|
Edited on Sun Dec-28-08 07:16 PM by ingin
("Abu Ghraib ok, as long as you can contain it"), I'll excuse your attempt to compare my morality to Cheney's.
I would expect any US President to do whatever it takes to prevent a follow up attack on the scale of 9/11, including using aggressive tactics such as water-boarding or even the threat of slow death on KSM, OBL, al-Zawarhiri, or Ramsey Yousef, men whom without a doubt, planned, co-ordinated, and executed an attack that killed 3,000 Americans, after all other options are exhausted. Let me remind you that if we had had a President who did all the right things leading up to 9/11, was an honest man, had all the best intentions, and had eventually tracked down and subdued al-Qaeda, their would be little discussion or disgust about the use of these tactics against such key figures.
Nobody seemed to have a problem doing what ever it took to kill or capture the people who killed our countrymen in the days that followed 9/11. And again, under trustworthy leadership, such tactics may have unearthed traitors in our midst and eventually answer the whole LIHOP/MIHOP conspiracies.
The issues I have with Bush Co's use of torture is that they are not trustworthy enough to wield such power. This is no different from wire tapping. If I trusted my government to do the right thing, I'd have little problem with it. Of course we are nowhere near in a position to give such trust to our government, so the point is moot. Which brings me back to my point.
The techniques used against KSM should have never left the room in which they occurred. If we had caught bin Laden in Tora Bora, and contained the threat without killing 100's of thousands of Muslims in the process, there would be little residual blow back if it became known to the world that such tactics were used on 3 or 4 high ranking al-Qaeda planners and facilitators. If we could have ended the need for military actions across the world, costing the lives of nearly 5,000 American lives, and close to 1,000,000 people world wide, because we tortures KSM, or even Omar Saeed Sheikh (ISI agent who gave $100,000 to Atta), I could live with that.
The true war crime here is that Cheney, Rummy and the other Bush Co. operatives allowed this practice to become an accepted technique outside of the original mission, to catch bin Laden and end al-Qaeda. The fact that they used private contractors to commit these acts, is the crime. The fact that they then sent these contractors into Iraq to fight the insurgency is a crime. The fact that they did not see the danger of blow back from such acts is a crime. The fact that they would kidnap and torture people on mere suspicion is a crime. The fact that they did all this in my name is a crime.
So don't get it fucked up, the torture of KSM and the wide spread abuses that followed are two entirely different things. To conflate the two show a fundamental misunderstanding of why we are losing this fight, and portrays a similar good v. evil mentality that plagues the Bush foreign policy operation.
If you can honestly tell me that had the torture of KSM led to hard evidence that Bush administration officials had financed, facilitated, or participated in the 9/11 attacks, you would still condemn the torture of top al-Qaeda figures, then I might accept your moral authority.
Until then, let me leave you with a thought. Blind opposition is not just the perview of those you oppose. And such conflicts rarely ever produces a victor.
|
Printer-friendly format
Email this thread to a friend
Bookmark this thread
(1000+ posts)
Send PM |
Profile |
Ignore
