Believe Me, It's Torture

Yeah, that's brilliant.

Once again the whiny ass PC police want to put rules of every day life into a war situation.

I agree, I think instead of waterboarding captured terrorists, we should offer them free day spa's, free massages, steak dinner every night, put them up in a six-star Hilton resort and make sure that we pay them $10,000 a day for their troubles.

God forbid we treat them like prisoners of war.

I think this war is bullshit. I think almost every war we've been in during the last 100 years was bullshit. I think our reasons for going to war are bullshit.

But since we are there, we should try to win as quickly and swiftly by any means neccessary and fuck the rules.

 

I can see why.

 

Ever heard of the Geneva Conventions?

 

And, then, when the Bad Guys capture Our Guys . . .

(fill in remainder . . . )

 

I should have used the face icons to demonstrate sarcasm.
Seriously, does anyone believe giving them three free meals a day and treating them like they're at one of our prisons (free cable TV, health care, etc.) would make them love us any more than they do? I don't like paying the amounts we pay for prisoners in this country - they should be paying for their stay with manual labor anyway. So why would I like it that we're even holding these fine guests from the Middle East? I don't.

And the military sure as hell is not put in place to baby-sit.

 

Once again, that's not the point. The point is, the rest of the world is watching how we treat these people.
The terrorists hate us, right? So what happens when we give those who aren't yet terrorists more reason to hate us?
We create more terrorists.

 

Who exactly is hating us? France?
We're giving them more reason to hate us with our own self-inflicted propaganda as much as anything else.

So what proposal would you have for effectively dealing with the situation?

 

What does that have to do with torture?

The whole point is getting information and bringing people to justice. Torture, as the Chinese method found, does not extract credible information. And because we torture them, we can't bring them to justice.

So, other than getting some vicarious pleasure of having them tortured, what's the benefit? How does this make us safer?

 

Believe it or not, there is more to the world than just us, France and terrorists.
I'm talking about people -- not countries -- throughout the world who are appalled by the idea that we would even consider torture.
Some people we will never win over. Some parts of what people dislike about us we will never change. This is one we can and should change (because it's the right thing to do, along with the other argument about it paying dividends).
Here's a simple equation -- do things the world hates and you create more who hate us, i.e. terrorists.

 

There is a reason much of the rest of the world mocks and laughs at us. Threads like this just reinforce why that is. Oh well. Maybe one day our nation will have adults in it again...

 

Demo, just a few thoughts:

Fact: Most people disdain governments, both their own and others. Surely you've heard: We like Americans, we just don't like the American government. That wasn't just a mantra that started during the Bush Administration.

Fact: A lot of hatred aimed at America is envy. We've largely been a prosperous nation and yes, we haven't always used that in a good way, whether to strongarm our policy or as a steward of resources. And we're paying for that in our personal and national debt. But many of those who envy us are the first in line to ask us for help when shit happens to them.

Fact: No one will ever, ever be liked by everyone. You will always have those who criticize you, who try to tear you down, etc. Human nature. Those who focus on trying to get everyone to like them, person to person or country to country, will not succeed. That doesn't give license to do as you want, but being loved by everyone shouldn't necessarily be center to international policy. That's called appeasement and it can be risky.

 

I'll ask again. What "process" would you propose to bring them to justice?