Originally Posted By DVC_Pongo >>>Hello. That doesn't mean we get to treat prisoners any way we'd like.<<< We as in we who? I didn't do anything.
Originally Posted By DAR <<But then, that's me. I am in favor of turning the country into a giant female reproductive organ apparently. Better to just talk tough, that'll prove something.>> No it comes down to, we don't want to offend people even the bad guys. Well guess what the bad guys need to be offended. They need to get their asses kicked. That is the only way you win a war. It's how we've won every war.
Originally Posted By Dabob2 >>So we're going to take the word of certain people whose credibility and trustworthiness might be a little sketchy?<< <But enough about Dick Cheney...> LOL! Perfect. <<<But then, that's me. I am in favor of turning the country into a giant female reproductive organ apparently. Better to just talk tough, that'll prove something.>> No it comes down to, we don't want to offend people even the bad guys.> It's got nothing to do with that. We keep saying this, but you keep avoiding it. It's not about them. It's about US. We captured Nazis, who were not only as evil as Al Qaeda, they were a great deal more powerful. Nearly took over all of Europe. But we didn't torture them, because that's not who WE are. (Pssssst... we won the war anyway.) And after it was over we gave them trials with rights of due process, rather than stick them in some black site prison outside of any sphere of law. Because that's who we are.
Originally Posted By DVC_Pongo I was watching videos on YouTube yesterday while waiting on my son to get out of school. I happened to come across a documentary of some kind, interviewing a man who is one of the last living people that SAW from the ground, the Atomic Bomb blast at Hiroshima. The thing went on and on about the immediate and long term effects of these bombs. Somehow thinking about that really made me ponder a few things. Very very very bad, and yet we treat the people that made the decision to kill a bazillion people out to be heroes. Just saying that at what point do you compare apples to apples on this sort of thing. What did the citizens that were completely innocent do to this "us" of which you speak? Nothing. It was war.
Originally Posted By Kar2oonMan >>No it comes down to, we don't want to offend people even the bad guys. << It has nothing to do with that.
Originally Posted By DAR There was this talk that the President is going to improve our standing with the world because it matters what the rest of the world think of us. That is secondary it always should be secondary. The President no matter who he or she may be should think of this country first and if it goads other countries even our allies then tough.
Originally Posted By Kar2oonMan It isn't about offending the bad guys or not. That's just chest thumping to sound tough. It's about whether we are going to throw aside our laws and code of conduct any time there are suspected bad guys. If we are, then those principles are rather hollow things.
Originally Posted By Kar2oonMan The President no matter who he or she may be should think of this country first and if it goads other countries even our allies then tough.<< That's what you fail to understand. They're both connected -- it is in our country's best interest not to have a "screw what YOU think" attitude. It makes a huge difference in building the number of allies we have, and gets a lot more respect. That's truly putting "country first."
Originally Posted By Kar2oonMan >>What if they're confirmed bad guys what we do then?<< That confirmation is determined by a trial or by a military tribunal, and they should be punished with whatever the law prescribes.
Originally Posted By piperlynne "Should any American soldier be so base and infamous as to injure any [prisoner]. . . I do most earnestly enjoin you to bring him to such severe and exemplary punishment as the enormity of the crime may require. Should it extend to death itself, it will not be disproportional to its guilt at such a time and in such a cause... for by such conduct they bring shame, disgrace and ruin to themselves and their country." -- George Washington, charge to the Northern Expeditionary Force, Sept. 14, 1775
Originally Posted By RoadTrip <<The President no matter who he or she may be should think of this country first and if it goads other countries even our allies then tough.>> We need our allies. We just ain't all that on our own. Sure, we can blow up the world 17 times with our nukes. But that capability doesn't help us very much most of the time. We need boots on the ground. And although we have one of the finest military forces in the world, we do not have an endless supply of soldiers. That has become very obvious with all of the stop-loss programs and multiple deployments that have been necessary in Iraq. It sure would have been a lot nicer to have our current war in Iraq be more like the first one. Then we had over a QUARTER MILLION troops from allied countries join us in the fight. Compare that to the 47,000 we had join us at the height of coalition participation in the current Iraq war (of which fewer than 5,000 remain today). We need our allies. No country on its own would probably have been able to defeat Germany and Japan in WWII. But by putting together a strong alliance we were able to accomplish what we never could have accomplished alone. WE NEED ALLIES. The lone cowboy thing just doesn't work.
Originally Posted By DVC_Pongo >>> No country on its own would probably have been able to defeat Germany and Japan in WWII. <<< Hummm, I need to study on this a bit.
Originally Posted By RoadTrip ^^^ We probably could have won alone after we got the nukes. But without our allies, I don't know that we could have survived to that point. We weren't a huge military power at the start of WWII.
Originally Posted By ecdc >>Well we need to win.<< But it hasn't been demonstrated that we can't win without doing this. It further hasn't been demonstrated that torturing will help us win faster. At best we've seen very mixed results. What's more troubling is that there's Americans who think that because some of us are opposed to torture, that somehow means we want to cozy up to terrorists or care about their feelings. It's a sad inability to understand that we can all want what's best for the country and still disagree. Unfortunately, it permeates politics more and more.
