Tuesday, June 13, 2006

The Difference, Part 1

Wretchard at the Belmont Club writes:
Talk Left raises the possibility that torture may have been used somewhere in the process of hunting down Abu Musab al-Zarqawi.

The U.S. does not approve of torture, claims President Bush. Does anyone have any doubt that Ziad Khalaf Raja al-Karbouly, the Iraqi customs inspector who turned on Zaqarwi after being arrested and held for months by the Jordanian police, talked as a result of being subjected to torture? ... So now we use information gained from torture to murder our target. What makes us different from them?
I would like to think that people who could write such nonsense are either innocent or stupid. That would be comforting. I'm afraid the truth is they're something worse: morally lazy. Spoiled rotten in fact.

This then will be an ongoing albeit intermittent series for the morally challenged and the morally dishonest. Today's entry hails from Iran. It would seem the police have been beating a small group of women who want some rights, such as equal rights to divorce. They got a fist in the face for their troubles. Then they were taken into the safety of the Iranian jails.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

How does this make us better than them? This reminds me of the teenager who says Dad can not tell him not to drink because Dad has a beer when he comes from work.

Maybe that is the excuse for these people , they are perpetual teenagers.

To them raising your voice is torture...but if you are a terrorist you have the right to push back against the imperialists and kill whoever the hell you want to.

So I guess my question to this guy would be how is he different from the terrorist or the terrorist sympathizer? Everyone can play the moral equivalency game and that way no one is to blame.

Syl said...

Knuck...I won't go that far. I think it's simply navel gazing. People with far too much time on their hands and no direct experience for reference to what's happening in the world today.

Also a worldview that prefers the criminal model to the war one, where there is no such thing as a POW. Remember, she is a defense attorney. 'nuf said.

There is no way that I don't think she thinks the terrorists acts are despicable. But she has been trained to defend murderers in court.

And that is the way our system works. In criminal matters.

What I condemn is the lack of courage to face the idea of war, the reasons for it, and what it entails. To people like this, Iraq is merely a crime scene.