So you think we’re supposed to be the bad guys ? We’re supossed to be no better than terrorists and dictators ? :rolleyes:
'Cause that is our moral justification for prosecuting a war. Otherwise, we might as well joint the Axis of Evil and share in the proceeds.
Seriously, if you have to ask this question, you need to sit in the corner for a while.
Stranger
So you think it is can be only an either/or? :rolleyes:
Maybe we are mostly good, but somewhat bad. Or, maybe we are somewhat good and somewhat bad. Or maybe if just doesn’t make much difference other than we are ‘we’ and they are ‘they’. ‘They’ seem to want to kill us, ‘we’ want to stop them. Specifically picking someone up and whisking them off to interrogation doesn’t seem any more evil than randomly dropping a bomb out of a plane and vapourizing what you hope might be enemies and in many cases isn’t. Now if you are asking me if I like either alternative, I don’t.
A quote from back when America was one of the Good Guys.
Ben Franklin:
They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.
Good, bad, we’re the guys with the guns.
This can only be applied locally because any injustice globally would oblige action. Since few seem to have the will to act and even fewer finally do, it only can apply to your own citizens.
There is nothing to indicate that these supposed secret prisons are used only for foreign nationals. What if your neighbour was considered a terrorist suspect?
… 65% is my best guess for the amount of innocent people in Abu Ghraib, based on Red Cross estimates (backed up by some of the findings of the Taguba Report) that between 70 and 90% of all detainee’s at Abu Ghraib “had been arrested by mistake”.
Cite.
CIte
Cite-*Treatment by the Coalition Forces of Prisoners of War and other Protected Persons by the Geneva Conventions in Iraq during arrest, internment and interrogation,” *February 2004
…following these reports, there were mass prisoner releases…
http://english.people.com.cn/200405/22/eng20040522_144073.html
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/5027643/
( I had many more cites in my bookmarks, which all got lost in the great Netscape crash of Xmas 2004 
)
…so my guess is acutally some degrees lower than the Red Crosses estimate, mainly because it is simply to horrific to even consider the worst case scenario-that up to 90% of prisoners (prior to the Taguba report) were there by “accident”…
Government’s Brief, Rumsfeld v. Padilla (PDF file):
So it doesn’t even apply to your own citizens.
It goes to my contention that the ‘good guys’ are just guys.
Ghanima… the problem is not how to treat “terrorists”. Many might agree that they need to be locked away and dissapear. The problem is that once you open this pandora’s box… how do you know what the CIA is doing ? How do you know they are only locking away terrorists ?
Soon they might be putting away political dissenters… those nasty people demanding regime change in Saudi Arabia for example. So the CIA might do your Saudi allies a favor and spirit away someone living in Western Europe that is making too much noise about the corrupt monarchy. Or maybe imprison the family of a known terrorist in order to make him surrendeer… put a gun to the kids head and see if papa shows up…
Maybe the CIA is full of nice and very moral people and would never think of abusing this power of course... you should trust your government and shut up and get in line again.Are you kidding? After 10 years of being in prison without cause you want to let him go? What if he was innocent ten years ago but NOW he’ll be really pissed off.
It’s better not to chance it. Give him a shovel, if you know what I mean.
-Joe
Maybe we could buy back his love by offering job training and a hefty bonus before he gets out; say flight school, and his own personal 747?
Why not? I can’t conceive] of anything nefarious he could possibly do with that.
-Joe
No one could. 
Now that makes sense. Guilty or innocent, let’s kill all of them just in case. Those innocent ones are the worst, because they get mad. You gotta be fuckin’ kidding. :rolleyes:
I’m getting this incredible sense of deja vu.
um, Steve, don’t look up.
There’s a political theory in which the ruling class is by necessity an elite group of insiders who must sometimes deceive the public for the good of the nation. (I’m thinking this theory doesn’t include much respect for the average person. So much for that whole “All men are created equal” idea.) It seems to me that this could be seen as that theory at work. Say for example that for every 50 suspects we illegally imprison and torture, we uncover a major terrorist attack in the making, that can then be prevented. It could be easily argued that this trade is worth it for the governments involved.
The trade-off? Yeah, so middle-easterners hate us, they pretty much did already. Soldiers die, but that’s what they’re there for. The average citizen continues to be a faithful consumer and the economy remains relatively steady because people have no idea how close they came to dying yesterday.
This ruling class by nature doesn’t give a fuck what the average person thinks, because they believe that the average person is too stupid to know better. They also believe that they are by necessity outside of the law. To them torturing a few people is for the good of us all. Isn’t it?
How many of these generalized statements could you agree with?
-Most people are stupid/make stupid decisions.
-Sometimes it is better for people not to know things that could disturb them.
-A small governing body is ultimately more effective than a large one.
-Sometimes you have to break the rules in order to do what’s right.
-Small sacrifices to prevent large consequences are justified.
-I have the moral high ground.
I’m just saying, the world isn’t all black and white.
Perhaps. Have you any evidence, any at all, that such is the case?
Any evidence that these illegal prisons are worth it? I just gave the example that a trade off of 49 innocents for one major terrorist attack thwarted could make it worth it. Especially if the public doesn’t know about those 49 innocents. Which we didn’t, until recently. I’d say if they were actually getting information, it was worth it for the government. It may still be worth it for them if nothing comes of people finding out about it.