Y'know what may be the saddest part of the whole "I guess we DO torture..." business?
The degree to which being opposed to torturing helpless prisoners is being cast as a "liberal" issue.
Fuck that.
Torture is among the lowest, vilest, most despicable of crimes. There is no excuse for it other than fear and desperation. As I said earlier; I would harm a captive if I believed that it would save people who depended on me. But then - I would I hope, if I was man enough - I would accept my own guilt and turn myself in with the evidence of my acts as the criminal I was and stand trial for my wrongs.
Torture IS wrong. The wrongest of wrongs. There shouldn't really be any argument over that; it's not a liberal wrong or a conservative wrong, it's a human wrong.
Period.
But somehow this is all getting twisted around into a "liberal" versus "conservative" issue. The peripatetic "conservative" commentor "no one" - who has made his appearance here before as well as over at the MilPub and Jim and Lisa's joint - just described my disgust and horror that my country is now unquestionably in the same class as Imperial Japan and Soviet Russia and Nazi Germany as industrial states that torture their captives as a "liberal rant" (it's over at the 'Pub, but you get the picture).
And, y'know what? That just saddens and sickens me even more.
Because I grew up in a "conservative" house. My father the Master Chief was a rock-ribbed Republican up until the Eighties when he grew sick of Reagan's "government is the problem" bullshit. Many of the most decent, honorable people I know are or were "conservative".
But by that very definition the notion that the nation they love, that I love, could act like the Kempeitai or the NKVD is sickening and saddening to them as it is to me.
I'm sorry, but if you think that wanting to coldcock Dick Cheney for being a cowardly sonofabitch who ran like a frightened sissy when his country called on him to fight but loves the idea of having one of his lackeys torture some A-rab is a "liberal rant" rather than just being justifiably insanely outraged at the craven fucker's utter gall you are completely fucked up like a football bat.
4 comments:
Perhaps if the torture denying asshats WERE literally fucked up/over with something like a football bat, they would 'get' it?
I know, I know...that Inner Optimist of mine gets the reins from time to time.
Yeah, Labrys; actually, Jim Wright at Stonekettle has a damn good column about this that points out that the only Republican to show any sort of sanity on the issue is the one who WAS tortured, McCain.
Not that the torture seems to have made him any more sane on things like bombing other people...
But, yeah...how fucked up is it that "torture works"...to unfuck the fucked up headspace and timing of what passes for "conservatives" in the US circa 2014...
Interesting. I'm sure you'll find the rest a good read, fits well with my comment elsewhere about torturing the poor nitwit Oklahoma electorate, and in the comments section a varied selection of posts including active military, as well as pro-torture trolls.
"Torture is among the lowest, vilest, most despicable of crimes. There is no excuse for it other than fear and desperation. As I said earlier; I would harm a captive if I believed that it would save people who depended on me. But then - I would I hope, if I was man enough - I would accept my own guilt and turn myself in with the evidence of my acts as the criminal I was and stand trial for my wrongs."
>>More hidden still are the dark recesses of our own hearts. For the torturers and the terrorists are just human beings. They were not spawned on an alien planet. Whatever they know, they learned from other human beings. And though the dark recesses of our hearts may often yield nothing more than thoughts and feelings, we should remind ourselves that their true character is the stuff of which torture is made.
I am even more interested in the cold assessment of those 10th century bishops who cooled St. Vladimir’s jets and offered their advice on statecraft. For theirs is the calm, pragmatic mind within us all. There is a chilly moral calculus that governs their advice. “The kingdom must go on, even if it requires a little torture from time to time. The gospel is good and the Baptism of the Rus is even better, so long as the Prince of the Rus doesn’t forget that he’s a prince and do his job.” I fear the cool utility of such reason far more than I do the uncontrolled passions within us.<<
http://blogs.ancientfaith.com/glory2godforallthings/2014/12/12/going-hell-terrorists-torturers/
bb
yup
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2014/12/21/1352611/-We-are-no-better-than-our-enemies
bb
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