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Originally posted by sebastian_dangerfield
I disagree.
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With anything in particular, or as a general reaction?
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I think you'd be pretty upset at the nation's reaction if all the torture was made public. I'd say 70% of people would applaud it. And those 70% would span a lot of different backgrounds.
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I don't doubt that many people think torturing people is wrong. But if the details of what we are doing to people were widespread, there would be revulsion. Which is why all the other evidence of what happened at Abu Ghraib has never been released. If it was going to strengthen the Administration's hand, is there any doubt in your mind that they'd have gotten it out there? That stuff is poison.
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Bush has to be slippery on the issue not because the country is anti-torture, but because his political enemies are brandishing the issue as a weapon he can't guard against. He can't come right out and say "This is not an issue of morality anymore. This is a conflict between us and them and we have to do immoral things to survive." The global community would willify him even further. His only move in this political game is to keep everything a secret.
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Bull. Shit. Bush doesn't give a flying fuck what his "political enemies" are "brandishing." Nor does he give a shit about what "the global community" thinks. For better or worse -- worse, if you ask me, better if you ask Slave -- Bush understands that what people think is not a constraint on him. As long as Republicans on the Hill are unwilling to break with him -- in actions, not words -- he can keep doing whatever the Hell he wants, and he knows it. And particularly with torture, he takes the position that he doesn't need Congress's permission or approval, and for most of the past six years Congress has been all to happy to ignore it. Now Congress is having a hard time just getting information out of the Executive Branch.
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I can;t help but think people taking your position are cynically exploting the issue because to me, it seems crystal clear that this is not an issue about the Constitution or the Dec of Independence or our freedoms so much as a simple matter of us doing the ugly things we have to do to keep an enemy under control.
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(1) Torture is wrong. That's not a matter of politics -- that's just fundamental. I can't believe the so-called Christians who are happy to give the President a blank check. Their beliefs have precious little to do with Jesus of Nazareth.
(2) We don't "have" to torture anyone to fight this war. We choose to. People who defend the use of torture would rather talk about far-fetched ticking-bomb scenarios from 24 than about the uncontroverted fact that most of the people tortured at Abu Ghraib weren't terrorists. It's about their fantasies and fears and posing, not about the real world.
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We've been torturing people forever. The CIA's done it all over Latin Ameirca for years. We kill and maim children all over the world to protect our interests. It's morally wrong. But speaking in terms of survival and protecting our way of life, "morals" are irrelevant.
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Explain to me how CIA torture in Latin America protects our way of life. This is because Nicaraguan hordes were going to be marching across the Rio Grande? If you believe that, then you can believe the Slave/Hank line that if we don't torture people we'll all be living under Sharia.
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I hate the pre-emptive strike stuff. The idiocy of Iraq sickens me. But do I, or should I, care as much about collateral damage abroad as I do about protecting our way of life? No. Not at all.
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If torture becomes part of "our way of life," what's left?
"For what shall it profit a man, if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own soul?" Mark 8:36.
