And where is the line between systemic and not?
The standard of proof being employed when determining who is or is not a terrorist. Sheik Khalid Muhammed was a terrorist and we water boarded him - good deal, I have no problem with that. If we were doing that to guys picked up on the ground in Afghanistan without any noteworthy connection to AQ, then its systemic.
What about perception versus reality? Remember all those pictures from Abu Ghraib? Most of them were not known terrorists.
They weren't water boarded, we're talking about water boarding and whether or not its inherently immoral. Notice how these posts keep getting longer the more you keep changing the subject?
It is much better for our country in the long run if we avoid all perception of being torturers. To anybody.
Maybe, maybe not... But if you were in charge of interrogating the sheik and you knew this guy's relevance to any impending attacks, how would you feel if the attack succeeded because we read the sheik his rights instead of water boarding him? Well, I know how I'd feel. Innocent people are dead because I wanted to be "moral", the road to hell is paved with good intentions.
I can justify anything to my point of view. What is justified for me can be completely unjustified for someone else.
Problem is justifying it to others... Are you suggesting murder is justifiable because you can say it is? Either justification exists or it does not, but if it does, it exists regardless of (y)our ability to see it. If I say slavery is justified and you say it is not, who is right? You are...
Saddam Hussein was, in his mind, justified in murdering all his political opponents when he took control of Iraq.
Even if true (and I doubt that), so what? Was he justified? If you say no, either he was right or you are right (or yer both wrong
) What a weird argument, if Hitler thought his conduct moral, does it matter? Of course not, he was a mass murderer. We dont even need a smell test to figure out whatever he thought served as his justification was invalid.
Where do you draw the line between just justification and unjust justification? How do you reconcile that with others points of view that may be different?
Well, how do you tell when something is justified or not?
I generally look at who is instigating harm, murderers lack justification, killing would be murderers in self defense is justified.
Unfortunately for your argument, we do have the luxury of employing a judicial system.
Not in my scenario, and my scenario proves my point - torture is not inherently immoral.
I would call it a responsibility even. This isnt the Wild West where we have to operate in a vacuum of lawlessness. We have laws (and international treaties) in place for a reason.
But the law does not define morality, the law ostensibly attempts to reflect morality. If someone walked up to you in the Wild West or NYC and pointed a gun and started shooting, you'd do what you could to defend yourself - including killing the attacker. The "law" aint relevant and you are justified with or without it... If "the law" says I can enslave other people, do I have the justification to enslave other people? Nope...
First we are making the assumption that he is guilty right off the bat.
Yeah? He is guilty. Now we cant even agree on that?
Second regardless of what someone does, they always have rights as a human being.
Can we put 'em in jail? Can we do anything to them? If I'm trying to murder you, do you have the right to kill me in self defense? Yes! What about my human rights? They dont exist anymore - a right is a moral claim to act. Murderers dont have a moral claim to commit murder...
We dont torture a criminal who murders someone back here at home do we?
A terrorist is a conspirator planning future murders that may already be in progress... Like I said, I'd torture the nutcase in my scenario based not on murders he has committed in the past, but to prevent a future murder.
By your logic we should be able to waterboard any gang member that we suspect of having murdered someone because he might know of a plot to murder someone else.
Then it would systemic, so that aint my logic, thats yours.
And lets stop calling him that sheik dude in the T Shirt and call him by his real name - Khalid Sheikh Mohammed (or KSM).
His name is Mud
So because someone does something bad to us, we should be just as bad back, in just the same way? An eye for an eye, and all that?
How do you compare water boarding to beheading? You said torture hurts opinion of the US and I said not so much because the people with opinions also see the beheadings and put things into context. Do you see a mad rush of Muslims to the ranks of AQ? Nope, while many Muslims may be sympathetic to the goal of getting the US out of the ME, damn near all Muslims see that crap and they dont mind so much if we mistreat these bastards a bit to get information.
And you provide a false choice for that innocent Iraqi. He doesnt only have 2 options. Among other things, he could join the jihadists and fight the Americans, which in this scenario is much more likely to be the case. Do we really want to push more people to fight us?
That aint an option, he's either captured by us or the Jihadists. He aint free to do anything, but it sure looks like we have far more Iraqis working with us than fighting us. And stop playing around with my scenarios
We would look much stronger to our opponents if we didnt reduce ourselves to their level of savagery, but instead kept on living unchanged. Their goal is to change us.
Their goal is to get us to leave the ME, and according to what I've heard about Osama, our failure to adequately respond in the past (get medieval on their asses) spurred him on to 9/11.
So because it is not the biggest, we should be able to do it? Just because we have done things worse doesnt justify the lesser evils.
Nope, just correcting your exaggeration. It aint evil to water board a terrorist to get information of an impending attack. Its justified... Thats a no brainer if yer kid was in the way of the attack.
What is good for the individual in the short term is very rarely good for the collective in the long term.
We aint a bee hive
What happened to your human rights? Why doesn't the kid being murdered have any human rights while his murderer does?
