Comments Posted By michael reynolds
Displaying 461 To 470 Of 839 Comments
I'm sure Lou Dobbs will handle this with great discretion. I'm guessing his bumper graphic will be, "Mexapocalypse Now!"
Comment Posted By michael reynolds On 26.04.2009 @ 12:33
WATERBOARDING: THE S.E.R.E. STRAWMAN
Don C:
Oooookay. Your vastly superior intellect has utterly shattered me.
I'm going to go find a sane person to talk to know. Bye.
Comment Posted By michael reynolds On 25.04.2009 @ 23:37
Don C:
I stayed out of the army because my father -- chief warrant officer, 20 year man, 2 bronze stars, 2 combat tours in Vietnam -- said I should stay the hell away from Vietnam.
Now, why can't you answer my question since I answered yours?
Are John McCain, the FBI and the US Army all examples of wimpy liberals? Because they all agree with me on this issue.
Comment Posted By michael reynolds On 25.04.2009 @ 22:12
Don C:
Interesting how you ignore the other part of what I said. I'll repeat it since you seem to be suffering some mental impairment:
Opposed to torture: John McCain, the FBI and the US Army.
Are they all liberals too?
Comment Posted By michael reynolds On 25.04.2009 @ 21:35
CDOR:
Michael, I have nothing more to say to you.
You've had nothing to say yet, aside from doing a sort of print impression of Jack Nicholson in A Few Good Men.
But if you do decide to talk to me do you think you could do something from earlier Nicholson? Maybe Five Easy Pieces or Cuckoo's Nest? I enjoy a good impression.
Comment Posted By michael reynolds On 25.04.2009 @ 18:55
I say be very thankful that there are tough men working in the dark of night willing to forgoe the niceties of the comfortable homes from which we type these words.
Opposed to torture: John McCain, the FBI and the US Army.
For torture: draft dodger Dick Cheney and loudmouths like you.
Yeah, it's all about manliness.
Comment Posted By michael reynolds On 25.04.2009 @ 16:59
One other thing: this is not liberal vs. conservative. It seems to have escaped the notice of many conservatives here that Obama is against prosecution. And it seems to have escaped the attention of some liberals here that our host is a conservative.
There is nothing "conservative" about throwing out our own history, Judeo-Christian morality and the law. Support for a government that can operate without regard to law or treaty or commonly-accepted bounds of morality is not conservative, it is radical and statist. It is authoritarian, the antithesis of genuine conservatism.
Comment Posted By michael reynolds On 25.04.2009 @ 15:25
Gregg:
Why is it torture when our enemies do it to our POWs and not torture when we do it?
By your logic John McCain was not tortured.
Comment Posted By michael reynolds On 25.04.2009 @ 15:20
#6:
http://andrewsullivan.theatlantic.com/the_daily_dish/2009/04/when-america-executed-waterboarders-for-war-crimes.html
http://andrewsullivan.theatlantic.com/the_daily_dish/2009/04/reagan-on-torture-prosecutions.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Waterboarding (see re: US court martial of US soldier.)
Comment Posted By michael reynolds On 25.04.2009 @ 14:06
#4:
We have always maintained that in law and in morality there is a difference between acts taken in battle and those involving prisoners. It's the difference between shooting a burglar as he's breaking in, and shooting him while he's locked up in jail.
We haven't just maintained this difference, we've enforced it. We've court-martialled American soldiers specifically for waterboarding. And we've executed Japanese soldiers for doing it to our people.
You'll note that we did not prosecute Japanese soldiers/sailors for bombing Pearl Harbor. We tried them and punished them for torture of US POWs.
Moral standards are not usually terribly logical. We draw lines and forbid one thing and not another. But if you are going to take the position that all moral standards must also be logical and consistent, you are opening up a very big can of worms.
In the case of torture, however, there is logic as well as morality:
1) We want enemy fighters to surrender rather than fight to the death. When they surrender, our men don't die killing them. If it is widely known that we torture or kill surrendering enemy they are far less likely to surrender. See: Germany, 1945.
The Germans fell all over themselves trying to surrender to us rather than to the Red Army. Because we were known to be humane. This yielded an incredible bounty to us.
2) We want to be able to condemn those who torture our men. This war is not going to be our last. We will face other enemies -- enemies that may not be as oblivious to international norms as the Jihadists are. We will want to be able to insist, with a straight face, that they treat our POWs humanely.
3) Our propaganda has often relied on pillorying those who practice torture. We condemned it in North Korea and North Vietnam, for example. We drew the line in the sand. Now we have to take all that back and admit that we do exactly what we decried in others. Accepting torture now requires a wholesale rewrite of American history. A rewrite that will not exactly improve our moral standing.
4) Torture alienates our friends and comforts our foes. Granted most of our allies are useless, nevertheless, we have had notable contributions from the Brits, the Dutch, the Australians and others, all of whom will find it harder to help us in the future because of this.
5) Finally: it doesn't work. As the guys who run SERE have now stated. As the FBI has stated. As the US Army has stated. As even the Luftwaffe evidently learned. Countries that torture have one thing in common: they tend, more often than not, to be the losers. The nations that are now the real powers in this world, the rich, successful nations, all reject torture. It's the North Koreans, the Saudis, the Egyptians, the Congolese, the Cubans who sanction torture.
Comment Posted By michael reynolds On 25.04.2009 @ 13:32
