BUSH ADMITS CIA HAD SECRET PRISONS

[Preechr]

I thought you were waiting.

How bout STFU until you are done waiting.

[The Good Reverend Roger]

Originally Posted by Preechr

I thought you were waiting.

How bout STFU until you are done waiting.

[mburbank]

There's WAY too much here for me to respond to, not because I don't think it's worth it, I'm just too busy right now. So. Main points and objections.

" War Crimes Trials are held AFTER the war."
Then there will be no trials (which perhaps you are okay with, but then argue that) because the way this 'war' was framed was so that it is not going to be over ever.

"I'm falling on the side of whenever even a single innocent life is at stake and offers of cigarettes and candy fail."

Even under the kindest of interpretations, this practically guarantees at least some innocent people get tortured. I hope it isn't anyone nice. Under less kind interpreation, it would mean the routine torture of almost everyone we take in, because who knows what information they might have? The argument isn't wether a line should be drawn between them and us, it's where that line should be drawn. I prefer to draw it so that we're the side that doesn't torture captives, as opposed to the side that tortures them less and with better intentions.

"The greatest mistake a person of virtue can make is the assumption that all others already are equal in virtue."

That would be a mistake. But I also think it is a mistake to think that Virtue has anything whatever to do with the actions of others. Vurtue is about deffinition and should exist in a vaccuum. Virtue is about what we decide to be as people and as a nation.

"To anthropomorphize those of such a terribly different culture is to commit such an error. "

I'm pretty sure you didn't mean exactly that, since athropomorphizing is attributing human characteristics to non human things, say animals or rocks. History is full of examples of humans of all stripes doing things terrible enough to make this current crop look like pikers. If what you mean is don't assume the same, similar or even understandable values of people from parts of the world we know next to nothing about. By the same token, we shouldn't assume our values are deffinitively human. Don't get me wrong. I like my values better. I just think that the opposite of anthropomorphization is dehumanization, and that it's our enemies ability to do this (among other things) that makes them our enemy. Again, if we don't draw some sort of line between us and the enemy, we are just baboon tribes killing each other with sticks. Not to anthropomorphize baboons. Or sticks.

[Preechr]

I actually did mean it that way. Well, that, and I wanted to make people look up a word. You weren't supposed to TELL THEM the definition, dammit!

I don't consider humanity a birthright. I can think like that and still believe we all possess "God-given" rights and freedoms because I believe it possible, common even, for people to give those rights and freedoms away or otherwise choose to have them stripped away through criminal and immoral actions. I don't consider our terrorist enemies to be human until they do something to regain that status in society. They lost their human status not just because we call them enemies, of course, but rather due to their choices and actions. They traded their humanity for an inhuman ideology... and I'm not talking about Islam.

I honestly do believe that this war will have an end. It's not going that bad so far. You're just jaded and cynical. This is the "end game" of Liberalism, and I'm just thankful I'm around when it's happening.

As for innocents, I agree that we should not torture them. I'm not advocating the mass torture of all Arabs or all Muslims or whatever, either. We won't have to. Just as were we to institute a policy that no prisoner will ever be tortured for any reason we would no longer be able to obtain ANY useful information, the policy that we have where our detainees don't know what we might do to them is pretty darn helpful, I'd imagine, when it comes to interrogation time.

They know we can lock them up forever and torture them if we wish. That's exactly as it should be. We have to have these options available to fight this war. Innocent folks might be shot in the head accidentally, but would you advocate taking away our soldiers guns, Max? War is not a fun and happy thing, but fighting a war with half-measures is exactly what causes "quagmires" like Vietnam. You like to refer to Iraq as a "quagmire like Vietnam," yet you champion the ideas that cause "quagmires like Vietnam." What's up with that? I wonder if your hatred for Dubya hasn't taken on a life of it's own, invading your subconscious and becoming a self-reinforcing, narcissistic pathology...

[mburbank]

I'll assume your last sentecne was meant as stylistic parody.

I think our differences of opinion come down to trust issues. My opinion is that as long as we have the option to "lock them up forever and torture them if we wish. " we'll do it. At first just a little the way we are now, and only a few innocents will end up getting tortured (as we do have a habbit of being wrong about things we think we are totally sure of) and only a few people will get tortured too much and die from it, and only a few officers will find they really like torturing other people. But as shown by Ahbu Gharib, shit like that spreads down pretty fast.

I'm confident (and I imagine our enemies, who have a worse opinion of us than we do) that the administration had a high value prisoner and they believed they were in that stupid ass ticking time bomb scenario they always talk about, they'd go right ahead and torture that prisoner in violation of the law. Every administration I've lived under has felt free to violate the law when they felt the need, and some of them paid the consequences and some of them didn't, but they all did to one degree or another. I'm sure no Arab prisoner thinks they won't be tortured because of the niceties of our laws.

Make torture permissible, and nobody has to think "Do I really need to do this?" Historically speaking, torture has enjoyed great popularity acriss the political spectrum. I don't think it's because of tirtures wonderful track record of success, I think it's because people in power like other peope to be afraid of them, and it's easy enough to find torturers who... enjoy their work.

As for Quagmires, while I agree with you that halfhearted efforst make them, whole hearted efforts made without due cause, or based on lies, or just for fun, are what make evil empires.

Case in point. Afganistan was arguably a case for a serious war effort. Take out the Taliban, round them up, occupy the country with massive force, perhaps requiring a draft, certainly requiring taxes, pour money into infrastructure and jobs and kick the shit out of anyone who doesn't like it. Crude, nasty, costly, but for a reason and maybe worth it all in the end. Certainly provoked.

Like the war in Iraq or not, think it's just or not, I think we went there because our president is a dope with daddy Issues and the people he trusts most have dreams of empire and have had since they were ugly like Nixon/Ford thugs. Go half heartedly into shit like tat and you have a quagmire. Go Wholeheartedly into it, and you are embracing evil.

Plus, you can't separate goals you might find laubable from the administration. Whatever you may want on paper, it ain't your paper. It's GWB's, and while I cop to hating him, I don't hate him randomly, I hate him for who he daily shows himself to be, an unprincipled, hubristic, shallow zealot. THAT's who's paper it is, and whatever you think of the uses of power and our ability as a nation to withstand it's corrosive influence, I wouldn't give these people one fifth of what they freely take and trust them for an instant.

[Preechr]

It's not an empire. France, Germany, and Italy aren't American States. We gave them back to their owners. That's what we do. We are not building an empire. We never have. There is just no indication that's what we are doing now. It's fun to say it, but we are no more building an empire than we are a condominium or a theme park.

Saying things you know are not true is bad, Max. If you'd like to offer proof that we are actually evil fuckers secretly building an empire, or even a historical example for an empire built in secrecy, then feel free to do so and we'll discuss that. If not, then we'll move on to a more productive portion of the conversation.

[Preechr]

Originally Posted by mburbank

Case in point. Afganistan was arguably a case for a serious war effort. Take out the Taliban, round them up, occupy the country with massive force, perhaps requiring a draft, certainly requiring taxes, pour money into infrastructure and jobs and kick the shit out of anyone who doesn't like it. Crude, nasty, costly, but for a reason and maybe worth it all in the end. Certainly provoked.

Here's where we get into the differences between a War on Terror and "treating terrorism like a police matter." The last thirty years have proven that putting out fires as they pop up does not work long term. In the 90's our military forces were dispatched 140 times. 95% of those times our troops landed in the same places... Different countries, but all with some striking similarities. Plot them on a map along with the poorest, most disconnected places in the world, and you will see a picture of what you have heard me refer to as "Globalization's Gap." The WOT is designed to close the gap. Your way of policing the gap is your war that will never end.

Disconnectedness is what causes terrorism. Despots and Dictators are what cause disconnectedness. These are the things we are fighting. THese are ties that bind together Al Quaeda, Saddam, Iran, Kim Jong Il... everything.... I have been through all this before, and recommended you a book on the subject. I would LOVE to see you feeling better about all this, but you just don't want to, obviously. If you change your mind, I'll be happy to type my fingers down to nubs for you.

[mburbank]

"The WOT is designed to close the gap."

HAH! The WOT is not 'designed' to do anything! Maybe it could be, maybe you'd like it to be, maybe it should be, but what it IS is a happ hazzard collection of nutsiness that is rapidly eexhausting our manpower and our wallets. We took our eye off the ball in Afghanistan, Iraq is a big fat mess, and who all knows what's next.

I don't disagree that closing the gap would be laudable, but just look at the home front. This administration doesn't LIKE closed gaps, they have been widening the gap right here at home.

"Despots and Dictators are what cause disconnectedness."
agree... mostly.

"These are the things we are fighting"

Disagree STRONGLY! We are buddy buddy with all sorts of dictators and despots, and when we DID topple a despot, we let all hell loose! If Despots and dictators were what we were fighting and closing the global gap was the reason, I might have many an objection, but at least something coherent would be going on, it might amount to a strategy.

You are describing a WOT you want and the current administration doesn't feature people like you. It features people as ridiculously, insanely sure of themselves as Abcgdgcdh and is 'led' by a man who makes Kultyklub look like a man of near normal intelligence.

It's like saying "Cars are good, not bad" and failing to think about the fact that the car your in is being driven by a rabid, blind Orangutan that hasn't been fed in a week.

[mburbank]

"The terrorists who want to harm America can now buy disposable cellphones and open anonymous e-mail messages."
-GWB

Thank your lucky stars that this nincompoop is just the hood ornament and not the driver.

[Preechr]

LMAO

[The Good Reverend Roger]

Originally Posted by mburbank

"The terrorists who want to harm America can now buy disposable cellphones and open anonymous e-mail messages."
-GWB

Thank your lucky stars that this nincompoop is just the hood ornament and not the driver.

I'm stealing that.