Over the weekend I was watching the History Channel, and they showed footage from the Holocaust. This wasn't what civilians normally see, which is the concentration camps months after they've been cleaned up, but rather this was when the U.S. first overran them. They were mostly Jews, but there were others the Nazis interned. There were naked bodies in piles, naked bodies on the ground where the starving had died, whole skeletons in the disposal furnaces, and on and on. The thing that really hits home when you see this is that they aren't healthy bodies; they're abused, starved bodies that would barely look human if alive, and they were alive, in that condition. That's real torture, without reason. In fact, that's beyond torture--that's horror.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internment_camp
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nazi_concentration_camps
http://members.aol.com/dignews/private/buchenwl.htm
The following link shows what I was referencing. DO NOT click this link if you are not willing/permitted by law, etc. to see such graphic images:
http://www.eisenhower.archives.gov/avwe ... 6-12-3.jpg
Originating Link:
http://www.eisenhower.archives.gov/avwe ... camps.html
Before we overran the death camps, the Royal Air Force bombed the heck out of a previously off-limits German city that citizens were fleeing to. The History Channel didn't mention the reason, but I presume it was to convince Germany to stop the war. Incinderary bombs caused the fire to reach over 1,000 degrees Fahrenheit, and the updraft was so immense that the resulting ground wind sucked anything not tied down into the fire, which is quite an amazing, horrifying site. The U.S. made bombing runs when the RAF was finished, and made sure the whole city went up in smoke. Mind you people can't seem to get out of a modern city when a natural disaster is approaching and there is fair warning, so it seems logical that most people didn't make it out back then, and they had no warning. Given Hitler's drive, I can't believe we did this to the German people for any reason, even if it was in hope of ending the war. (During the war, Germany was doing that to everyone they could, which was also horrific.)
Dresden bombing:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bombing_of ... rld_War_II
I've seen footage of what happened when the first atomic bomb was dropped, and footage from the weeks following. That, is horrific. Everything that happened to the people of Dresden happened to the people of Hiroshima, but what followed was even worse. I couldn't begin to condense what happened into something that would fit here.
One reference:
http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB162/index.htm
Guadalcanal was horrible for the United States, and the Japanese. It was pre-living the horrors of Vietnam, mostly. At Guadalcanal the Japanese would decapitate U.S. soldiers and ram their heads onto sticks placed along trails. That prompted the Marines there to create the policy, "No one lives." Unlike Vietnam, this policy caused us to win.
http://hsgm.free.fr/rajoutsguerre/guada ... canal2.jpg
http://guadalcanal3.homestead.com/CanalWW2pics.html
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So yes, you are right when you say torture is wrong, and it makes people even more committed against those doing it. Remember, though, it's not the U.S. against Britain, and if it were, I think things would be much more civilized (so civilized we probably wouldn't go to war in the first place). In this case, it's the U.S. (in the topic of this thread, anyway) against terrorists, who subscribe to torture of innocent civilians. The terrorists aren't going to be any less or more committed, no matter what we do, in the broad scope of things, which is why we're killing them instead of capturing them, which is what we've always done in the past, where possible (capturing preferred over killing). And yes, the people fighting them are farmers from Iowa, who happen to be protecting your lily a**, and they do deserve respect. They are not robotic soldiers, but our neighbors, who think Liberty should be defended. God forgive you for forgetting that.
You dilute the truth when you quote Winston Churchill, but don't also tell the full story of what he did. The same goes to imply that torture of the Gulf detainees are covered under the U.S. Constitution, or that most are tortured. We also don't torture 100 people (of any color) because a crime was committed. We also don't consider three days of police interrogating suspects torture, despite the standing room only conditions, lack of sleep and food, etc. (Referencing the Milwaukee Jail, Wisconsin, U.S.A.) Since most of the Gulf detainees have it better than Milwaukee County detainees, your argument is not plausible.
Many countries don't subscribe to the Geneva Convention. Terrorists certainly don't, by the definition of being a terrorist.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terrorist
So how do we fight terrorists? There's no clean "go in and get them" solution--it's messy. And we have tried to not kill civilians, claiming otherwise is wrong on your part. The Israelis just found out how hard it is to keep everything straight when they wiped out a mass of civilians by accident. It happens, and people feel bad. But the terrorists keep fighting and the war goes on.
Is torture Christian? No, of course not. We do lots of things every day that aren't Christian, and since all sins are equal in the eyes of the Lord, torture is no worse? I'd hate to make that argument, or the karma argument, which could be put, "they did it first, so we're only repaying their debt." I'd also hate to argue a "them or us" situation, since we're all human.
Way off topic, our founders had the common sense (more than the person who made the post) to pick a pretty decent name: The United States of America. Notice they reference America, and the subset of it that I live in, the States which are United. I find this much easier to keep track of than the Kingdom of England, being part of the Kingdom of Britain, having previous political intertwining with France and Wales, previously England, previously part of the Roman Empire, and Britan before that. I think I have that close to correct, even though I left out a lot of history and changes in the middle, but I'm fairly certain it's not truly correct. Rip on me in a different post dedicated to that.
The bottom line for me is the U.S. tries to stay out of wars because there are much better options that may work, which is why we try them. There are many reasons people start wars, usually to conquer other people, and it's not pretty. Those people have to defend themselves, and the U.S. and Israel are two countries currently doing that for pretty much the same reasons. Both the U.S. and Israel would rather not be ferreting out attackers, but they don't have much of a choice at this point. As history (above) shows, war is not won and lives are not saved by neat, clean methods; war is hell. We do the best we can.
