JudgeBob

Hire This Man

Comments

[this is good]
The greatest sin of the second Bush administration is poor communication with the people of the United States
This is so true Judge. I'm with you, the Bush administration needs to hire David Horowitz to communicate this with the American people.
[this is good]
Hi there,

The reason that Blair wanted to go back to the UN SC was that Britain is not as well protected by international law as is the USA. Bush is immune from being tried by the International Criminal Court because the American Service Members Protection Act declares that the US military may use "all necessary means" to recover any US personnel detained by the ICC. (Perhaps they'd bomb The Hague!?)

But Blair could, in principle, be charged at any time, anywhere. And if he were charged, he would also be putting the British forces' generals in the dock with him. The hope that one day HE will carry the whole can is what keeps many in my country hot in his pursuit.

A second Security Council resolution on Iraq would have been belt and braces. It isn't actually a legal requirement, considering the many other UN resolutions that Saddam had ignored, but in the end it looked as though it WAS a requirement by the very fact of their asking for it. So, the naysayers accuse the coalition of failing to get legal backup.

Iraq was in breach of the ceasefire agreement from 1991 and had failed to do what UN resolutions required. Technically it had actually already been caught developing missiles that broke the range limits allowed and that had been found by the arms inspectors. That's enough for a legal case if you have to find one.

No country actually NEEDS a UN resolution to act. If the UN fails to act everyone is on their own. Just as well, as the UN is now as deadlocked by China and Russia voting against the US and Britain on most issues as it was in the Cold War - hence China protecting Zimbabwe and stopping any response to Darfur. All you might get from the UN on most difficult issues is a majority of votes which doesn't mean much. In 2002 France was more interested in being against the US on anything and getting back the money it had loaned Saddam. If you had the vote now it might well vote with the US as it did in 1990. Three out of 5 vetoing members looks better than two but does it matter when the UN as a whole can't agree to do anything.
Thank you for the clarification. We all need to understand where the other nations are coming from.
Torture is a pretty big sin. Two wrongs don't make a right.
What torture? Are you comparing some embarassment at Abu Graib to the enemy's beheadings? Or waterboarding which is a scare tactic and is no longer in use because the enemy has been made aware of it? You have to be a moral idiot to compare these things with what the enemy does to our soldiers and even to their own people.
I never compared them to what the enemy does. I am contesting that "The greatest sin of the second Bush administration is poor communication with the people of the United States."
Not understanding the threats against us is by far more costly in human rights violations. The enemy is the far greater violator of human rights. We have done nothing to compare with that evil. We have not engaged in any form of torture. No one has experienced any life threatening or bodily damage in our prisons.
Waterboarding is a cruel and unusual punishment.
Water boarding is a mere scare tactic that leaves no damage. And it is useless now and therefore no longer used simply because the enemy is aware of its use and purpose. The greatest sin is still, not having the American public informed of the great danger that is Islam from its inception until the present day. The president has failed on this one critically important job, to make us aware of how tragically the enemy operates. Imagine if you will, that an insurgent grabs a young boy and takes piano wire and slices off his face to intimidate the village from working with the Americans. That's torture. Unless you know this enemy, you have no understanding of what we will have to face. If we do not stop this enemy from its aggressive nature while they are still technologically weak, we will have to face them when they have the missiles and warheads that can take out entire cities. Amadeniwhackjob has stated flat out, that he would wipe Israel off the map whatever the cost to his own country. That means when, not if he gets the nuclear technology, we will be fighting a nuclear war. If we can show the Islamic states that we will not tolerate their aggression by converting country by country from Sharia rule to democracy, then perhaps we can avoid that. but if we pull out and turn that country and any other Islamic threat back over to the radical influences, then we will be fighting with the biggest nastiest stuff around. A scare tactic strategically placed gets us what we need to know then I am all for it. Meanwhile the enemy is dragging beheaded bodies through the streets to frighten us away from the hard task at hand and you have nothing but contempt for America. Torture is damaging or harming an individual in detention. Not shaming which was corrected, not scaring which is useless now, and not temperature controls or sleep deprivation. Get your head screwed on straight.
I never said that the enemy is justified to do worse things than America. That does not make it morally justified to induce mortal panic and acute psychological suffering in people who may or may not be guilty. Torture does not have to leave a mark to be torture; what makes it torture is that it intentionally causes great suffering in another human being. If you look a little deeper than neo-conservative websites and Judge Scalia's warped view of the Constitution, you will find out that waterboarding does cause psychological damage.

There are other tortures that don't leave marks too. Chinese Water Torture, punching someone through a phone book or hitting them with a sock full of oranges, sensory deprivation [the CIA invented a torture method that involved putting blindfolds and mittens on their prisoners - in two days of sensory deprivation they suffered mental breakdowns and temporary madness].
The key word in your comment was 'temporary'

The whole point of the methods we have been using is to break down their mental defenses, to get them to spill their guts. There was a case where an insurgent had been captured and he knew what was planned. A Colonel understood that his men were in real and present danger. He talked to this insurgent long enough to gleen that the man had the information and was gleefully expecting a huge military success. The Colonel took him outdoors from the interogation room and pulled his pistol, cocked it and forcing the man to his knees he made as if to execute him, firing the pistol into the dirt next to him. That action saved the American military men and women in harm's way that day. In your opinion, was the Colonel wrong, was that torture, and if you think it is torture, is torture always wrong, even when it means saving the lives of so many? Or are we only justified if we take huge losses every step of the war?

You cannot convince me that extreme interrogation techniques are not justified, especially when the enemy has no value of human life. I am not suggesting that we should be breaking people's bones or electrifying them. I am suggesting that publishing harsh interrogation techniques is traitorous and calling what these men do out of necessity to saving lives, evil is a morally bankrupt value system 180* out. You should be far more concerned with criticizing the enemies works than our own. Instead we have lawyers following our troops around a war zone to see if they're actions are prosecutable, making the troops second guess every decision in an environment that requires split second decisions in order to survive and prosecute the mission.

Now I'm sure you want to believe the worst about our people using phone books and oranges and mittens without any evidence that they are using them. How terrible! But you cannot remove their conduct from the reality of the war and the way the enemy treats its prisoners of war.

By the way, that Colonel was relieved of his command and is now sitting in a jail cell.
I was not citing oranges and books and mittens as torture techniques used in the war, but rather impermanent torments.

If we are still talking about "sin," then it doesn't matter how many people were saved, it is still explicitly a sin to cause suffering in another human being and try to push them to their absolute limit.

If we leave sin and morals behind, and pursue a secular, pragmatic solution, then torture can be justified - but is still ethically vile except in dire emergencies.

If we leave sin and morals behind, and pursue a secular, pragmatic solution, then torture can be justified - but is still ethically vile except in dire emergencies.

So you recognize ethically in dire circumstances actual torture is acceptable? If it is ethical, then it is not a sin. Examples of Jewish spies hidden by a prostitute in the enemy's city lied and this was not counted as sin against them or her. Religion does not throw practicality out the door. It does cling to the overall good and insists that deception is wrong. A war zone and a military action is a time and place where ordinary rules have to be set aside. Otherwise the sin of murder would prohibit all military actions and we would simply cease to exist. Since we act on the moral high ground we win hearts and minds, but you cannot win the nut who is actively seeking to kill you. You can win the family man that has a child whose face was sliced off by the insurgents to intimidate the village. In fact you can win the entire village and if enough real comparative goes on then you can win the entire state. But the comparison the liberals are making between our troops and our enemies suggests that we are on the moral low ground or at best, just as bad. Those in the war zone know better than those at home who has the moral high ground.
Ethics are not the same as morals. Morals are black and white, what i good and what is bad. Using wiki for a quick definition of ethics; "Ethics is a major branch of philosophy, encompassing right conduct and good life. It is significantly broader than the common conception of analyzing right and wrong. A central aspect of ethics is "the good life", the life worth living or life that is satisfying, which is held by many philosophers to be more important than moral conduct."

That said, torture is a moral evil, but can be justified as an ethical necessity.
Why are liberals always looking for the gray? This isn't complicated. As I argued in previous comment, the time and place of war makes the actions fall under a different standard of behavior and so sin, morals, and condemnation are shifted from norms of peace time.

So, there is a rapist and murderer in your house and he intends to make use of your daughter, he is holding your wife at knife point waiting for your daughter to get home from school in her normal routine. Is it wrong for your wife to lie to the rapist, murderer to protect her child. Would God condemn her for such a sin? Morals still apply in this situation but the rules have changed. That does not mean all lies become justifiable. It means the responsibility of the parent to protect the child by any means she can takes precedent over the normal rule of 'do not deceive.' The rules are still set, not fluid because there is a practical application of standards here that supersede the original rule.

Moral codes are not lost in circumstances, practicality requires a greater understanding of principals and morals. The issue is still black and white.
Please don't turn this into punditry.

Do you subscribe to Utilitarianism?
Yes, in the macro, not in the micro.

I consider it the responsibility of national leaders to operate on the basis of macro morals, ie. the survival and safety of the nation and to facilitate as much personal freedom as possible.

I consider it the personal responsibility to operate on the basis of micro morals, ie. if a man steals my coat, offer him my shirt as well. if I am struck on the left cheek offer the right as well.

A practicing Jew articulated this Christian fundamental understanding of morals and ethics. I have never heard a clearer mind on the topic. His name is Dennis Prager.
That's a pretty pragmatic stance; the state can't regulate every individual's unique day-to-day ethics, but the state also represents everyone as a body politic, and has to protect that body.
Then I guess I am a pragmatist. Its on those ethics that this country and culture has got to where it is with the exception of the lawsuits (abused for gain) and gangs (separatism) and porn (perversion wrongly protected as free speech) and biased press corp. (an industry trying to backseat drive the governing principals) Those things exist on the back of a great society and function as an illness. Either the culture will correct itself in each of these areas or the culture will die.
I don't see how porn is a perversion, but ok i guess?

Post a comment

Already a Vox member? Sign in

Advertisement