalist Lawrence Wright, the teenage al-Zawahiri formed his first violent cell, dedicated to the overthrow of the Egyptian government and the creation of an Islamist state. Meanwhile, Qutb’s brother Muhammad went into exile in Saudi Arabia, where he taught at King Abdul Aziz University. One of his students, an heir to the country’s largest construction fortune, was Osama bin Laden. ---
**Author:** ![The\_Tao\_s\_Revenge](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/73ab20/32.png) [@The\_Tao\_s\_Revenge](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/The_Tao_s_Revenge)\ **Post date:** [April 24, 2009, 5:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/obama-kicks-bush-torturers-in-the-nuts/493338/357 "2009-04-24T17:53:41Z")
> [@Jack\_Batty](#): > > This is a sticking point for me. If our “enemies” are going to hate us regardless of whether we are moral or immoral (for lack of better terms), then why the hell would we ever choose to be immoral? And if we choose to be moral it kind of damages any arguments they’d have to convince others to hate us too. So over all torturing just increases our enemies and dangers they pose. Only a traitor who cared nothing for America, or an incredible moron would choose it. Republicans are full of both kinds. Also torture is a war crime. Republicans: the party of traitors, fools, hypocrites, and despot war criminals. The label will only stop applying when they join a movement to extradite Bush and his henchmen to the ICC to face a war crimes trial. ---
**Author:** ![Fish](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/bc8723/32.png) [@Fish](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Fish)\ **Post date:** [April 24, 2009, 5:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/obama-kicks-bush-torturers-in-the-nuts/493338/358 "2009-04-24T17:54:49Z")
> [@Ocean\_Annie](#): > > This is disheartening. I was thinking that Rove and Cheney’s defense of torture will destroy any credibility they may have had with the American people. So much for the rallying cry of “no judicial activism,” right? If they wanted waterboarding to be permitted, they should change the law and define it so it is not “torture.” ---
**Author:** ![buttonjockey308](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/bcef8e/32.png) [@buttonjockey308](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/buttonjockey308)\ **Post date:** [April 24, 2009, 5:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/obama-kicks-bush-torturers-in-the-nuts/493338/359 "2009-04-24T17:55:07Z")
> [@ElvisL1ves](#): > > No, merely evasive. You’re looking for a way to say we didn’t do it, without being too blatantly dishonest about it. Please. We did it, I know we did it, they know we did it, the issue isn’t that it was done, rather, was it torture as defined. If it was, it was, then the next question is, was it necessary? [QUOTE=Elvis] The manual constitutes orders. Torture methods have to be specifically ordered to countermand that. Yes, it matters. [/QUOTE] I know what the manual does, and although it constitues orders, the persons executing those orders just maybe aren’t following the book. [QUOTE=Elvis] Is that what you’re calling our invasion and destruction of Iraq, and the killing of hundreds of thousands of its people, most of whom have family members who didn’t hate us before but do now? Do you see any connection with the heavy \*growth \*in AQ membership since we started fighting them? Any connection at all? [/QUOTE] Yes, that’s what I’m calling it because that’s what it IS. I didn’t, don’t and refuse to agree with this godawful ‘war’. But this isn’t the first time we’ve made enemies of friends and it won’t be the last. The only difference is that we’ve done it in greater numbers this time. [QUOTE=Elvis] Don’t fucking dare include anybody but yourself in that “we” shit. That’s a fucking lie. [/QUOTE] Whatever gets you through the night, cousin. It’s [QUOTE=Elvis] A typical rhetorical device, lumping and depersonalizing an opposition into a monolithic and implacable The Enemy. Civilized people see through that one pretty easily. [/QUOTE] Don’t disagree here either, but does personalizing someone who wants you dead make them any less dangerous? [QUOTE=Elvis] We can stop being bad guys. Yes we can. You clearly don’t want to, based on all these lame excuses, but yes, we can stop. [/QUOTE] Sure we can. We can ask them nicely to stop plotting, to stop flying planes into buildings, to stop trying to acquire nukes or bioweapons. Stop training rogue killers, if you stop, we’ll stop too, k? Let me know how that works out, eh? [QUOTE=Elvis] Which is it, respect or fear? Fear is off the board, they don’t have a reason for anything but hate. Respect can be earned, by acting civilized. There is, fortunately, some evidence that we’ve started - including by stopping the use of torture. [/QUOTE] Respect or fear would work either way, but we don’t have enough courage to instill fear nor enough political capital to instill respect. I agree that say we aren’t going to torture goes a long way to generating that capital, but we’ve got a long way to go, because not only do we have to stop SAYING we torture, but we actually have to stop DOING it. [QUOTE=Elvis] I have an option for _you_. Educate yourself. Learn a little bit about the world. Maybe take a psych class and a history class once you get to college. Get to understand how people really work in the real world. Put down the fantasies. Then maybe you won’t post such disgusting bullshit. [/QUOTE] Because of this mess, since 2001 I’ve learned quite a bit. From men who’ve fought side-by-side with Iraqis, from military tacticians, from people who have on the ground experience and I think I’ve got a fair grasp on the real world implications of our meddling. What I’ve found is that the current mess we’re in is a result of a complex series of terse interpersonal connections that have gone south and stayed there. Deals made and reneged on, lies told and promises unkept. [QUOTE=Elvis] No, because we’ve given too many people too much reason to hate us. We’ve established too well that force is the only language many of us understand. Your “contributions” here are evidence of a widespread refusal to think of anyone else as actually human, just like us - that attitude towards others breeds the kind of response in them that you claim to be inevitable. [/QUOTE] This isn’t NEW. They’ve hated us for DECADES. We funded Osama Bin Laden to fight against the Russians, and he turned on us because of our dealings with his enemy. I don’t know anything about you, but from the things I’ve learned from the men who’ve been to the places we’re only talking about, it seems that you’re the one without a true grasp of the situation. My contributions are meant to see the problem in the wide view. Of course I know we’re dealing with humans, I’ve never denied that, but for those who are against the things we’re helping the people of those countries fight for; freedom, democracy, trade I absolutely draw a hard line. If you don’t want your countrymen to be free and your countrymen want freedom, you are on the wrong end of the fight. [QUOTE=Elvis] Try this: Tell us who these “enemies” are. No more of this faceless, monolithic lumping; tell us who their decisionmakers are, how they got into those positions, what their goals are. Then maybe it can become possible to discuss with you how to affect their actions. [/QUOTE] See above. [QUOTE=Elvis] But none that are just immoral, that make us no better than these “enemies” you despise. [/QUOTE] Woah, wait a minute, I don’t despise the enemy (as previously described) and no fighter should. I think the enemy is an obstacle to a goal, and you can win him over, or remove him from the fight. Generally, when the goal is freedom for the people, the fight is a fierce one. Sometimes, you have to be on the same ground as your enemy and let him know there is no length to which you won’t go to win your fight. It’s as much psychological as it is physical. [QUOTE=Elvis] What would you think if you were one of those prisoners? That you were taking part in a “fraternity prank”, like Limbaugh says? Or something else - what? Remember that those are real people, almost exactly like yourself. What would you think? [/QUOTE] Good lord I hate Limbaugh. I’d hate it, not saying I wouldn’t, hell, I’m not even approving of it, but the naked pyramid, the guy with the spooky hood, the guy with the dog collar, that was all fairly sadistic and again, I don’t really approve of it if it’s for the sake of taunting alone, but if we’re talking about death by 1000 cuts or electrical shock vs. those things, I’d rather have the nake pyramid. I haven’t looked at gonzo’s link yet, so perhaps I’ll be more appalled later. ---
**Author:** ![buttonjockey308](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/bcef8e/32.png) [@buttonjockey308](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/buttonjockey308)\ **Post date:** [April 24, 2009, 6:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/obama-kicks-bush-torturers-in-the-nuts/493338/360 "2009-04-24T18:02:13Z")
> [@Jack\_Batty](#): > > This is a sticking point for me. If our “enemies” are going to hate us regardless of whether we are moral or immoral (for lack of better terms), then why the hell would we ever choose to be immoral? And it’s a fair point, honestly, I get it. Still, sometimes you’ve got to get your hands dirty. This is a fact of life. You can be conditioned not to break under even the harshest of conditions, if you know your captors are only going to ask you questions and perhaps play some john denver to break your spirit, you’ll deal. If you think this man is going to drug you, beat you, tear you to shreds, drown you and leave you to die, maybe you’ll give up the intel. That same reason is why torture, real painful torture doesn’t work though. There’s a line that we as civilians can’t know the location of. We’ve got to trust our people on the ground, a strict “we never torture” policy that equals “we won’t even make you uncomfortable, won’t insult your mother and we’ll give you a cheese sandwich” isn’t going to get the intel we need. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/obama-kicks-bush-torturers-in-the-nuts/493338.md?page=17) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/obama-kicks-bush-torturers-in-the-nuts/493338.md?page=19)