11th May 2004, 5:53 PM
Quote:ABF has a point that the whole dog torturing thing really was close to this, except it was done on an innocent bystander it seems. Weltall has a point that his anger, and he said he realizes this, leads reason to this. Here's the thing, you both fully acknowledge that just lashing out because you think they deserve it after what they did is not the answer, for either of these small groups. While they were criminals, they still have the rights of criminals, and that includes no excessive punishments. Further more, any actions by other people outside, even though they WERE allies, and yes that DOES infer that if the criminals were free, they would be doing similar things, are the actions of those people, and shouldn't be added to the list of crimes of those in the prison, and thus not acted upon.
What do you mean 'except it was done on an innocent bystander'? Okay, some of the people we have jailed in Iraq are guilty of something. But I'm sure that more are innocent, including plenty that we abused... as far as guilt goes, it isn't like these are convicted criminals (not that that would change my opinion if they were... but the fact that many are innocent makes it, in some ways, even worse...).
As in, I very highly doubt that most of those Iraqi prisoners have been through any kind of trial, much less a fair one, and been sentenced.
Quote:I agree.
But that doesn't begin to apply to this situation. We stripped and humiliated some hardcore criminals. We never once took an innocent civilian, made him cite a reading, name his family, and behead him on video.
What our people did was reprehensible, yes. But it doesn't even begin to compare to what these people did in this video. That was thousands of miles beyond reprehensible.
Yet, (and sadly, I'm not surprised at all by this), there is no outrage over this. The Arabs and Americans both get outraged by the humiliation of a handful of prisoners, but those same people are silent when the Arabs do things like this. Like, it's okay for them to do this, or something. Like what we did was worse, or something. That is so untrue. Now, of course, I expect them to be silent. Their fucked-up culture lives for this sort of thing.
Why isn't our media in an uproar? Why are we hotly demanding the heads of Rumsfeld and others but no one seems to be nearly as disgusted by this sort of inhuman butchery?
I don't think for a moment this excuses us for what those soldiers did. But, at the same time, I don't think what our soldiers did excuses them either. I swear, we are fighting this war the wrong way. Fucking political correctness and world opinion. I almost think we should go in and fucking terrorize them a bit. There is a savage part of me that would love to see them get this in return. Obviously, that's my anger speaking... but my anger is just as directed at the Americans who are not outraged over this the way they are over ourselves. The apologists, the enemy within.
As I said in my first post. We expect them to act inhumanly and to break international law because that is what they stand for and that is their expressed goal. They are terrorists trying to destroy America's power in the world and they cannot do that and follow international law. So this is a horrible thing, but not something that is uncharacteristic for terrorists like Al-Quaida.
But the US? As DJ says, we are trying to stand for the high moral ground! We are most definitely failing, but that is at least our supposed goal... and that means treating them well no matter HOW their extremists treat us back. And assuming innocence before guilt... that's a tough one these days, especially for people like you who assume all Arabs are immediately guilty...
Oh yeah, to refute some of your post. What we did wasn't as bad? As DJ says, you cannot really quantify this. But to extend that, remember: 24 people have died in our custody. And even if half of them have been shown to probably be unavoidable, that leaves some dozen others... several have definitely died as a result of what our people did to them in custody. So you have no right to say that we aren't as bad, even IF you consider torture and humiliation to be "not as bad" as humiliation and death.
As for the rest, that'd be the worst possible course we could take. The one we're taking is bad, overall, but giving in to our hatred and terrorizing them? I REALLY hope you understand how incredibly badly THAT would go. Even ignoring the crimes against humanity, it'd completely fail to get us where we want! If you think the Iraqis hate us NOW...
No, the only way to make any progress is to work at unity. Working fully with international organizations. Giving the UN as much power as it wants in Iraq and ditching the American control of the occupation. Working our hardest to increase the chances of democracy taking hold in Iraq... and trying to reduce the influence of religion in politics. But I doubt that last one -- I don't see the Iraqis as ready to follow the Turkish model, unfortunately. Democracy is good, but it seems that when people who do not understand or want democracy get it it fails... and when they do want it, it succeeds better. Iraqis have little understanding of democracy, and as such it'll take a long time to get them in shape for one... this isn't something we can do in a few months. And it's not something we can do alone. As the last year proves, us by ourselves just does not work. We need the UN to give it legitimacy that the Iraqis might pay attention to.
I really don't know what we can do to fix Iraq. It's a tough situation. We can't let the mullahs take over, obviously. But there is no credible group to provide a civilian government, and no popular demand for such a thing... the majority, if they could vote, would probably choose a religious government! That is the problem here. That is why in Pakistan the US does not protest when the "President" supresses elections -- we know that religious extremists would win, and a pro-US dictator is better than an elected anti-US parliament. Similar issue in Iraq with the Shi'ites and Sunnis...
Well, and the fact that if left to their own devices it'd almost certainly devolve into a three-way civil war between them and the Kurds. So despite the fact that they hate us we're really preventing more violence by being there than we are causing by being there, I'd say. As to how to get them not to hate us... there is no easy answer. It's a mix of making moves to try to go towards Palestinian statehood, showing that we aren't a total occupying power and giving the international community and the Iraqi people more power in their nation, and finding some way to create a government that the religious leaders will accept. A tough act, to say the least.