torture as a macho American virtue

[fpb]

If the Republicans wanted to win at the coming elections - and, perhaps even more important, not to confirm every commonplace of anti-American propaganda throughout the world - they should have sent Cheney (and perhaps Rumsfeld) on a diplomatic mission to Antarctica for the last couple of months. His outburst about pretend drowning being a

Comments

[patchworkmind]

Yes. My sentiments exactly. Exactly. I say so, and that's why it's getting a little harder for me to live hereabouts, on this continent. It's the seige mentality, the party jerseys, the Us v. Them thing that makes me cringe. It's the power-at-any-price crowd. It's all so transparent if people ever bother to think. The problem is... most don't, and they don't because they don't want to.

The state of things in the U.S., particularly its so-called government, saddens and sickens me no end.

[rfachir]

I wonder if this is how it felt during the Cold War, or how the Germans felt in the bad old days?

[asakiyume]

I'm reading Hannah Arendt's Eichmann in Jerusalem to try to get some sense of that... what makes people behave the way they do... how do people live with the horrible acts they permit/condone/participate in...

[patchworkmind]

It might be, but the real test is in how one reacts, what one does with one's impulses. Does one choose violence or aggression, or does one choose to do something else? Does on sink to a lower level in hopes of "getting even"?

[super_pan]

"The West is held to a higher standard of behaviour than the stateless gangs of murderous thugs who hate it; and rightly so, for these are the standards we chose for ourselves. "

You're right; we are supposed to be better than this.

We have the most amazing capacity for double think. We simultaneously decide it's ok for us to torture our "enemies", but still think we are the most moral and righteous country on this earth. It drives me crazy. And we can also boil it down to the simple premise that we should treat other humans the way we want our precious soldiers to be treated. I hate the idea of an American being treated the way we treated prisoners.

[fpb]

Let us not delude ourselves. Our enemies are monsters and will not treat any prisoners in any way but monstrously. In the days of the Empire, there was a commonplace that a British soldier left wounded and alone in Afghanistan should use his last bullet for himself - it would be better than what awaited him at the hands of the natives. The point is simply the same old, old, old one: what kind of victory do we achieve over our enemies, if, in fighting them, we become like them

[bufo_viridis]

The number of court martials, executions and penal battalions was proportionately higher in the Wehrmacht than in the Red Army - an army built on terror.

I'd rather think it was because Red Army usually did not bother with tedious paperwork of court martials etc., nor it registered all the instances of officers shooting beligerent subordinates ;)

[fpb]

Maybe, but the proportion was huge - something like two to one per number of men enlisted, if I remember Richard Overy's data correctly. I think that the correspondence between the criminalization of warfare and the collapse of troop morale is something that can be found in many places - it is, for instance, the only thing that explains the triumph in 1994 of the smaller, disciplined Tutsi force in Rwanda against the larger Hutu army, backed by the government and by France, but made drunk and disorderly by repeated massacres of civilians.

[asakiyume]

fpb, I am so glad to read this from you. It has made me truly despair to see reasonable people trying to justify torture. As you say in your comment to halfguk, if, to defeat your enemy, you become your enemy, what kind of victory have you achieved?

And I agree with you that it's ridiculous the way the Democrats have exploited the Foley affair. It really is "a plague upon both your houses"--it makes a person wonder how to be principled in the political arena. Does one have to turn one's back on it altogether? I've always voted, but it does get so depressing sometimes.

[becomethesea]

*applauds*

[johncwright]

Well said.

... as always.