The Torture ‘Debate’

Posted on 05/12/2009 at 10:34 am by Bob Cesca

Digby on the cable news treatment of “the torture debate”:

We are in big trouble when torture becomes just another political football. It’s the kind of thing that turns powerful empires into pariah nations. Why anyone thinks it’s good for America for the world to perceive us as violent, pants wetting, panic artists who could start WWIII at the least sign of threat is beyond me. I certainly don’t feel safer.

Somehow a moral and legal absolute has been reshaped into something debatable.

All of the rationalizations by the Cheney torture people remind me of the pro-slavery fire eaters who argued that “slavery helps the economy!” and we need to maintain slavery or else we’re all doomed! It shouldn’t have mattered, though. Slavery was wrong, irrespective of the so-called economic upside. Torture is wrong, irrespective of the so-called “national security” upside.

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  • GM Diehl

    Yes, and since so many of those that advocate torture are about as deep as a rain puddle, they don’t realize that in the same breath they are authorizing our enemies to torture OUR TROOPS.After all, what if our troops might know something that could save thousands of their own citizens?The U.S. Does it. It’s all good with us.I’m sure someone will argue that our enemies would torture our troops anyway, and that’s often true, but now we have no argument to use against them to the rest of the world. We are as guilty as they are.

  • CitizenJ

    You can count the number of foreign attacks on American soil on one hand (and one of those was ON CHENEY’S WATCH!!!). So doesn’t that mean that the other 43 presidents in our history kept us pretty damn safe? Without torture.

  • http://www.xkcd.com/ ∇•B=0  Silly Ratfaced Git  ∇•D=ρ

    Torture is a criminal act under our laws, international laws, and under treaty obligations.Torture is a criminal act. Period. People that that approve using torture are war criminals.These are irrefutable facts. Everything else is rationalization of criminal acts.War Criminal Cheney belongs in a court room answering criminal charges. There is no excuse, ever, for criminal acts.There is no argument, there is nothing to debate. Arrest these war criminals now.

  • KenCo

    I believe in the concept of America. I think we are more special than any other democratic experiment in history – - and we need to protect and cherish this.Some people think we need to protect ourselves by torturing those who may do us harm. But this debases our country, and then we’re not that special anymore. Sounds like a Catch 22 – - in their piss-pants minds, anyway.America needs to stay on the high road. Shep Smith and Gandhi would both agree. In the long run, this will contintue to make us a great nation.

  • http://tarackian.deviantart.com J M Ashby

    I agree with Digby, and its no wonder that anyone who has the power to challenge the US is doing so by making provocative moves or arming themselves. We have a defense budget that rivals a dozen other countries combined and we are currently occupying two other countries while bombing a third. And ontop of all that, up until Obama took office we had a leadership that was constantly shitting their pants in fear. Why wouldnt they be posturing themselves to defend against us?

  • http://peggystone263@msn.com peggygeorge

    One thing among many that I don’t get is how so-called Christians can be for torture when 1) Jesus said to turn the other cheek, 2) Jesus was tortured (which causes them much suffering to contemplate) while refusing to fight back in any way (and even healed the ear of a Roman soldier that one of his disciples had cut off), and 3) Jesus said not to fear what people can do to your body (which would surely include WMD) but to worry about your soul because your reward is in heaven. He didn’t say that if you are really afraid, it’s okay to throw out everything he preached. He didn’t say that if you are worried about your lives and possessions (however rationally or irrationally), you should make sure you have plenty of guns and ammo to protect yourself. He lived in a violent world, in an occupied country, filled with torture that ordinary citizens had to pass by on the road – it’s not like he didn’t get it compared to his “followers” in contemporary America. I just wish more people were challenged when they justify torture with one breath and say they are Christians in the next.