The question that must be asked...?

[kentuck]

What kind of nation do we become if we do nothing about the torture that was committed in our names?

What does it do to the psyche of the American people? How important is it that the people maintain the ideals of America, whether real or idealized?

How much harm could it cause our nation if the people thought less of themselves as human beings? And if we permit torture to be swept under the rug, we are minimized as a people. We have lost our moral bearing.

[Duer 157099]

1. You may as well be asking that which Hamlet asked:

To be or not to be?

Because it's that important. imho.

[leftstreet]

2. Does it really matter? We're already a police state

Capital punishment.

Death from lack of healthcare.

Displacement and death from Katrina.

:shrug:

(Not that you don't have a good point.)

[vixengrl]

3. The harm wouldn't be immediately realized.

No, because the problem with the "move on" and "don't prosecute" voices, and even the (how does this shit happen?) torture-apologist voices is one of serious denial. They deny what happened, or they deny it was torture because of some semantic contortion.

The problem is, the nation we become is the USSR (and worse). A superpower with an imperial bent and a taste for human rights violations. We had a neuteed media, and a tyrant at the top.

I don't think this relative apathy regarding the torture question can stand. There has to be a breaking point, where every-day, non-political Americans shout: This is not US!

I think that's what'll happen.

It won't be Glenn Beck fans, let me tell you--that guy who recently said he didn't care if the torturers used cheese-graters. It won't probably be Fox-News fans. The outrage is going to be the players who dissented early--deciding to dissent more often (people like Taguba and Moro and Zelikow and Lawrence Wilkins--what I think I want to see is someone like Colin Powell to finally talk about what he knew and why he recognizes the wrongs. I think another release of pictures would be enough, now, to create the visceral shock throughout this country, that would lead to political will for our representatives to make something of it.

I'm reading Jane Meyer's The Dark Side right now--it recaps things that have been revealed over the years on the subject, but it looks ever more conspiratorial, criminal, prosecutable. I think we need to really repent of this stain to get our country back.

[Golden Raisin]

4. The Bush/Cheney years

were a descent into darkness and Constitutional danger that will take a long time to recover from. We need to face up to torture and all the rest and NOT sweep it under the rug. We owe it to ourselves, our children and to the ghosts of the Founding Fathers.

[nadinbrzezinski]

5. Easy, and one thing that most don't realize

the next time this will be done to everybody

We have accepted torture before, just that we let OTHERS do it, see central america

This time it was done by us to the other

Next time, it will be to each other

We have become all but a representative republic, oh and Nuremberg becomes victor's justice

In other words we lost the moral edge, if we ever had it

There is more... we are now an Empire, and the logic of empire is driving this, not the republic... we are Rome, in her late stage, that's all

[hfojvt]

6. We already lost that innocence

when we accepted the murder of one million babies every year. What's a little torture compared to millions of murdered babies?


Just like there are only a few people who freak out about abortion, so there are only a few people who freak out about torture. Nobody I know personally is talking about it or thinking about it. Is it ever on TV or in the news?

Hell, in the leftist world, didn't we already commit genocide against the Native Americans and the Vietnamese without batting an eyelash? You think this nation will turn away from their guitar hero and American Idol and football and beer and Nascar long enough to worry about innocence lost and moral bearing?

Here's another clue. Just yesterday I was watching NCIS, as I all too often do. Tony chased one of the bad guys, who slipped and fell off a plank where he hung precariously over a forty foot drop. He then proceeded to question said bad guy under the threat of dropping him. It is 'taught' in hundreds of fictional ways that 'good guys' sometimes do some nasty things for the greater good.

[LooseWilly]

7. We seem to be a largely lazy nation.

I'm often lazy myself.

We like our guns, and we like our retribution... and apparently a large chunk of the country is ok with torturing "bad guys". Unfortunately, as a country, we're too lazy to realize just how quickly and easily the "bad guys" thing can be expanded on. Too many are fine with "do onto the other"... too complacent with their own "non-other" status.

I personally fear that the self-perceived majority will not ever really give a shit until they are demonstrably not the majority... and at that point, it will be too late for them...

[shadowknows69]

8. We become the most powerfully armed rogue nation in history

Kings of the world whose laws only apply to it's subjects, not the ruling class.

[Delphinus]

9. We have lost our moral bearing.

There's no doubt about that.

[kentuck]

10. Is that the bottom line?

What will it cost us to just make excuses and rationales for it and then forget about it?

[madokie]

11. Torture is not going away

what I mean is the perpertrators will be prosecuted. In the US as well as in other countries. These old boys and gals are headed for a true nightmare, a nightmare of their own making. I don't buy into the, they will get away with it bullshit, at all.