Troubadour
Banned
- Joined
- Oct 12, 2010
- Messages
- 464
- Reaction score
- 181
- Gender
- Male
- Political Leaning
- Liberal
There is another poll up right now asking if "defense" justifies torture, and the absurdity of even asking the question has led me to ask an equally ridiculous, alternate-universe poll question: Does "defense" justify genocide? How about burning people at the stake? Surely if Jack Bauer had to, let's say, dismember and cannibalize some children on live TV in order to save America from a terrorist plot, that would be justifiable?
The fact that anyone even considers it acceptable to treat the matter of torture as morally ambiguous is reprehensible - it is not ambiguous. Questioning something does not make it questionable; debating it does not make it debatable; arguing over it does not make it controversial. There is no ambiguity here.
Torture is illegal. It is a crime. It is evil. There are no real-world circumstances under which it is justified. Everyone who condones it is un-American at best. Everyone who in any way facilitates it or tolerates it when they are in a position to stop it deserves long prison sentences. Anyone who directly commits it (as George W. Bush has admitted to doing) deserves to spend the rest of their lives in a maximum-security prison, and if their crimes resulted in any deaths (as it appears occurred in Bush's case), that constitutes first-degree murder with capital special circumstances.
This is not a game. This is not a TV show. This is America in the 21st century, and anyone who looks with nostalgia on the Spanish Inquisition can kindly leave my country.
The fact that anyone even considers it acceptable to treat the matter of torture as morally ambiguous is reprehensible - it is not ambiguous. Questioning something does not make it questionable; debating it does not make it debatable; arguing over it does not make it controversial. There is no ambiguity here.
Torture is illegal. It is a crime. It is evil. There are no real-world circumstances under which it is justified. Everyone who condones it is un-American at best. Everyone who in any way facilitates it or tolerates it when they are in a position to stop it deserves long prison sentences. Anyone who directly commits it (as George W. Bush has admitted to doing) deserves to spend the rest of their lives in a maximum-security prison, and if their crimes resulted in any deaths (as it appears occurred in Bush's case), that constitutes first-degree murder with capital special circumstances.
This is not a game. This is not a TV show. This is America in the 21st century, and anyone who looks with nostalgia on the Spanish Inquisition can kindly leave my country.