Letters to the Editor
smartalec
Published Letters: 51 Editor's Choice: 4
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Pls forgive if this point was made already...
[Read the article: The Islamic enemy within]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]...since I'm posting before reading the thread, and this is one of those things that Salon posters will have noticed...
...but I'd bet that some of the explanation for the obscenely high values for many of those numbers is due to wording bias in the running of the survey.
Specifically, when the survey question, as posted in the link, asks
"Do you think the use of torture against suspected terrorists in order to gain important information..."
there are two wording choices in the question that hugely swing the results, in ways that exaggerate the malignance being decried here.
How many Americans aren't going to hear "suspected terrorists" the way they'd hear "white rabbit" -- ie, "an actual terrorist who is suspected of something in particular" -- as opposed to the actual meaning, which of course is, "a person who may or may not actually be a terrorist, but who is suspected of possibly being one." And although there are many people -- Glenn Greenwald, myself, and many of the regular posters here -- who would not support torturing actual terrorists either, there are going to be WAY more people willing to torture known, proven, unquestioned terrorists, than there are people who would countenance the torture of anyone who merely might or might not be one.
Not to mention that, when the question includes the wording, "important information," most people (especially, but not limited to, people who watch 24 and/or people who have heard the Bushists' lies a few too many times) will of course take that to mean "immediately applicable information required to save many innocent lives" -- that "ticking bomb" scenario so beloved of reichwing fantasists, and other such delayed-adolescence violence-porn masturbatory material. Again, there are unquestionably way more people -- and this time I would be one of them -- who, in that scenario, and that scenario ONLY, might accede to torture, who would otherwise never so accede. (And since such a situation has never, to my knowledge, occurred in real life, and the odds of its doing so are less than those of my winning the Megabux, then for all practical purposes, this large number of people are answering a question very different from the question that was actually asked.)
It would be interesting to compare the above results to those of a survey that asked questions in ways that would actually yield meaningful results. But since such a survey would not serve the interests of the war pigs, it'll never be done -- or if done, never publicized.
Pity, that.
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Of course every decision you make should be binding for life
[Read the article: I enlisted in the Army -- but now I've changed my mind!]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Is it just me, or are some of the posters here at Salon getting a bit too ESTian?
What kind of person really thinks that a decision possibly made purely on impulse, while under the no-doubt considerable pressure of recruiters who, we know for a fact, are now often lying, cheating, and manipulating their victims into life-shattering moves -- that such a decision made at the age of 18, and that the decision-maker soon realizes was a bad one, should be set in stone, even unto the death, or worse, of that decisionmaker, and not subject to modification or retraction on reconsideration?
And lets, as we answer this question, remember that even our current hard-core right-wing "personal-responsibility" Supreme Court has recognized, in a landmark decision, that the brains of people up to the age of 25, let alone 18, are still not fully formed and developed, and that among the lagging sectors is JUST the one involved in making judgements of long-term consequences.
Jeez -- have none of you people ever, in your youths, made any fundamentally bone-headed decisions, that you then realized were wrong, and of which you should not, by any reasonable standard, have been forced to bear all the consequences, just because? (Or is it that some of you have been thru exactly that, and you now can't bear the thought that someone else be spared a similar fate?)
18 is exactly that age where you're expected to make a few bad calls -- and to profit from the recognition thereof. But not to the extent of possibly being sent to war, for crying out loud.
Now, if LW had already taken on the benefits of her enlistment (eg, spent a year in college at Uncle's expense), and then didn't want to pay up by performing the requisite service, you would have a valid point. But just saying, at one point in time, "Gee. this sounds like a good idea," and realizing later that it was anything but? There's a reason that the laws in many states mandate a cooling-off period in certain types of contracts, a zone of time during which decisions made can be re-cast; and it's not a coincidence that some of these laws specify fields known for highly aggressive (to put it politely) sales tactics (car, gym membership, and weight-loss program purchases come to mind).
There's more than just a whiff of sadism in some of these posts.
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@Grow up
[Read the article: How can we get back the thrill in our relationship?]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]"(By the way, I have no idea what a "rising junior" is, except another absurd term of academic puffery.)"
A 'rising junior' is someone who has completed sophomore year, and will be a junior upon return to campus in the fall.
It should come as no surprise that the LW is, therefore, at this moment still a sophomore -- they have a name for that, and he's it.