For Americans- Is Torture acceptable?

welsh

welsh

Junkmaster
Here's an op ed from the NY TImes- It's worth questioning the main question-

It's Called Torture
By BOB HERBERT

Published: February 28, 2005


s a nation, does the United States have a conscience? Or is anything and everything O.K. in post-9/11 America? If torture and the denial of due process are O.K., why not murder? When the government can just make people vanish - which it can, and which it does - where is the line that we, as a nation, dare not cross?
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THere in lies the question. Did 9/11 mean that the values we cherish become optional? THat notions of due process no longer need apply?

More of the article- illustrative case-.
When I interviewed Maher Arar in Ottawa last week, it seemed clear that however thoughtful his comments, I was talking with the frightened, shaky successor of a once robust and fully functioning human being. Torture does that to a person. It's an unspeakable crime, an affront to one's humanity that can rob you of a portion of your being as surely as acid can destroy your flesh.

Mr. Arar, a Canadian citizen with a wife and two young children, had his life flipped upside down in the fall of 2002 when John Ashcroft's Justice Department, acting at least in part on bad information supplied by the Canadian government, decided it would be a good idea to abduct Mr. Arar and ship him off to Syria, an outlaw nation that the Justice Department honchos well knew was addicted to torture.

Mr. Arar was not charged with anything, and yet he was deprived not only of his liberty, but of all legal and human rights. He was handed over in shackles to the Syrian government and, to no one's surprise, promptly brutalized. A year later he emerged, and still no charges were lodged against him. His torturers said they were unable to elicit any link between Mr. Arar and terrorism. He was sent back to Canada to face the torment of a life in ruins.
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More questions worth considering?

Mr. Arar's is the case we know about. How many other individuals have disappeared at the hands of the Bush administration? How many have been sent, like the victims of a lynch mob, to overseas torture centers? How many people are being held in the C.I.A.'s highly secret offshore prisons? Who are they and how are they being treated? Have any been wrongly accused? If so, what recourse do they have?[/quote]

In a democracy, aren't these questions important to us?

Should we allow secret prisons? Make people disappear? Punish those wrongly accused?

President Bush spent much of last week lecturing other nations about freedom, democracy and the rule of law. It was a breathtaking display of chutzpah. He seemed to me like a judge who starves his children and then sits on the bench to hear child abuse cases. In Brussels Mr. Bush said he planned to remind Russian President Vladimir Putin that democracies are based on, among other things, "the rule of law and the respect for human rights and human dignity."
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How much should one believe a preacher who doesn't practice what he preaches?

Someone should tell that to Maher Arar and his family.

Mr. Arar was the victim of an American policy that is known as extraordinary rendition. That's a euphemism. What it means is that the United States seizes individuals, presumably terror suspects, and sends them off without even a nod in the direction of due process to countries known to practice torture.

A Massachusetts congressman, Edward Markey, has taken the eminently sensible step of introducing legislation that would ban this utterly reprehensible practice. In a speech on the floor of the House, Mr. Markey, a Democrat, said: "Torture is morally repugnant whether we do it or whether we ask another country to do it for us. It is morally wrong whether it is captured on film or whether it goes on behind closed doors unannounced to the American people."

Unfortunately, the outlook for this legislation is not good. I asked Pete Jeffries, the communications director for House Speaker Dennis Hastert, if the speaker supported Mr. Markey's bill. After checking with the policy experts in his office, Mr. Jeffries called back and said: "The speaker does not support the Markey proposal. He believes that suspected terrorists should be sent back to their home countries."

Surprised, I asked why suspected terrorists should be sent anywhere. Why shouldn't they be held by the United States and prosecuted?

"Because," said Mr. Jeffries, "U.S. taxpayers should not necessarily be on the hook for their judicial and incarceration costs."

It was, perhaps, the most preposterous response to any question I've ever asked as a journalist. It was not by any means an accurate reflection of Bush administration policy. All it indicated was that the speaker's office does not understand this issue, and has not even bothered to take it seriously.

More important, it means that torture by proxy, close kin to contract murder, remains all right. Congressman Markey's bill is going nowhere. Extraordinary rendition lives.
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NY TIMES OP-ED

I'd like to hear from the Americans here mostly, but Europeans feel free to chime in.

The nature of a person is not the sum of the past, but in their actions and the future they make for themselves. Is this what we, Americans, want for ourselves, for our future?
 
The world has changed. The West has always accused our Stalin. Now we have reasons to accuse your Bush. Ask yourselves: is America still democratic? Or there have appeared the first feeble springs of demonocracy? And who is in charge?
 
I have said in the past something along the lines of "torture the shit outta them" but i know that there are lines that shouldn't be crossed and we are crossing every one of them....... this wouldn't be the first time the US has abused innocent people to try and find the "terrorists" or at one time "communists"....... rights and values have always been under attack by various groups and political movements and it would seem that in the aftermath of 9/11 values have been cast aside, but i think that we have always used simular methods but the media is now on the lookout for freedoms abuse/terror/ and Bushes mistakes. With the media watch dogs out events in foreign policy that before 9/11 would go almost unnoted are front page news.
 
As long as they don't have to see it, torture or anything else will not upset most people. Keep it behind closed doors and utter some soothing words and you can get away with it.
 
As a religous person, don't go off topic on that, I am firmly against torture. I don't care what half baked excuses neocons come up with to justify it, its just wrong. If something is immoral... it is immoral! Straight from the Heart of it All (state marketing campaign)!
 
You say whats moral is moral.....to you and from your point of view. I often think the same though, i have a hard time understanding people perceptions of morality. I believe in absolute morals my self but have found that if i am to even begin to get along with others who dont share my views i have to the majority of times keep my beliefs to myself.


Torture is "immoral" but as i have said before if it wasn't for 9/11 and the frenzy like news coverage of everything, people wouldnt even care. Its been happening under simular circumstances for a LONG time now.
 
Yeah, a lot of morality can be subjective. However, cultures totally independent from each other often arive at very similar ideas about morality. For example, Confuscious is credited with an older Golden Rule, that is "Do unto others as you will have done unto you." I think torture is one of those things that can universally be looked upon a immoral by a good portion of the world's population.
 
IMHO, torture is never 'right' in the moral sense, because it violates previously mentioned human rights and 'dignity', whatever that may be. Most cultures will at least agree that painless death is better than torture, or at least more honorable.

btw, I heard that Rumsfeld offered twice to resign after these torture allegations, but Bush wouldn't have it...
 
I don't know about this. As a country, I grew up believing in the notions of democratic values, equality, fairness and justice. That people should have an equal chance to do well and prosper. That the state is restrained from torture, abductions, and that this is a country of due process.

That has often been challenged in the past, but that seems to be the moral basis of the country. I hope these are things that most Americans would say the country and the people are about, and perhaps it part of the nationalism that holds the country together.

This has international significance as well- can we tell the Russians to be more democratic if we abduct people or make people disappear without due process? Can we tell China not to invade Taiwan when we utilize a theory of preemption for national security?
 
First off Welsh, the USA would never tell China to invade Taiwan as they are paying the USA a great sum of money for good ol' Uncle Sam's protection from China. Hence the large spikes that stick out of the island toward China the 5 guns to every person there and the ghastly amount of weapon stockpiles there.

Torture? Morals... I don't believe in it... But what can you do? There is no way to stop it. The people are not the driving power of ANY government. It is the commerce that influences the government. It is the secret societies such as the Illuminati and Free Masons. Not people like us. Behind closed doors who are we to say or even find out what happens?

The only solution here is much similar to the resolution of racial injustice. Over generation after generation of changing the society’s standards little by little can something as torture or racism be looked on as unacceptable period.

It may seem grim for everyone today. But it is tomorrow you must strive for. For today the plans must be developed tomorrow they must be executed.
 
greatatlantic said:
Yeah, a lot of morality can be subjective.
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As a slight aside from this topic, but perhaps a useful one to some members, i have a comment.

Morality, in it's entirety, is subjective. Not just some of it. Every single bit.

Do you really think that you share some common ground with such as Dahmer, Stalin, Nero and Mugabe? There is always some topic or stance that is debatable.
 
Fuck no - err, i mean tha's what you want to convince us, right? WTF with using NMA as your propaganda mediaspace, Welsh?
 
Yes... Welsh is obviously the devil for bringing on topics that make us think in the general discussion forum...
 
Maphusio said:
First off Welsh, the USA would never tell China to invade Taiwan as they are paying the USA a great sum of money for good ol' Uncle Sam's protection from China. Hence the large spikes that stick out of the island toward China the 5 guns to every person there and the ghastly amount of weapon stockpiles there.
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No, your missing the post. For the past few years the Chinese have been increasing their official military budget (the unofficial budget is higher) and have been spending it in a way that suggests they are thinking of intervening in Taiwan before the Taiwanese declare themselves independence.

Should Taiwan do that, based on past experience, the US will park two nuclear armed aircraft carriers offshore, making US strategic assets a target. This would be a trip-wire deterrent so that if the Chinese decide to hit the two aircraft carriers it means full-scale war, and if so, adios muchachos.

The problem with a theory of preemption is that if we are allowed to launch a preemptive war based on our notions of national security, why shouldn’t the Chinese? For China an independent Taiwan would essentially mean a secession of part of their sovereign territory (regardless of they have been able to govern there). That would be a threat to their national security.

So why shouldn’t China get to invade Taiwan and the US get to invade Iraq?

In the old days we could say, ‘ no right of preemption for national security.’ But Bush has killed that doctrine.

Torture? Morals... I don't believe in it... But what can you do? There is no way to stop it. The people are not the driving power of ANY government. It is the commerce that influences the government. It is the secret societies such as the Illuminati and Free Masons. Not people like us. Behind closed doors who are we to say or even find out what happens?
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I don’t buy into the secret societies, conspiracy theory stuff. I think Ratty does. But the Free Masons drink to much, and any one can get into the Council of Foreign Relations with a little effort.

I would accept the argument that more powerful social interests do have a greater hand to play in the decisions of politics.

But then you have international conventions which say that “torture is an international crime.” And then you have a state that is willing to do it for politically expedient reasons.

Admittedly torture is stupid- how can you trust the information you get from someone who just wants to stop being tortured? Does the state have more of a right to inflict cruel punishments than do individual? What about that whole
No cruel and unusual punishment’ stuff that it’s the constitution. It’s not just the death penalty. That’s why the “tar and feather” punishment doesn’t hold up.


The only solution here is much similar to the resolution of racial injustice. Over generation after generation of changing the society’s standards little by little can something as torture or racism be looked on as unacceptable period.

It may seem grim for everyone today. But it is tomorrow you must strive for. For today the plans must be developed tomorrow they must be executed.
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Except we thought we did reach that point where “Right to be free of torture” or “right to due process” were standard practices.

I mean, ok, if we were Syria or Russia, where those notions may still be rudimentary or not established, that would be one thing. But isn’t the values of a country part of what defines a national identity?

Big T said:
greatatlantic said:
Yeah, a lot of morality can be subjective.
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As a slight aside from this topic, but perhaps a useful one to some members, i have a comment.

Morality, in it's entirety, is subjective. Not just some of it. Every single bit.

Do you really think that you share some common ground with such as Dahmer, Stalin, Nero and Mugabe? There is always some topic or stance that is debatable.
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Fair enough- but moral choices at the individual level might be debated. But if moral choices are what shape law, then the law should be upheld as it’s own value- shouldn’t it.

Isn’t it important that what rights are established in law are upheld by the state?

APTYP said:
Fuck no - err, i mean tha's what you want to convince us, right? WTF with using NMA as your propaganda mediaspace, Welsh?
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Typical incomprehensible ramblings of moron. APTYP –you're still just an immature whining troll bitch.

Go elsewhere or back under the rock you crawled out of.

Maphusio said:
Yes... Welsh is obviously the devil for bringing on topics that make us think in the general discussion forum...
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There are worst things than being a devil these days.
 
I don't know why anyone would be surprised that the government would use torture. There are secret laws, agencies, assassinations (outside US borders), kidnapping squads for wanted men abroad, support of various regimes over the years and around the world by the back door, even when they go against almost everything the US constitution stands for. The US that everyone thought they knew and loved was a pipe dream. This is just confirmation of how real governments and politics works. You can only expect more dirt as you dig
 
Ahh Welsh I was not aware of the elevated bull shit in Tiwan. I don't think the US would be so bold as to place long rage frogs there though. Then again... the US seems to thrive on stupidity. One would assume they learned from the Russians mistake in Cuba.

That brings me to Fez's point... "This is just confirmation of how real governments and politics work." Unfortunately with the death of the majority of the Kennedy family this is the outcome of the USA. From Jack and Bobby's deaths on the USA has been building on a false foundation of lies corruption and deciept. It is like a tangled web of morning glory (nasty ivy) It wil take so so much to sort through it all and get the ground clear again. I hope in my lifetime I can help with the restoration of this country.
 
Sorry pal the Kennedys were just as bad as any other political family. They just looked good. They probably were a lot worse.
These arguments on the morality of torture, imprisonment, the loss of our individual liberties make me laugh.

Still, after all the problems the US has suffered, the humiiations, the attacks, the name calling...you ask that poor bastard trying to escape religious persecution, political oppression, economic depression, the very evils of the world, where he wants to be. America.

Its always shame on you America for doing that, shame on you for this, but like the police you called names on the street today, when someone breaks into your home in the middle of the night to do you harm, who you gonna call?
Someday World 9-1-1 is going to be a busy signal...What are you going to do then?

I dont believe in my country right or wrong, I believe in right vs. wrong. Sometimes the two are hard to tell. But I believe in the long run we manage to get it right more often than not. Thats better than a lot of other countries have managed so far in this world.
 
criticism of the police state is not criticism of the police.

the usa is not the sole nation in this world responsible for violence.

what makes terrorism bad? do you eat meat? drink milk? you torture animals. something that is not you is okay to torture. youve just shifted the bounds a little bit.

realism is bad.

terrorism is not a country, nor an army.

conspiracy theories are less radical than you think. take that as you will.

what does posting do about any of this?
 
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