What are you telling your children? (Warning: political)

[Pure]

That's *very interesting, perd' posting about CBS withholding the news. Apparently the picture surfaced to the army brass in Jan.

CNN probably shut up too, but last night was all over the story.

OTOH, this 'phone call' thing (suppression, delay) is not unknown in the past; it occurred on some vietnam and watergate stories, among others, iirc.

Also I think on some nasty 'Saudi' stories: didn't BBC hesitate on 'Death of a Princess'?

PS. there's was a related story, that the issue of 'army intelligence' involvement, and 'private contractor' involvement was shushed till a few days ago, and the army didn't act on the pictures, till those stories started to leak.

 

[sweetnpetite]

What are parents - in the U.S. and elsewhere - telling their children about the torture of prisoners by American soldiers? Are they asking questions? Do they accept as a matter of course that Americans are capable of the same evil as anyone else?

Don't you know? They are not 'us.' They are a rougue element. Rest easy. We are still on the side of good. Our country is good. Now are you with us, or against us?

 

[sweetnpetite]

The truth is there are bad people everywhere. There are bad cops and good cops. Bad soldiers and good soldiers. We can't always tell the good from the bad just by looking at them.

Unfortunately atrocities and barbarism is a part of human culture. No race, creed or country is free from it.

I don't hold that there are 'bad' people and 'good' people. Just imperfect people in an imperfect world. That which is present in the human race is present in us all. (macrocoms, microcosm, ect. ect.)

I've been hurt, and I've hurt others. I've been helped and I've helped others. I'm a lot more complex than good or bad. And so is everybody else.

Good people or bad people implies to me that we could be no other way- that we have no choice but to act as our nature dictates. And I don't believe that. I believe that we are just people, and some of our choices are good and some are bad. So I suppose that is what I will have to tell my children. Bad choices are generally followed by unpleasent consequenses. So be careful what choices you make.

 

[sweetnpetite]

You can't proclaim yourself the hero and then behave like a villain.

With this I totally agree.

It doens't matter whether or not they 'deserved it' or if they would have gotten worse treatment elsewhere. What matters is that *we* behave with integrety, regardless of how the 'bad guys' act. Our actions will reflect on us, favourably or porely, just as the actions of others reflect on them. You can't become the vilian (as you pointed out) and still argue that your on the side of good.

The question never was, "did they deserve it?" the question is, "did the soldiers act appropraitly?" They did not. (Neither by 'their' [Iraq's] standards nor by ours.)

 

[sweetnpetite]

.

The chicken hawks who rushed into this war unprepared and ill planned are the ones to blame. Hell, when Rummy overruled the military and decided that he could get by with 20% of the troops some generals requested, he should have been fired.

Ed

Rest assured, they won't accept any of the blame. They will cut the perpetrators loose, and let them carry the full brunt on there own.

It's not really suprising, when you think about it. The guards probably felt that they were paying their prisoners back for the deaths of all those Americans on September 11th.

If we think we've been fed a lot of retoric and propaganda, quadruple that at least for what soldiers at war are being told. If we at home were filled with rage over the events of that day, know that that rage was magnified many times over for our troops, to increase moral, the will to win, all that- it's just the way it goes.

I'm not condoning it, because I think they acted inappropriatley. I'm simply saying that it's not really suprising or shocking. Unfortunatly, without any direct and careful action to prevent it, it's almost inevitable. (no worries though, because those soldiers who acted as they were badicly 'brainwashed' to act, are expendable too.)

I mean come on- does anyone think that the 'higher ups' including the presendent didn't know that this sort of thing was bound to happen? Denial- it's such a beautiful thing.

 

[sweetnpetite]

4) Once fights fire with fire. Shoots prisoners who act up. Tortures others to get the goods on 'higher ups'. Sort of like the French 'paras' in Algeria. [/B]

You know what they say:



Kill 'em all, let God sort 'em out!

 

[rgraham666]

There's an old Taoist saying that I keep close to my heart: What you resist, you become.

Nietszche said the same more poetically:

Beware when you battle monsters,
Lest you become a monster.
And as you gaze into the abyss,
the abyss gazes also,
into you.

That may be the only wise thing ol' 'Superman über alles' ever said.

 

[Pure]

Actually N didn't say 'superman uber alles.' nor was his 'superman' at all like an 'Aryan' or Nazi. He despised much of Jewish AND Christian thought, as based on guilt and false answers to basic questions, but had some admiration for the Jewish people and some the noted Jewish creative types, like the poet, Heinrich Heine.

N was simply a 'natural aristocrat' who believed the best--NOT defined racially-- should lead, and he gave examples such as Julius Caesar and Napolean. (And the latter example indicates he was NOT nationalist. He despised the Kaiser.)

In fact he said many wise things: One favorite: "What does not destroy me, strengthens me."

 

[Pure]

Hey, guys, I hear Bush is going on Arab TV to 'explain.' Should be interesting. (Seems like a sign he's pretty worried.)

 

[rgraham666]

Pure, I know Nietszche didn't say what I quoted. But that is, in my opinion, the essence of what he said.

Another opinion of Nietszche that I hold is, "same old, same old." He's pulling the old chestnut, "I admire 'superior' people. Therefore I am 'superior'. As I am 'superior' I no longer need to think. As a 'superior' I am no longer capable of making a mistake, nor do I need to be responsible for my actions, since they will always be the correct thing to do."

What a wanker!

 

[sweetnpetite]

I thought it was "what does not kill me, mades me stronger."

That was our class motto!

Don't care much for N, but I do like that particular quote.

In fact he said many wise things: One favorite: "What does not destroy me, strengthens me."

 

[KarenAM]

I saw in the newspaper today that when Rumsfeld was asked why he didn't apologize for these outrages, he said it had never occurred to him to do so.

That's the kind of people we have running this war.

 

[Pure]

Hi rg,

you said,
Another opinion of Nietszche that I hold is, "same old, same old." He's pulling the old chestnut, "I admire 'superior' people. Therefore I am 'superior'.

A bit crude, but yes he appreciated his abilities. You're on track up to here.

As I am 'superior' I no longer need to think.

Odd to say of a philosopher and philologist who spent his life thinking, writing a dozen books, some of which are read and studied today.

As a 'superior' I am no longer capable of making a mistake, nor do I need to be responsible for my actions, since they will always be the correct thing to do."
------

This is *way over the top, if you're commenting on his actions, which, afaik, were quite responsible. Indeed, what you describe, doesn't even fit Sade, whose activities were hardly atrocious.
Sounds like you're thinking of Louis XIV or later Mao.

Factoid of the day: After a brief period of youthful infatuation with Wagner and his music, Nietzsche spent the rest of his life denouncing anti-Semitism and German nationalism.

Second factoid of the day: After he began to lose his mind (organic disease), in his slightly crazed, last coherent writing, he said, "I am having all anti-Semites shot."

Cheers!

J.

RG, sweet, for the record:

"Aus der Kriegsschule des Lebens. - Was mich nicht umbringt, macht mich stärker."

Translation: "Out of life's school of war. - What does not destroy me, makes me stronger."

Note: Often quoted as "That which does not kill me, makes me stronger".

Source: Götzen-Dämmerung (Twilight of the Idols), I,8.
[from wikipedia

http://quote.wikipedia.org/wiki/Friedrich_Nietzsche ]

A fine quotation from the same book:

"What alone can be our doctrine? ...No one is responsible for man's being there at all, for his being such-and-such, or for his being in these circumstances or in the environment. The fatality of his essence is not to be disentabled from the fatality of all that has been and will be.

Man is not the effect of some special pupose, or a will, and end; nor is he the object of an attempt to attain an 'ideal of humanity" or an "ideal of happiness" or and "ideal of morality."

It is absurd to wish to devolve one's essence on some end or other. We have invented the concept of 'end': in reality there is no end.

One is necessary, one is a piece of fatefulness, one belongs to the whole, one is in the whole; there is nothing which chould judge, measure, compare, or sentence our being, for that would mean judging, measuring, comparing, or sentencing the whole. But there is nothing besides the whole. ...

The concept of 'God' was until now the greatest objection to existence. We deny God, we deny the responsiblity in God; only thereby do we redeem the world." (Twilight, VI,8)

 

[cantdog]

I am an atheist, so I joined Amnesty International. This situation is in no way new.

Stress. Well, la de da. Volunteer soldiers signed up to be slaves, which is necessary under common law. Doesn't make it less stressful to know you asked for it, though.

The reason people torture, universally, is that they have characterized the people they are torturing as less than human.

This goes for wife beaters, Nazis, and war criminals like these poor stressed people. Once you understand, however, that an Iraqi is a human you don't treat him like that. If a Jew or a Gypsy is human, you don't throw him in Belsen. If a Pachuco is human, the jackbooted thugs we call police won't be treating them like that. Just as when a Vietnamese is human, you don't sign up to go kill him in a war.

Those fellows are nationalists, meaning "my country is the only one which contains humans," so we have to shock and awe them, burn their kids and mothers with weapons from afar.

You can't push the trigger button to have the opening salvo in this war unless you somehow convince yourself the other fellow doesn't qualify for human.

Religionism-- the feeling that my religion is the only one which contains humans, brings on slaughters, too. As often and as virulently as nationalism.

Any us/them morality will do that.

But there is no them.

All of us are human. Therefore no one, of any religion, from any country, under any circumstance, is justified in treating anyone as less than human. Torture is therefore wrong no matter what, because it is engendered by and excused by a crippled us/them spirituality.

Torture is also extremely cowardly. It is repugnant on other levels as well.

Because there is no God, no power is going to stop this but us humans, right here. So stop it. And stop making excuses for it.

 

[Pure]

Nicely put, cantdog. Accords with the Nietzsche quotation I just posted.

J.

 

[cantdog]

Later quotes from Nietche, such as the one you posted, show him to have abandoned his us/them stance and moved up to a higher type of spirituality, which adopts everyone into "Us".

The irony is, that when he found his us/them, earlier ideas, he was every bit as tautological about it. Us/them, after all, shows up as a higher calling. All nationalists started out as egoists. This is I/them: What's good for Me is good.

What's good for Me is good, what's bad for Me is bad, what's bad for You is probably good because it makes you less of a threat to Me....

To become a Nazi from there is a step up.

The next step is to adopt the whole human race. Suddenly the old Us/Them morality seems puerile and absurd. But what about the non-human world, the majority of life on the planet, after all? Are they Them and to be treated as a threat to Us?

Does it end there? All life? All creation? How do you act once you feel like that?

You have to pass through all the stages to get to the upper ones. I, too, was once in an Us/Them mode, and as a child, in a I/Them mode.

I am asking these people to grow up.

Even Nietsche did that. But it ain't easy. Thinking and introspection will get you there. But who has any time for that jive?

I am very gratified to read posts from rg and others who have grown up enough not to talk about "bad men."

Writers as a group may be more likely to have reached that plane, but we all know writers who are racist, who are nationalist, who are religionist, and whatnot. Some have posted to this thread.

I hope one day they will look back at those posts and repudiate them, no longer being able to imagine being able to feel the way they did when they posted them. I know I had to eat some of the crap I said back when I was a nationalist. Think, introspect, and write.

 

[Boxlicker101]

quote:
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Originally posted by Boxlicker101
I have seen some of the photos being discussed and I don't really see what the fuss is about.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Shereads responded:


We have evidence of prisoners held down and sodomized with broom handles, forced to have sexual contact with each other, beaten on the soles of the feet with metal rods. We have at least one photo of a prisoner hooked up to wires and threatened with electrocution while forced to balance on a narrow wooden box. We have accounts in a secret document leaked to the press, of prisoners in such bad shape that they were concealed from Red Cross inspectors - no details on what happened to them.

And we have an account of a prisoner who died from over-enthusiastic interrogation (body cavity search?) and of a cover-up that required making the body appear to have died during a medical procedure.

Box, you can't be serious.

First, let me say that I am in a place where I have less access to TV news or newspapers than I usually have.

To date I have seen a pic of a hooded man being strip-searched by somebody who was described as a US soldier. If this is an Iraqi insurgent, who may or may not be an Iraqi, strip searching in necessary. These people we are fighting would consider surrender to be a tactic,allowing them to get close to Americans and blow themselves up, taking some Americans with them. That being the case, strip searching, even body cavity searching is necessary. If this is embarassing to him, that is tough. If you can't stand the heat, stay out of the kitchen. If you don't like the nature or war, don't make war. Just as US soldiers are volunteers, so are the people we are fighting. Personally, I think it is better to embarass somebody than to let him blow people up.

As for embarassing this guy or not, the embarassing part is the photo being broadcast all over, so maybe we should blame the people who did that. If something happens to me that would be embarassing, but nobody sees it, it is not embarassing.

I have also seen hints and allegations of serious abuses on this thread, but is there any hard evidence? If so, I haven't seen it. Remember, the gov't is capable of issuing disinformation but so are those opposed to US actions.

 

[cantdog]

I love you all.

But if sodomizing with broom handles prevents suicide bombers, I guess there really isn't any limit to rationalization after all.

That's really absurd, dude.

The prime directive for I/Them people is that I can't be the one at fault. A woman issued me a name tag with the wrong name on it once. I gave it back, saying, I'm sorry, ma'am....

She said, "That's the name you told me!"

The capacity for rationalization knows no bounds. You hear similar crap with regard to Us/Them: We are never Really the ones at fault. Not really. So there has to be some reason why what we seem to have done wasn't our fault.

But look at some of them! Wo. You gotta laugh!

 

[Boxlicker101]

I love you all.

But if sodomizing with broom handles prevents suicide bombers, I guess there really isn't any limit to rationalization after all.

That's really absurd, dude.

The prime directive for I/Them people is that I can't be the one at fault. A woman issued me a name tag with the wrong name on it once. I gave it back, saying, I'm sorry, ma'am....

She said, "That's the name you told me!"

The capacity for rationalization knows no bounds. You hear similar crap with regard to Us/Them: We are never Really the ones at fault. Not really. So there has to be some reason why what we seem to have done wasn't our fault.

But look at some of them! Wo. You gotta laugh!

Well, I certainly don't think anybody should be sodomized with a broom handle, if that ever actually happened. However, a body cavity search is something like that, only not so extreme. We should remember, however, that the person being searched would probably do much worse to his captors if he had the chance, and may have already done so.

 

[KenJames]

I'm not a parent, so I don't have to worry about what to tell my children, thankfully.

Since I've studied history and human behavior, I'm not surprised at the abuse/torture. I'm still really angry about it, because I can't get over my idealistic belief that the United States should hold itself to a higher standard.

Also, this has made an already disastrous foreign policy even more worse. We'd already shot ourselves in the foot. This time, we used a RPG.

One of my friends is a retired Army officer. He's even more outraged at the abuse than I am.

It looks like Rumsfeld is getting set up to take the fall. That's too bad. As a Navy friend says, "If a ship hits a reef, the captain is responsible, even if he was in the head at the time."

 

[Pure]

too bad?

 

[KenJames]

too bad?

What's too bad? You're usually so much more specific.

 

[Pure]

Ken said, "It looks like Rumsfeld is getting set up to take the fall. That's too bad."

?

 

[cantdog]

parent stuff

What ho, KenJames:

It's a large question, being a parent. I recommend the experience.

Like most guys, I resisted the idea. I mean it sounded like work and it was something you couldn't say "Forget that" to, if it turned out you weren't doing it well. Which is to say, it sounded like a lot of pressure, as well as a lot of work.

But she was going to do it , it was her next thing. Living with a pregnant woman, with the nesting priorities and the increased security drives, was very interesting indeed, but the day came, ultimately.

When you hold your daughter in your hands for the first time, you feel the universe realign itself right over your head. You know what you're going to be doing for the next twenty years, you know that things are of key importance which seemed not so key only the minute before. It was really an unexpected thing, this change in perspective.

Turned out I was pretty good at it, parenting, I mean. But not to be one is to miss a very profound part of the whole trip of being human. Do it if you can.

That's just an aside. Rummy needs to clear out. To fail to act to check torture is tantamount to participation. Any of these drones who does not act, who sweeps this under the rug, deserves lasting if not permanent disgrace. Such disgrace properly attaches to lying, torturing hyenas. Torture is reprehensible, bestial, cowardly, tactically stupid, mentally unstable, spiritually immature behavior. Excusing it when anyone is under your authority, be it legal, personal, or moral authority is just as bad. Rummy excuses it. Excise Rummy. He is obviously not qualified to serve. He signed on to the power structure because he likes to throw his weight around, but no one needs a fellow in charge who is a lying, torturing hyena with no respect for common human values. His reaction, "It never occurred to me to do so," simply reveals his weaknesses.


About the body cavities.

They raped people, they stomped their feet, they inflicted routine beatings, applied electric shocks, and all that shit these torturing war criminal pricks do, everywhere, all over the world.
Stop acting as though the discussion is about body cavity searches. It's about torture. Pay attention.

People were sent to kill other people. That's what wars are. You can't just slaughter other people for whom you have respect. Therefore they are indoctrinated beforehand. These are not any longer people, they are told, they are ragheads, Eye-rackies, or whatever. Johnny Reb, gook, slope, Boche, hun, Nip, whatever it happens to be for this particular war. But not human. Once the enemy is not human, you may slaughter him, burn his children, leave land mines or depleted uranium or defoliants or whatnot all over his countryside, rape his daughters and mothers, and torture him if he becomes helpless and in your hands at your mercy. The key thing is to make your warriors cease to believe he is human. Then you get the St. Bartholomew's Day massacres, the Buchenwalds, the My Lais and so on. Every war something like this occurs, and not on an isolated basis either. On our side, all sides, every side. For the very reason described above.

And, provided you are someone like Rummy, for whom killing a certain number of Iraqis is a good thing, you want your armies to dehumanize your enemy. But you must draw lines. Shock and awe attacks on civilian populations is immoral, rapes and massacres of civilians, torture and killings of prisoners, all these things are immoral and further, do not help you in the task for which you sent the troops in the first place. But Rummy does not stand above. He also believes they aren't human, or it would have "occurred to him." He really believes it's okay to torture them. It is no loss to lose the services of Rummy.

 

[KenJames]

Ken said, "It looks like Rumsfeld is getting set up to take the fall. That's too bad."

?

D'oh! I'm slow tonight.

Bush should be taking the fall. He's in charge. Rumsfeld too, of course.

P.S. I don't feel Bush is the pawn many AH members consider him to be. His administration is exactly what he wants it to be.