In Your Name...
In your name, the CIA tortures people to death, and lies about it. That is what America stands for now in the eyes of the world, thanks to the Bush administration and those who support them both through votes and contributions. The blood is on their hands.
posted by SheaNC at 11:54 PM
15 Comments:
Not advocating torture, but it has gone on in the United States since the WWI under every President. There is a well documented history of it. It's just now its in vogue for the media and members of Congress to talk about it. Can anyone think motive?
-Jack
Shea, let me pose an interesting scenario. I would like all of the Neo Libs to weigh in on this one if they can:
Your 10 year old daughter has been kidnapped by a group of men. You are sent pictures of her being repeatedly raped, tortured, and you are told that she will be killed in 24 hours. You manage through much heroics to apprehend one of the accomplices who knows where your daughter is being held within one hour left in the 24 hour deadline. What are you going to do?
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I would awaken from the dream containing the hypthetical scenario to realize that it is not real, whereas the tortured and murdered CIA victims' families can't wake up from their nightmare.
But anyway, Jack, you're absolutely right; it has gone on under those previous administrations. Each new adminstration has the opportunity to correct the situation. The one who promised to restore honor and dignity to the whitehouse has yet to do so. Will the next, I wonder? If not, I'll criticize them, too!
I know you will, Shea! That's what I love about you, man!
-Jack
Leave it to Shea to completely ignore both the hypothetical and the point of the hypothetical. Way to go, Shea. By refusing to discuss exactly how you would handle a situation in which there was an extremely small amount of time to prevent an extremely large amount of harm, you invalidate your whole grandstanding holier-than-thou post.
Torture is a terrible thing. Unfortunately, those of us who live in the real world, Shea, know that in extreme circumstances torture may be necessary to save lives. Does that mean we "endorse" torture? No. It means that we understand it as a very rare necessary evil.
Sean, you're wrong again. Since you're unable to figure it out: Jack's hypothetical situation was a complete change of subject. I did not want the thread to address a totally different, and fictional, subject, so my response to Jack was to return the thread to the subject of the post. I did not refuse to discuss anything; quite the opposite: I demanded the original subject be addressed instead of fictional scenarios.
One thing about you, Sean, is that you rarely, if ever, address the actual subject of the post. Instead, you take the tried-and-true Bushist method of villifying the messenger instead. Why talk about America torturing people, when instead you can throw another tissy about me? I mean, you never appear except to say something snarky about me personally.
Admit it, Sean: you have some kind of gay crush on me, don't you?
Principle is principle, Shea, and you are either consistent or inconsistent. I wrote a direct parrallel only changing one variable--thousands of other people with the probability of dying vs. your own child. Would you advocate torture in one circumstance and not the other? The issue is torturing individuals to reveal information to save innocents right?
So yes, by avoiding to answer the question directly you avoid having to reveal an ideological bias.
Gee Shea, I thought the point of the post was that Bush and his supporters have blood on their hands because the CIA tortures people. Jack's example, and my example, each were about torture and the circumstances in which it might be acceptable, if still morally repugnant. How is that off topic? Answer: it isn't. You just don't want to accept that as repugnant as torture is, there are indeed situations when most any reasonable person would agree with its use.
P.S.
In case you haven't noticed (which you obviously haven't) I've not been doing any blogging lately, and haven't commented here in a long while. Also, had you paid any attention to the comments to other recent posts by your co-bloggers, you would see I've left some comments there as well. It only seems I appear solely to "get snarky" with you. Perhaps my comments on your posts are more forcefully put than my comments elsewhere, but that's because I disagree so stongly with most of your posts.
I often wish I could be as diplomatic and patient as Jack is, I'll keep trying. At least our comments to each other, as snarky as they can be, aren't devolving into meaningless swearing and name-calling. That's some progress, at least.
Jack, don't try to tell me that I am being inconsistent because I refuse to let you lead me by the nose down a different path. It is not inconsistent to remain on topic. Quite the contrary, it would be inconsistent to deviate from it, so I insisted on sticking being consistent (sticking to the subject). You're comparing apples to oranges with a semantic parlour trick used in dorm-room arguments. I did not avoid the topic; what I did was refuse to be distracted from it. I did not want the first comment to my post to be a complete change of topic. My point in this post is that the United States is doing what we condemned Iraq for doing - remember Bush's lofy promise of "no more torture chambers"? Now we know that he was either lying or ignorant. Which is better?
Sean, you're right that I disagree with your contention that torture is acceptable to "most reasonalble people". There might be a lot more people than you realize that are opposed to torture no matter what. Of course, we are in the minority; many of us who believe that torture is wrong, also readily accept the likelyhood of our minority status. So be it.
Shea, I did not contend that "torture is acceptable to 'most reasonable people'". I contend that torture is acceptable to most reasonable people under the right circumstances.
Those circumstances are rare.
Forgive us, Shea, but the only points of your post seemed to be that torture is bad, and the U.S., CIA, Bush, and Bush supporters are evil people because torture was used on certain prisoners. The only way I know to refute such a point, if I have understood the ones you are making, is to argue that there are situations in which torture might be acceptable.
Before I go further let me be clear on my position regarding torture. Torture is wrong. Torture is not the act of a civilized and decent society which values all human life. That said, I believe there are rare circumstances in which torture is acceptable. Those circumstances involve a balance of evils.
In a situation where a great many people will die, and the only way to quickly get the information to save them, if at all, is through torture, we must decide which is the greater evil: torture or allowing a great many people to die without doing anything that might save them.
This is a very important topic, one which we as a society should be discussing in earnest. I believe it is possible for the idea of torturing a human being to be repugnant to a person, and yet still have that person understand that in certain rare, dire circumstances, it might be necessary. I am one such person.
Will the blood of that torture victim be on my hands for supporting such a policy? Yes it will. But the blood of all the innocent victims will be on all our hands if we forever foreclose ourselves from utilizing this tool in times of great emergency.
Another aspect of this conversation that needs to be handled, equally important, is exactly what constitutes "torture". I disagree that putting a Koran on the toilet, in the toilet, flushing it, setting on fire, or smearing it with pig feces is "torture". I disagree that sleep deprivation is "torture", or taking pictures of naked men with panties on their heads is "torture". There are people that disagree with me.
Finally, do I condone torturing just any 'ol prisoner just because we think he/she might have some useful intel? Absolutely not. If there is not a clear and overwhelming reason for the use of torture, it should be prohibited. Personally, I think the standard should be that of a reasonable person. Any activities of torture should be performed under the assumption that those performing it will be prosecuted, and only win their freedom if a jury of their peers deems that their actions were absolutely necessary for the safety and welfare of innocent lives which were in immediate and grave peril. If they cannot prove that, they go to prison for a very long time.
I would just like Sean to know that I did notice he had not done any blogging lately. Whatever the reason, stick around. I really think we have achieved a solid balance here, and thats nice to see.
...and, I'll try to behave...
Ouch. Nobody noticed I haven't been around. I'll just be over here ... alone ... without anybody noticing me ...
:)
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