Quote:
Originally posted by Rodeo
Some would find a lot in common between the religious zealots in charge of our country and other brands of religious zealots.
If we would torture in the name of democracy, is it that much of a leap to start cutting off heads to please this same ideal, this same god? Maybe cutting off heads is more humane than torturing someone for 2-3 years before killing them. Read the papers. America is doing that now.
Now that the president of the United States has started claiming that critics of his administration give aid and comfort to the enemy, another shoe has dropped. We are headed down a dark, dark hole if people allow this to continue.
Pastor Niemoeller offers lessons for our society as well as others.
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I realize there are "some" who "find a lot in common" between a jihadist and George Bush (or the "religious zealots in charge of our country.") These are not serious people, and with all hope shall remain among the politically powerless margins of non-seriousness. For it is wickedly flippant to make such a comparison. Either that or profoundly abstracted from the world; even a remote observor of the practiced and remoreseless barbarity of Islamicism would realize there is nothing on earth "in common" with it.
I suppose it is waste of time to point out the extent to which our "religiously zealous" leaders have gone to name and isolate fanatic Islamic extremism as the enemy, as distinct from wider Islam. Or to point out the extravagant liberalness of our nation to all peoples within our borders, and our equal generosities to Muslims around the world (rescuing millions in the Balkans, giving aid and comfort to millions more in Indonesia). Or to point out that torture has been an occasional tool of American warfare since the beginning of our nation, and that its use, under exigent circumstances of war, has not led, and will not lead, to "beheadings." Such claims are either plainly irrational, or the sort of rancid anti-Americanism that wafts out of ideological salons, and would waft out no matter what the facts or truth. They betray not merely a total lack of faith in the American conscience, but a willful attack on that faith.
We face an enemy who violently rejects all basic assumptions of Western ethos. This will test us as never before. And so it is good to have debates and shape policies with regard to torture. I believe there will be many cases of men in the field acting in ways soldiers have never acted before. But given the pressures they are under, living under a literal "sword of Damacles," the reality that capture means a brutal death as opposed to the guarantees of anything like a "Geneva Convention," I think we need some leniency and understanding.
We'll figure it out, muddle through, according to the lights of our good consciences. It is a shame we must fight two wars, though. This is a handicap the enemy does not suffer.
By the way, Bush never questioned the patriotism of those who criticized the war. He asserted that "rewriting history" for political gain during a war was bad faith, and undercut morale. I completely agree. Democratic leaders are behaving right now in the basest manner that leaders can possibly behave in these circumstances -- opportunistically and deceitfully. They are doing so because they can. They know the media will run cover for them.