President Obama gave a town hall meeting today in Strasborg, France today. During the course of the Q and A , he took a question regarding terrorism. In his answer , he gave the most concise and compelling argument against torture (and...huh...without a teleprompter thus blowing the latest in a series of lame and borderline bizarre criticisms of our president).He said
Our security and our values are not in contradiction.
This sums up exactly how I feel about the use of torture in our conflict against extremism. It doesn't work. We can maintain the values that we have as a nation when it comes to the dignity of human life and still protect our country. My grandfather proved it in World War II when, rather than treating human beings as animals as the Japanese did, we offered them food and clothing in exchange for information (that the readily gave up) which lead to winning the war. Let me say this again for the deaf fuckers that read here...WE WON THE WAR. And we did not stoop to the levels that Japanese did in order to win.
As President Obama went on to say, we cannot allow Al Qaeda to use things like Abu Ghraib or Gitmo as a recruiting tool. We need to take away as many notions as we can that we are ANYTHING like these psychotics. We aren't. We need to lead by example and I thank God that finally we have a president who represents those values in abundance and is now taking that message to the rest of the world.
I'll put up some clips of the event over this weekend.
6 comments:
Nuking a couple large cities in Japan probably helped us win the war more than food did.
Actually, the Japanese didn't surrender after the first nuke. And even after the second one they quibbled over the conditions.
Then we gave them food and sealed the deal.
i am watching a programme (right now) about the birth of Jazz (sad :) actually quite relaxing & interesting after a long day) it's called 'Cool' and the definition of Cool (as coined by early Jazz musicians) reminds me of the Japanese reactions mentioned above to enormous crimes committed against their citizens and also to the exchange between Last in Line and Paul above..
"to be cool.. was at its most accessible meaning, to be calm, even unimpressed by what horror the world might daily propose.'
Another definition i like "detached but smart." (also, imaginative but not overworked.) jt.
As John McCain has reminded us, we executed Japanese interrogators for waterboarding Americans. Given that Cheney closely monitored what torture techniques were being used on Al Qaeda prisoners, should he not receive the same treatment?
The Americans were planning to use weapons of mass destruction on Japan, so by Conservative lights the Japanese were justified in using that kind of torture.
Why don't conservatives have even the slightest clue about their own hypocrisy?
Execution is too nice. I think he should spend the rest of his life in Sheriff Joe's prison as Mark suggested a while ago.
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