The more you go to church, the more you support torture

[jack sommerset]

Like I've said before, you are the absolute worst poster on this site and it isn't even close. Good for you that we have freedom of speech, so you can flaunt your astonishing levels of mental re ation.

I know for a fact their are posters on here that have special needs and they have kids with special needs. Don't be a insensitive little to those because I don't agree with you. Don't respond. It's pretty ing simple.

Look up what Chruchill thought of Ghandhi. He thought he was a fanatic and an ascetic of the fakir type. Not everyone thinks starving urself to get your way is all that heroic "warlord". Some think its pretty ing pathetic.

[Winehole23]

Oh please do cite case law applicable to alien combatants captured on a field of battle.

Do you think it's "generically acceptable to torture anyone of sufficient rank or value"?

If the Germans had captured a colonel with probable knowledge of Patton's battle plan, torture would have been OK. If the Taliban caught a deputy consul who knew when the next attack on Kandahar was scheduled, torture would be OK. If al-Qaeda catches a Air Force pilot who might tell them the secret of detecting and shooting down drones, torture will be OK.

The following is not *case law*, I know, but posted for the general edification. US statutes count too, don't they?

http://www4.law.cornell.edu/uscode/1...0---A000-.html

(a) Offense.— Whoever outside the United States commits or attempts to commit torture shall be fined under this le or imprisoned not more than 20 years, or both, and if death results to any person from conduct prohibited by this subsection, shall be punished by death or imprisoned for any term of years or for life. (b) Jurisdiction.— There is jurisdiction over the activity prohibited in subsection (a) if— (1) the alleged offender is a national of the United States; or
(2) the alleged offender is present in the United States, irrespective of the nationality of the victim or alleged offender.

Definition of torture:

(c) Definition.— As used in this section the term “war crime” means any conduct— (1) defined as a grave breach in any of the international conventions signed at Geneva 12 August 1949, or any protocol to such convention to which the United States is a party;
(2) prohibited by Article 23, 25, 27, or 28 of the Annex to the Hague Convention IV, Respecting the Laws and Customs of War on Land, signed 18 October 1907;
(3) which cons utes a grave breach of common Article 3 (as defined in subsection (d)) when committed in the context of and in association with an armed conflict not of an international character; or
(4) of a person who, in relation to an armed conflict and contrary to the provisions of the Protocol on Prohibitions or Restrictions on the Use of Mines, Booby-Traps and Other Devices as amended at Geneva on 3 May 1996 (Protocol II as amended on 3 May 1996), when the United States is a party to such Protocol, willfully kills or causes serious injury to civilians.

(d) Common Article 3 Violations.—
(1) Prohibited conduct.— In subsection (c)(3), the term “grave breach of common Article 3” means any conduct (such conduct cons uting a grave breach of common Article 3 of the international conventions done at Geneva August 12, 1949), as follows: (A) Torture.— The act of a person who commits, or conspires or attempts to commit, an act specifically intended to inflict severe physical or mental pain or suffering (other than pain or suffering incidental to lawful sanctions) upon another person within his custody or physical control for the purpose of obtaining information or a confession, punishment, intimidation, coercion, or any reason based on discrimination of any kind. (B) Cruel or inhuman treatment.— The act of a person who commits, or conspires or attempts to commit, an act intended to inflict severe or serious physical or mental pain or suffering (other than pain or suffering incidental to lawful sanctions), including serious physical abuse, upon another within his custody or control...
(D) Murder.— The act of a person who intentionally kills, or conspires or attempts to kill, or kills whether intentionally or unintentionally in the course of committing any other offense under this subsection, one or more persons taking no active part in the hostilities, including those placed out of combat by sickness, wounds, detention, or any other cause...
(G) Rape.— The act of a person who forcibly or with coercion or threat of force wrongfully invades, or conspires or attempts to invade, the body of a person by penetrating, however slightly, the anal or genital opening of the victim with any part of the body of the accused, or with any foreign object.
(H) Sexual assault or abuse.— The act of a person who forcibly or with coercion or threat of force engages, or conspires or attempts to engage, in sexual contact with one or more persons, or causes, or conspires or attempts to cause, one or more persons to engage in sexual contact....

[Winehole23]

Yoni: Who will surrender to us on the battlefield, knowing that we have an official policy that parses torture as not being torture?

[Winehole23]

From Daniel Larison's conservative, Orthodox Christian perspective:

Will at Ordinary Gentlemen writes:

I’m totally baffled by people who look to past atrocities for some sort of ethical guidance.

Well, quite so. One of the odd things about this is that it tends to make the atrocities even more central to the perception of the overall war effort than they might otherwise be. Instead of acknowledging them as wrongful excesses in an otherwise justified military campaign, which a reasonable person could easily do and leave it at that, the argument from war crimes has the strange effect of making the commission of war crimes seem absolutely essential to waging the war in question. While the defenders of these excesses may believe they are protecting the reputation of the government and the war it was fighting, they succeed mainly in affirming a double moral standard in judging wartime acts, thereby undermining the moral authority of the very cause they purport to be protecting against critics.



I would add that the recourse to past crimes to evade accountability for new crimes is a good argument in favor of enforcing strict accountability for crimes recently committed. If such crimes are permitted to go unpunished, their apologists will continue to work overtime to shape the debate in later years and decades in favor of the decisions leading up to those crimes, and the more time goes by the apologist will be able to fall back on one unassailable retort: “If this was a crime, why didn’t anyone in the government investigate and prosecute it as such?” Having warned against witch hunts and “criminalizing policy differences” in the beginning to intimidate the responsible ins utions into inaction, the apologists will then remind the public that no charges were ever filed and no convictions were secured.



So, ironically, some of the defenders of the torture regime are making the best argument for the prosecution of past administration officials by their own invocations of past government illegalities. They are unwittingly reminding us that crimes unpunished today can easily become tomorrow’s conventionally accepted “correct” decisions. Every usurpation or instance of lawbreaking that is not challenged and reversed creates a precedent for the next round of usurpation and lawbreaking, and the fact that there is a non-trivial number of people in America who think that the illegal acts of Lincoln, FDR, Truman or others should have some mitigating effect on how we treat illegal acts under a more recent administration is one of the best reasons why crimes committed during the last administration must be investigated and lawbreakers must be prosecuted. Had many past administrations been scrutinized and their crimes investigated and punished, it is less likely that we would have to cope with an executive branch that acts as if it is above the law and which seems to be able to to break the law with impunity. If we fail to hold past administration officials accountable, we not only make a joke out of the rule of law, but we ensure that no legal or ins utional constraints will prevent a future administration from committing similar wrongdoing in a time of crisis.

[Winehole23]

The Argument From War Crimes Returns

Posted on May 2nd, 2009 by Daniel Larison

Others have already covered this fairly well, but I suppose I should say something about Michael Goldfarb’s preoccupation with defending past war crimes. Julian Sanchez makes the important point regarding the nuclear strikes on Japan:

To the extent it’s a controversial claim, it’s controversial because we don’t like calling U.S. presidents war criminals, not because it’s a difficult question whether obliterating entire areas inhabited by large civilian populations with the flimsiest of military targets as a pretext should now be regarded as a war crime.

Sanchez is correct that it isn’t a difficult question as far as law and morality are concerned. War crimes are not justified or obviated by necessity–necessity is almost always the rationale governments use to explain why they committed war crimes. As Stewart’s pathetic backtracking shows, however, it continues to be a politically charged and risky thing for a prominent public figure to claim. Politically and as a matter of retaining viewers, Stewart may be right that acknowledging the nuclear bombings to be war crimes was “stupid,” since there is no upside or popularity in saying so publicly, but Stewart’s own recantation is a good example of how perverse and distorting the prevailing “judgment of history” can be. Judged by any consistent standard of treatment of non-combatants in wartime, mass incineration must surely rank as a far worse crime than the very serious crime of torturing prisoners.


Because the prevailing view of Harry Truman and his decisions at the present time happens to be favorable, we are all supposed to believe that the “judgment of history” has “vindicated” Truman. This is a nice way of saying that propaganda and hero worship have overcome moral reasoning, and time has caused the moral horror of even a significant part of the American right in the 1940s to fade from memory. This favorable view of Truman is inextricably tied up with the cult of the presidency, our depressing but all too human habit of praising bad wartime leaders at the expense of better peacetime executives, the mythologizing of WWII (and therefore the minimizing or justifying of any wrongdoing on the Allied side) and the implicit devaluing of Japanese civilian lives every defense of both fire-bombing and nuclear strikes includes. None of this seems to occur to the people who continue to glorify Truman and to use Truman as an example of how tainted, bad Presidents may yet be viewed as great successes by posterity. What Truman’s posthumous rehabilitation should tell us is that half-truths and falsehoods, if repeated often enough, can become widely accepted, and that virtually no American political leader, no matter how many blunders he made and no matter what criminal acts he ordered, is beyond redemption at the hands of later sympathetic people who find that leader’s decisions to be useful precedents for their own preferred course of action. The “judgment of history” has, for the time being, ruled in favor of Truman, and therefore challenging this judgment is something to be mocked.



Stewart might reflect on the truth that a “complicated decision in the context of a horrific war” could be applied to many crimes ordered and carried out by governments in wartime. If we aspire to hold America to a standard according to which “we don’t torture,” one might think the same concern for human dignity and justice would also require us to say, “We are America–we don’t incincerate civilians, and we certainly don’t do it en masse.” Or, rather, we know full well that this has been done in our name many times in the past (and certainly not just at Hiroshima and Nagasaki), but we should also be able to say that this was wrong and should never be done again. Pro-life Christians who remind us of the Massacre of the Innocents to protest the terrible crimes committed against the unborn must be able to see the same Massacre in the gratuitous nuclear annihilation of the center of Japanese Christianity. It is when convenience and so-called necessity are most tempting that adhering to moral principle is the most difficult and the most crucial.



The love affair with war crimes that some on the mainstream right have never ceases to perplex me. When smaller wars have been waged in which civilian centers are being bombarded, we often hear from this crowd that the problem with Western nations today is that they lack the will to inflict the mass casualties inflicted during WWII bombing attacks, and when challenged about ongoing operations they will say, “Oh yeah, well what about Dresden and Tokyo?” To which I might respond, “Well, what about them? These were unspeakable crimes.”



Many of the same people who preach such insipidly simplistic and irrational messages about fighting and even “ending” evil will be the first to find refuge behind the “complicated” nature of wartime decisions. At least they will do so if it means that they can ignore the real moral complexity of these situations, in which all belligerents are capable of committing war crimes and ought to be held to the same standard. It is this latter point that is really quite simple: if the torture practices authorized by the last administration had been carried out against Americans, we would not hesitate to call them crimes and demand punishment for the guilty, and if the same kinds of bombings were done to our cities by foreign military forces we would not think twice about calling them war crimes. Acknowledging this should not be an occsasion for excessive self-flagellation, but it does have to be acknowledged. Perhaps even more corrupting and dangerous than the abuses of power and wartime excesses themselves is the willingness to minimize or approve of wrongful acts carried out by the government.



P.S. Here is an older post from John Schwenkler to remind us of what it is we’re talking about in this debate.

[Winehole23]

Via Larison:

Now, I don't want to answer dogma with dogma. Strategic and national interests played major roles in the decisions of all combatants in the First and Second World Wars. They do in every war. It's a messy world and the motives of nations are seldom simple and pure.


The sort of Americans who cheer for Fred Thompson would agree with that statement -- as it applies to other countries. What they cannot seem to accept is that it applies to their country, too. For them, Americans are unique. The United States is unique. And what sets America and Americans apart is purity of heart.


"We are proud of that heritage," Thompson said in Iowa after citing the mythology of America-the-liberator. "I don't think we have anything to apologize for."


Nothing to apologize for. Never did anything wrong in 231 years of history. Nothing.

This is infantile. And dangerous. A superpower that believes it is pure of heart and the light of the world will inevitably rush in where angels fear to tread. And then it will find itself wondering why the foreigners it so selflessly helps hate it so.

[EVAY]

I've always found that alot (not all, of course) of people that call themselves Christians are more pro-war, pro-torture, and even anti-Muslim so this doesn't really surprise me. I guess this is just the political time that we live in. There used to be anti-violent and anti-war Christians. So as a Christian that's against abortion, torture, and preemptive war, what does that make me?

unusual

[braeden0613]

unusual

[PixelPusher]

http://www.juliansanchez.com/2009/05...ity-isnt-free/

...

Still, if you think of the United States as being defined, in part, by a certain set of moral ideals—if you don’t merely want your side to win international conflicts, but think that in virtue of these ideals we deserve to win—it seems very odd to then think of conduct in war as a question of pure expediency. Practicing torture or bombing civilians because it would “save lives” is, one supposes, better than doing it for the sheer sadistic pleasure of it, but sets the bar too low. I don’t mean to take the position at the opposite extreme—fiat jus ia, ruat caelum—but surely “saving lives” is the beginning of what a justification of these actions might sound like, a minimum, a necessary-but-not-sufficient condition. If defenders of torture could establish that it’s effective, that it uniquely able to extract vital, reliable information that prevents more deaths than are caused by the swelling of terrorist ranks, the loss of international cooperation, the waste of resources chasing false leads—if all that were well established—that would be step one, the basis for opening a discussion of whether it might be justified.

Since recent polling suggests that regular churchgoers are more likely to believe torture is justifiable, perhaps it’s appropriate to paraphrase a certain late rabbi: If you refrain from savage acts in wartime only when brutality would gain you nothing, what credit is that to you? Even sinners do the same. Vague talk about “saving lives” obscures a vital question: What kinds of costs are you willing to bear, what risks will you accept, in order to avoid doing evil? If you’re prepared to discard a principle as soon as there’s some significant benefit to be gotten by doing so, then it’s a principle of expediency, not morality. If you’re ready to resort to torture, or to targeting civilians, as soon as there’s some chance it would “save American lives,” then you’re declaring a commitment to abide by moral constraints, so long as observing them is free.

We are required, it seems to me, to choose: We can accept that we’re one more country like any other, guided by pure rational self interest, in which case “if it might save even one American life…” is as much justification as we can ask for any policy, and the only question (though still, of course, a difficult and complex question) is how we go about it. If, on the other hand, we think there’s something exceptional about the United States—that we’re defined by a particular moral vision beyond the universal desire for comfort and safety—we need to accept that hewing to a moral vision sometimes comes with costs, and then ask how much ours is worth to us.

[Winehole23]

If you’re prepared to discard a principle as soon as there’s some significant benefit to be gotten by doing so, then it’s a principle of expediency, not morality. If you’re ready to resort to torture, or to targeting civilians, as soon as there’s some chance it would “save American lives,” then you’re declaring a commitment to abide by moral constraints, so long as observing them is free.

[Ignignokt]

We don't believe in killing, but we do practice capital punishment.

in the case of torture. the life of the inoccents are more worthy than the damned.

As a christian one wouldn't kill one's self, but in order to protect the innocent, you would put your own life in danger knowingly that it will put u in certain death.

General Washington's view on torture was shaped for different reasons. The colonies while they warred with the brits, considered them still kin. You would fight your brother, but you'd never aim for his face.THe brits also fought like nobles and wouldn't try to kill innocents as a rule. Now there might have been exceptions, but the brits and hessians, played within the war rules of europe. War strategies were to achieve decisive military defeats, not genocide.

So as the state which has a duty to uphold my life. I want them to achieve whatever means possible to protect me and my family.

[Ignignokt]

so in other words. Live with your plat udes, but i'm not gonna make the decision for some innocent life to keep them from dying.

We don't torture or practice enhanced interrogation to win on the battlefield, we do it to save others who have no say in this matter. NO MAN HAS THE RIGHT TO TAKE ANOTHERS LIFE.

and like one of our founding fathers said (in paraphrase), "THe only vote that should never be allowed, is a vote against democracy."

A vote to allow the destruction of a free society, is self allowed tyranny.

Sometimes there is no black and white.

/thread.

[hope4dopes]

so in other words. Live with your plat udes, but i'm not gonna make the decision for some innocent life to keep them from dying.

We don't torture or practice enhanced interrogation to win on the battlefield, we do it to save others who have no say in this matter. NO MAN HAS THE RIGHT TO TAKE ANOTHERS LIFE.

and like one of our founding fathers said (in paraphrase), "THe only vote that should never be allowed, is a vote against democracy."

A vote to allow the destruction of a free society, is self allowed tyranny.

Sometimes there is no black and white.

There is no black and white....well that's a concept that takes an adult to understand, so you may get alot of flack for this one.

/thread.

[PixelPusher]

We don't believe in killing, but we do practice capital punishment.

Speak for yourself. There's lots of people who believe in both propositions, and lots of people who believe in neither.

in the case of torture. the life of the inoccents* are more worthy than the damned.

*make that "American" innocents. For everyone else, happens, war is , blah-blah-blah...

Perhaps that was an unfair assertion on my part...

As a christian one wouldn't kill one's self, but in order to protect the innocent, you would put your own life in danger knowingly that it will put u in certain death.

General Washington's view on torture was shaped for different reasons. The colonies while they warred with the brits, considered them still kin. You would fight your brother, but you'd never aim for his face.THe brits also fought like nobles and wouldn't try to kill innocents as a rule. Now there might have been exceptions, but the brits and hessians, played within the war rules of europe. War strategies were to achieve decisive military defeats, not genocide.

So as the state which has a duty to uphold my life. I want them to achieve whatever means possible to protect me and my family.

...oh, nevermind. Thanks for re-affirming tribal limits of your morality.

so in other words. Live with your plat udes, but i'm not gonna make the decision for some innocent life to keep them from dying.

We don't torture or practice enhanced interrogation to win on the battlefield, we do it to save others who have no say in this matter. NO MAN HAS THE RIGHT TO TAKE ANOTHERS LIFE.

But we have the right to torture? WTF? And didn't you attempt to throw capital punishment in our faces a couple of paragraphs ago? You're all over the place.

and like one of our founding fathers said (in paraphrase), "THe only vote that should never be allowed, is a vote against democracy."

A vote to allow the destruction of a free society, is self allowed tyranny.

Sometimes there is no black and white.

/thread.

A vote to put the interests (security) of "the state" ahead of individual rights is self-allowed tyranny, and will result in the destruction of a free society. If our ideals really don't amount to more than empty plat udes, if they're just rhetorical gang signs to rally our tribe and taunt the other tribe, then the United States really isn't exceptional. It's just another country. Just another flag waved by a bunch of monkeys killing other monkeys.

Bumper-sticker patriots can't have it both ways.

[Ignignokt]

Speak for yourself. There's lots of people who believe in both propositions, and lots of people who believe in neither.


*make that "American" innocents. For everyone else, happens, war is , blah-blah-blah...

Perhaps that was an unfair assertion on my part...

...oh, nevermind. Thanks for re-affirming tribal limits of your morality.


But we have the right to torture? WTF? And didn't you attempt to throw capital punishment in our faces a couple of paragraphs ago? You're all over the place.

A vote to put the interests of "the state" ahead of individual rights is self-allowed tyranny, and will result in the destruction of a free society. If our ideals really don't amount to more than empty plat udes, if they're just rhetorical gang signs to rally our tribe and taunt the other tribe, then the United States really isn't exceptional. It's just another country. Just another flag waved by a bunch of monkeys killing other monkeys.

When am i ever going to argue with Pixel pusher the human being and not Pixel Pusher the attack bot.

First off, you're de able and a mindless hack, your thread poses the question as to why chrisitians believe in torture, i respond with my own faith by awnsering that same question, and i get a "thanks for reaffirming your tribal thought".

If that's what this is all about, Pixel i want you to personally state yourself, that if an attack would render your loved ones dead, you'd be satisfied knowing that we held our heads high.

I want you to put that on your signature.

I want you to tell everyone you love including your kids if you have any, that Daddy would allow their destruction because he doesn't believe in a technique that doesn't kill someone.

Well, you know what, i could care less, what you think. You don't get to decide who lives and who dies. Individuals do. And if i were that CIA agent, i would use whatever means necessary to save your loved ones and give them that choice.

I'd rather you call me a racist bigoted, narrow minded christ freak than have your loved ones engulfed in flames.

[PixelPusher]

When am i ever going to argue with Pixel pusher the human being and not Pixel Pusher the attack bot.

First off, you're de able and a mindless hack, your thread poses the question as to why chrisitians believe in torture, i respond with my own faith by awnsering that same question, and i get a "thanks for reaffirming your tribal thought".

If that's what this is all about, Pixel i want you to personally state yourself, that if an attack would render your loved ones dead, you'd be satisfied knowing that we held our heads high.

I want you to put that on your signature.

I want you to tell everyone you love including your kids if you have any, that Daddy would allow their destruction because he doesn't believe in a technique that doesn't kill someone.

Well, you know what, i could care less, what you think. You don't get to decide who lives and who dies. Individuals do. And if i were that CIA agent, i would use whatever means necessary to save your loved ones and give them that choice.

I'd rather you call me a racist bigoted, narrow minded christ freak than have your loved ones engulfed in flames.

No, I will not cop to your straw man.

[PixelPusher]

I want you to tell everyone you love including your kids if you have any, that Daddy would allow their destruction because he doesn't believe in a technique that doesn't kill someone.

If death is the only limit to what you would do to save your kids from "destruction", why stop at torture? How about doing what they do in Great Britain - put up a load of CCTV cameras to monitor us for our safety? It wouldn't kill anyone and it would help insure your child's saftey. How about we unshackle our law enforcement from the namby, pampy idealistic plat udes proffered in our Bill of Rights and allow for warrantless search and seizure?

How far is too far to protect your child? Is there no limit for you as long as no one is taking anyone's life away?

[hope4dopes]

Hey ignigknot you know that old whinehole and pixie are just arguing about how many angels can dance on the head of a pin,I don't know maybe they didn't have the chance to become lawyers or something.But if some head dragged them into an alley and slapped them around then took their wallets they'd be screaming for the cops to start busting heads, any head.

[Ignignokt]

Life is a strawman.

[Ignignokt]

Hey ignigknot you know that old whinehole and pixie are just arguing about how many angels can dance on the head of a pin,I don't know maybe they didn't have the chance to become lawyers or something.But if some head dragged them into an alley and slapped them around then took their wallets they'd be screaming for the cops to start busting heads, any head.

I know that they mean good, but. that's just it. I live in the real world.

[Ignignokt]

If death is the only limit to what you would do to save your kids from "destruction", why stop at torture? How about doing what they do in Great Britain - put up a load of CCTV cameras to monitor us for our safety? It wouldn't kill anyone and it would help insure your child's saftey. How about we unshackle our law enforcement from the namby, pampy idealistic plat udes proffered in our Bill of Rights and allow for warrantless search and seizure?

How far is too far to protect your child? Is there no limit for you as long as no one is taking anyone's life away?

I didn't know torture was a plat ude in the bill of rights.

[Ignignokt]

redistribution of wealth is a violation of property rights, a plat ude in the bill of rights. we could go on and on about each sides hypocrisy, and i don't claim to be faultless.

But, what bout my wager?

[PixelPusher]

Hey ignigknot you know that old whinehole and pixie are just arguing about how many angels can dance on the head of a pin,I don't know maybe they didn't have the chance to become lawyers or something.But if some head dragged them into an alley and slapped them around then took their wallets they'd be screaming for the cops to start busting heads, any head.

Like the con artists who lives his life in paranoia because he's convinced everyone else is as depraved and deceitful as he is, you assume everyone else share your conviction that "nobody else really believes in any of that ethical crap".

[braeden0613]

A better question is, would you be alright if Christ was standing next to you while you torture someone (or allow it)? See how that "well we might save lives at some point" argument works. It may seem like an extreme example, but if you truly believe in "what would jesus do?" it applies here.

[hope4dopes]

I know that they mean good, but. that's just it. I live in the real world.

Oh I don't think they mean good I just think there's a disconnect,