First, Chuck, fix your quotes.
Originally posted by: chucky2
Originally posted by: Craig234
I notice how Chucky 'defends' torture by saying it's not just for fun, but to get info. Oh, that's ok then! It's that CIA torture just for fun we need to ban.
First, I never said torture is "just for fun". Ever. Either go back and re-read what I said or stop putting words in my mouth.
Your whole last sentence here is you making an inference to something I never said. Nice job at distortion, unfortunately it didn't work.
You are confused and don't realize what you are saying. This is typical of the confusion of righties who think they are the moral ones as they are the evildoers.
You defended the use of torture by saying it works and that we therefore get information.
Now, let me help you at what you did not say but implied, and don't realize you implied; what's the alternative to what you said? That we torture, but it doesn't work, we get no information; in other words, that there is no reason at all to do it; in other words, it's 'just for fun', as another way of saying for no reason. So my statement was accurate, that your defense is that rather than our torturing being for no reason, it's 'justified' because 'it works' to get information.
That's the generous answer; the post from you could be interpreted as lacking the basic reading skills to notice I summarized your position as "saying [torture is] not just for fun", to which you devastatingly disproved my post by responding, "I never said torture is just for fun". Oh, wait, that's exactly the same thing I said.
The assumption throughout your post is that torture is peachy keen if you are doing it because you want information.
Others of us differ with you on the morality of that view.
And oh, by the way, since I object on moral grounds, I did not bother to point out that experts broadly say torture does NOT work, for the most part.
It's interesting how similar the rationalizers of violence on 'our side' and on 'their side' can be. You would fit in well with the terrorists as one who argues with anyone raising doubts about their use of violence. You could be the enforcer who explains that the only thing the US understand is violence, and how if not for the terrorism, the US would be far more intrusive in the Middle East.
The difference is we torture as a last measure on high value targets only (unless a mistake is made or we have people going rogue), whereas the terrorists just kill whoever they want, when they want, however they want. I love how you lump us in with them, thereby inferring we're equal when in fact, we are lightyears ahead of the other side in humane treatment of prisoners.
My comparison was in the way you think about things and view the issues in terms of demonizing your enemy, of rationalizing violence, not the specific actions.
Show me the man who intends to rob and kill a man but is prevented, the man who robs and kills a man, and the man who robs and kills 100 men, and I'll show you three men who are pretty similarly problematic in their thinking, whatever their actions. And you don't really want to get into actions anyway; for example, the US killed millions of Vietnamese for no good reason, often with methods far more horrific than beheading, e.g., Agent Orange; Middle Easterners today have done nothing of the sort. Closer to home, the US chose economic sanction policies which killed hundreds of thousands of Iraqi civilians, mostly women and children; this outdoes the acts you refer to. But as an apologist - you are projecting in using the word - you don't see the US wrongs. How convenient for the math.
Regardless, you also neglect to look at the context of WHY each side is doing what it's doing; how were the middle easterners provoked? Who interfered in whose region first? Who installed dictators over nations? Who is in whose territory now? How many Middle Easterners have Americans killed compared to how many Americans Middle Easterners have killed? Are they taking our natural resources, or are we taking theirs?
So, again, my point was that you are guilty of the same views that serve the terrorists well when people on their side question the violence - the rationalization of violence.
It's not about the specific acts that result, but again, you don't have a point there anyway.
Yes, at the core there are some bad forces there, who are a threat; and there are murderers and rapists and other bad forces in our own cities, for that matter. But you make the problem a lot worse, and commit a lot of unnecessary wrongs yourself because of your wrong views. We should be able to deal with the legitimate threat a lot better than you would have.
That the US sucks up violence, insults, and ill will to our civilian population, and it takes events like Libya's shot down airliner and 9/11 to actually provoke a more than words response from us is telling. Again though, you infer we're the same as the other side because we're finally driven to do so.
The US isn't 'finally driven' to do much of anything, going back to the days of our sending Commodore Perry into Tokyo Harbor to tell the Japanese who just wanted to be left alone, open up or we'll kill you; since we started a war with Mexico and took half their land; since we committed genocide on Native Americans to take their land for our own use; since the Monroe Doctrine, and so on. No, we rarely are 'driven' to do much (an exception being Hitler).
You know who is driven to do something? One example is Iran, who actually did have their government put in place as a dictatorship for decades (by us), immediately followed by their being invaded (by our encouraging and eventually assisting Saddam) in a war with a milllion casualties, as Iranian schools were attack by gas weapons. And yet, *we're* blameless with Iran, only they are in the 'Axis of Evil' and a threat to us. Yes, their government has serious problems, but your ideology is, for lack of a better word, insane.
What an apologist you are Craig...if you're white do you also feel responsibility to apologize to blacks because of slavery? I think the answer will be Yes from you...
isgust;
Your projecting aside, I do not feel responsibility to apologize to blacks for slavery. I do feel responsibility, as a human being, to recognize the history of wrongdoing; and that includes the wrongs that still exist today that are effects from the century of racism following slavery and the slavery for 200+ years before that, and to be interested in justice for the wrongs blacks experience today as a result of those historic wrongs.
When one group is denied money and education for decades and centuries, they are not any more ready for a 'color blind' race than a trained runner who has spent years preparing against someone who has been prevented from running for years before and is suddenly put on the track. I recognize that I benefit from my (white) race having had advantages from the immoral policies of racism in the past.
And I see the need to oppose that sort of injustice in the future, as I think everyone here does.
It's interesting that you show no concern about the wrongs but as a way to attack someone for showing such concern.
You need to develop your moral understanding of war, IMO. I can suggest some reading for you, for example a book by a war reporter from many wars who you would probably also claim doesn't understand war like you do, but won't waste the typing. You can pleasantly surprise me by asking for the title - I'd buy you a copy if you wanted.
Nice elitist approach there....unless you're the reporter in question, or the reporter covered the ME, I don't care much what his/her views are. Ground war against a clear direct uniformed enemy that only occurs in other countries is a far cry different from combatants dressed and indistinguishable as civilians except for the acts they were caught committing. That some of these same high value combatants have a high degree of likelihood to possess information that will lead to the prevention of civilians being harmed just makes your argument even less realistic and more myopic...
Chuck[/quote]
Reading a book fits your definition of elitist, hm? I see.
War and human nature are broader than one specific region; your disinterest in any such inf o not specific to the Middle East is your problem, not mine.
You are so blindly following the road of war where you fail to have any grasp of the issues and demonize your enemy and care only about the 'effective methods' for committing violence that it's tragic, but not uncommon. There are many expressions for your immoral and amoral views, such as 'might makes right', but they are wasted on you, as lectures on the dangers of alcohol are on an alcoholic.
Whether it's you and the 'terrorists', or the US and Vietnam, or Russia and Chechnya, or Indonesia and East Timor, or the Taliban and the 'infidels', or countless other similar situations, it's largely the same fallacies leading to the rationalization of violence, where you justify the wrongs you do. I don't think we're going to communicate much on this, you are to ideologically drunk, IMO. It's like trying to convince the Germans of their errors in 1942, they were not ready to hear it. One day, you may see it differently.