Torture to mass murder, thank you. And how is this an argument? “See, we’re doing something morally reprehensible, inexcusable, and terrible, but they do worse things, so we’re fine!” How far above their level do you think we should be, Magiver? One notch? Three notches? Is it okay if our government randomly murdered 4000 people for dissenting? Would we have been justified in systematically wiping out the wives and children of everyone in the German army ca. 1944, so long as the death toll was lower than 6.000.000 and there was no racism involved?
Here’s a revolutionary idea. How about, instead of trying to excuse the inexcusable by pointing to how evil our enemies are, we judge what we do on our own merit? Torture is WRONG. Big, all-caps, write-it-in-500-foot-tall-flaming-letters-on-the-moon WRONG. Anyone seeing our government commit such vile acts institutionally would be entirely justified in seeing our government as a group of morally reprehensible thugs, regardless of whether our enemy was the Taliban, or Russia, or fucking Hitler. Isn’t that our claim to fame here? That we’re the moral high ground? We’re the good guys.
Good guys don’t torture.
Personally,I really like the way clairobscure put it in the pit thread, and I feel that this should be repeated.
And no, the collateral damage from the drone strikes is not comparable.