Letters to the Editor
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Too cowardly to ask someone who knows, that Jonah.
Perhaps Jonah Goldberg could resolve his deep conflicts about torture by talking with Tom Sutherland. That former Colorado State University professor, who in 1985, while serving as a Dean at the American University in Beirut, was taken hostage by members of Islamic Jihad. He was kept captive for 6.5 years. He was also tortured. I'm not sure Jonah is man enough to ask Tom Sutherland about the wisdom of torture. I expect Jonah couldn't endure a day of what Sutherland endured for over six years. I've no doubt that Professor Sutherland would have strong words for Jonah, and could cure Jonah of his ambivalence in fairly short order, were Jonah to ask. But, Jonah is a coward, and only a coward would promote torture.
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Torture is wrong
Why are people "deeply conflicted" about a horrible abuse our our species? What is the big deal? If torture is wrong, it's wrong. If it's okay, why be ambivalent about it? It was wrong during the Inquisition, during the Salem witch trials, at Buchenwald. It is wrong at Gitmo and it is wrong in any of the sites to which victims are taken under rendition. It is wrong if the victim is a Jew or a Muslim. You can't have it both ways.
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Shooter logic:
Of course the US condoned and encouraged slavery for much of its history therefore blacks should consider themselves lucky that they're allowed to own homes, let alone vote.
Sounds like progress to me, but I wouldn't expect any of you folks with a functioning conscience to see it that way.
heh
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er
Scooter, please rewrite your essay to focus on the correct historical period. In colonial days, during which the punishments you describe were commonplace, there was no United States. You were assigned to write an essay on progress in humane punishment under the United States Constitution.
Do not forget to mention punishments inflicted on slaves, i.e., permanently and automatically guilty sub-humans.
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Sic semper democracy?
Every few years or so, some Eastern Establishment poobah or Ivy League gasbag makes a thoroughly obscene proposal which in short order becomes our standard operating procedure.
Alan Dershowitz advocated legalizing torture (or, at least setting up a legal framework for its use) 10-12 years ago. In fact, he was the author of the jackass "If Your Detainee Knows Where the Bomb Is Stowed, Start Yankin' Them Fingernails!" procedureal mechanism. Within five years of him touting this ugly idea on the lecture/talk show circuit, we were tying people to water boards.
This spring, another Harvard grandee with far too much time on his hands, Harvey Mansfield, proposed chucking our quaint, small-town democracy in favor of Rule-By-Imperator. In an article in the Wall Street Journal, he pointed out the advantages of putting a "strong man" at the nation's helm. Is that next? Are we being softened up for the newest bull charging us from down the road: "America: The Banana Republic"?
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jonah the wise and valiant
The LA Times, which used to be a pretty good newspaper, fired Robert Scheer for being prematurely sane about the war in Iraq, but it continues to employ Goldberg and world class war-wanker Max Boot.
Go Figure.
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@shooter242
Who has more humane treatment of prisoners of war, than we do?
Presumably, all the countries that still adhere to the Geneva Conventions.
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@Kitt
>Goldberg is actually only in his 30's. Born in 1969.<
Ah. He made it sound as if he were only three walker-steps from the grave...:)
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Taking the Long View
I see this fairly often from those whose sense of history began last month. Should Mr. values do any wiki searches he/she/it would find that common punishments in the early US for petty theft, or even kissing one's wife on Sunday, included the pillory, stocks, whipping, branding, hanging, and for women that were common scolds the early equivalent of waterboarding the ducking stool. Ah, the good old days.
Not to mention we are no longer beset by ravaging saber-tooth tigers and woolly mammoths!
Whereas our ancestors froze to death, we on the other hand enjoy the comforting flicker of "hot bright air", or as some of you neologistic wags have dubbed it, "fy-ur."
True, you might get kidnapped by the govt. and tortured these days, but you also get to enjoy, both at work and home, mankind's greatest acheivement: THE WHEEL!
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hats off to prunes
Both your answers to poor scooter were FAR better than mine.
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The talking cow-pie has spoken
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Scooter, please rewrite your essay to focus on the correct historical period. In colonial days, during which the punishments you describe were commonplace, there was no United States.
-- Baldie McEagle
It's too bad that this f'wit, "scooter", is incapable of feeling embarrassed.
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Simple answers to stoopid questions
Who has more humane treatment of prisoners of war, than we do?
Pretty much every country not run by dictatorships or authoritarian gummints (which would be well over half the world's countries). You know, like those that signed the GC3, the subsequent additional protocols, and the CAT ... and that actually go by those signatures.
Cheers,
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Who has more humane treatment of prisoners of war, than we do?
We did. Until 2001.
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Pricks spring eternal Mr. Dirks
Prominent spokesmen for the ultra-right tend to be a good bit older than the gamer generation, so I doubt that video violence and nihilism can be invoked as the underlying cause of their inhumanity. I could blame consumer culture more broadly though. The worst tax whiners and "I'm aboard, pull up the ladder" types I encounter tend to be the over-extended. The loudest bitchers are usually the ones with the biggest McMansions, the fanciest vehicles, and the least equity in either.
There isn't a perfect, one-to-one correlation between anti-tax/pro-spending conservativism and armchair military adventurism, but they seem to share the same short-sighted outlook: "If I can't see the debt (death) it isn't really there!" -
How do people become sadists?
The question has been bandied about. Jonah Goldberg and his ilk fit the definition. They seem incapable of empathy for anyone outside their small group. The deaths and suffering of innocent Iraqis or Iranians mean nothing to them. They are, after all, citizens of a "small crappy country." But how to explain this apparent lack of concern for the suffering of blameless civilians, and even (given the lack of medical care for returning veterans) the soldiers of this country?
After following some links on Glenn's site, I found some essays by Arthur Silberberg. This, in turn, led me back to Alice Miller, an author I read years ago, when I was a teenager. Her thesis is that it has nothing to do with video games. People who are incapable of empathy as adults are those who were forbidden from experiencing, genuinely, their own pain and suffering as children.
To quote: "Beaten children very early on assimilate the violence they endured, which they may glorify and apply later as parents, in believing that they deserved the punishment and were beaten out of love. They don't know that the only reason for the punishments they have ( or in retrospect, had) to endure is the fact that their parents themselves endured and learned violence without being able to question it. Later, the adults, once abused children, beat their own children and often feel grateful to their parents who mistreated them when they were small and defenseless."
Children who are mistreated in ways other than physical abuse also suffer the same effects.
I urge anyone who is curious about this to visit Alice Miller's website, www.alice-miller.com.
I agree with Alice Miller, when she says that in order to change the ways of the world, we should start with how we treat children.
Respectfully,
Valkyrie