Let's be more like them!
That'll show that world how superior American values are.
That's not even funny as a joke.
But instead of spouting more inane jokes, explain why liberals are so worried about America pouring a little water in somebody's face, but not this. Why is that? Does their HATE and CONTEMPT for America really run that deep? Why do want to live here?
I don't think Iriemon is really joking so much as demonstrating the hypocrisy of believing we have the righteous authority to waterboard people because the enemy will torture us worse or murder us. And it isn't only liberals who are against waterboarding people, just ask Catzmeow, Crimson White, and many many others who fall more to the right on the political spectrum.
Secondly, abortion and torture are unrelated when viewed from the perspective of those who believe in a woman's right to choose: torture involves people, abortions involve unborn fetuses which are not yet people. So don't think that pro-choice people have given up the moral high ground because we think it should be legal for women to get abortions. The word is
legal, not encouraged. We don't WANT women to get abortions, we just think they should have the choice.
How can
you value life and still think its good to torture people? How can you
value human rights and think its good to torture people?
This is why I am concerned about waterboarding
suspected terrorists or anyone for that matter:
1. Habeus corpus. They haven't been convicted and so therefore are considered innocent until proven guilty. To torture them for information goes against the American principle of upholding human rights: habeus corpus.
2. American principle of upholding human rights. To torture people at all, to dehumanize them, is against the American principle of upholding human rights.
3. For the US to fear terrorist attacks so much to resort to the very practices it abhors in the extremist groups that it has fought in the past i.e. Hitler, Stalin, the Khmer Rouge, Saddam Hussein, etc. is hypocritical.
4. For the US to fear terrorist attacks so much as to compromise its own principles is a de facto victory for the terrorists who wish to manipulate the US through fear.
5. Its against the law signed by Ronald Reagan himself.
7. Its against the Geneva Convention, a member of which the US is.
8. The North Vietnamese, Russia, and other totalitarian regimes used to torture people to force them to sign false confessions, and it worked - just ask John McCain who broke under torture. Therefore, information obtained through torture is not credible.
9. In the US Armed Services we are trained, when taking POWs (aka
enemy combatants), not to kill, mistreat, or torture them, not because we're so nice and kind caring soldiers, but because to torture them:
a. Provides the enemy with a will to fight because they feel justified in fighting against those who torture or kill POWs, they would rather die than be taken prisoner, and they would be angry at the US for torturing POWs, and,
b. information gained through torture is not credible.
10. Where do we draw the line between torture and "enhanced interrogation practices"?
11. Where do we draw the line between suspects and convicts if we can torture suspects for information, especially without a lawyer present to represent the suspect and supervise the interrogation?
12. My father was waterboarded as part of his training during the Vietnam war. He's told me it was one of the worst experiences of his life. You feel as though you are going to drown. And that was just training. He knew he could quit. Those that the US was waterboarding have little hope of release, can't quit whever they want, and don't really know if they will be killed or not.
And they might not even be guilty.
I am
not defending terrorism or terrorists. If these people plotted or committed acts of terrorism or tortured people, they should spend the rest of their lives locked away or tracked down and killed if they won't surrender. Fuck'em.
But I do and did defend the US. I served four years in the Marine Corps. I swore, and potentially risked my life, to defend the Constitution against
all enemies foreign
and domestic. If US citizens torture people, using "enhanced interrogation practices" which is just a euphemism for torture, then they are enemies to the Consitution of the US. They are enemies to the American way of life and the principles upon which this country was founded. This nation does NOT compromise its principles out of fear!
It has nothing to do with hatred or contempt of the US, but rather, a love of the principles upon which this nation was founded, the very foundation upon which our way of life rests. It doesn't matter if torture saves lives. Did those men who died fighting for and protecting the US die for nothing? Did they die fighting Hitler or Saddam Hussein or Osama Bin Laden only so that the very country and freedom and human rights for which they fought would be compromised by fear of terrorism? And the evil against which they fought should become practiced in the very nation for which they died? Or did they die to ensure that torture was used on people; to ensure that everyone was innocent until proven guilty; to ensure that the US wouldn't compromise its principles out of fear?
To waterboard people makes us no better than Hitler, or the Taliban, or Saddam Hussein.
That's why I, as a liberal American and a former Marine, think that waterboarding is torture and therfore impractical, immoral, unethical, and un-American (to use a term coined by the Right).
