Is Ted Cruz Satan? Discuss.

[Sidd Finch]

Originally Posted by Greedy,Greedy,Greedy

Well, here's the problem. Assume we're not better than they are, and in response, that we are perfectly happy to go kill a few thousand people, invade a country or two, maybe one where the terrorists are hiding, maybe one that actually hasn't been too kindly to that set of terrorists but is run by some of its own, maybe drone some weddings, open a torture facility, etc. And we spend ten or fifteen years doing it.

After spending all that vengence, some of it well directed (who doesn't cheer at bin Laden's demise?), some of it completely misdirected, we still get pretty damn upset by that image. It still doesn't feel any better. I still have a couple childhood friends who are dead, but now also have a bunch of other friends with years of time spent in places like Iraq and Afghanistan and Qatar.

And, after all that, what next?

You know what next. ISIS.

Rinse and Repeat.

At some point we have to figure out how to break the cycle. Abu Gharib is about deepening that cycle, not breaking it.

I'm having trouble understanding why you seem to be in full douche-flame mode, since I agree with you on all of this and I think you know that. But, okay -- maybe you just disagree with my "we're better than they are" view.

I stand by that view. Do spend a moment thinking what ISIS, say, might do if they had the military resources of the United States at their power.

[Sidd Finch]

Originally Posted by Greedy,Greedy,Greedy

Well, here's the problem. Assume we're not better than they are, and in response, that we are perfectly happy to go kill a few thousand people, invade a country or two, maybe one where the terrorists are hiding, maybe one that actually hasn't been too kindly to that set of terrorists but is run by some of its own, maybe drone some weddings, open a torture facility, etc. And we spend ten or fifteen years doing it.

After spending all that vengence, some of it well directed (who doesn't cheer at bin Laden's demise?), some of it completely misdirected, we still get pretty damn upset by that image. It still doesn't feel any better. I still have a couple childhood friends who are dead, but now also have a bunch of other friends with years of time spent in places like Iraq and Afghanistan and Qatar.

And, after all that, what next?

You know what next. ISIS.

Rinse and Repeat.

At some point we have to figure out how to break the cycle. Abu Gharib is about deepening that cycle, not breaking it.

Did you actually think I was agreeing with Icky, and saying I don't care that we tortured enemies (plus all the people we just caught up in the mix)? Did you not see me saying that Obama shouldn't pardon, and should prosecute, the torturers?

[Greedy,Greedy,Greedy]

Originally Posted by Sidd Finch

I'm having trouble understanding why you seem to be in full douche-flame mode, since I agree with you on all of this and I think you know that. But, okay -- maybe you just disagree with my "we're better than they are" view.

I stand by that view. Do spend a moment thinking what ISIS, say, might do if they had the military resources of the United States at their power.

Meant to douche-flambe Icky; you're just an intermediary. We need the ability to include quoted quotes within quotes.

[Greedy,Greedy,Greedy]

Originally Posted by Sidd Finch

Did you actually think I was agreeing with Icky, and saying I don't care that we tortured enemies (plus all the people we just caught up in the mix)? Did you not see me saying that Obama shouldn't pardon, and should prosecute, the torturers?

No, no, no. Building on your point, but in a slightly different direction.

[Icky Thump]

Originally Posted by Greedy,Greedy,Greedy

Meant to douche-flambe Icky; you're just an intermediary. We need the ability to include quoted quotes within quotes.

Don't blame me, we'd be halfway through a nuclear winter if I were in charge.

[Greedy,Greedy,Greedy]

Originally Posted by Icky Thump

Don't blame me, we'd be halfway through a nuclear winter if I were in charge.

Asshole. This is no fun if you make my points for me.

Do you like to get your wife all hot and excited and then go to the frig, grab a beer, and sit down in front of the football game?

[Greedy,Greedy,Greedy]

So Uber's next add campaign is "We're really good at the sucky sucky!"

[Icky Thump]

Originally Posted by Greedy,Greedy,Greedy

Asshole. This is no fun if you make my points for me.

Objection. Foundation.

[Greedy,Greedy,Greedy]

Originally Posted by Icky Thump

Objection. Foundation.

Sustained. Next.

[taxwonk]

Originally Posted by Tyrone Slothrop

In case you wondered whether the worst of it was in the torture report, the answer is no. And Obama has been terrible on this.

I imagine Snowden might be able to expound on that.

[Sidd Finch]

Originally Posted by Greedy,Greedy,Greedy

Do you like to get your wife all hot and excited and then go to the frig, grab a beer, and sit down in front of the football game?

And suddenly, this thread is making me uncomfortable.

[Tyrone Slothrop]

Originally Posted by Sidd Finch

I understand that sentiment. But we are better than they are, and better than that. We should continue to prove it.

Outsourcing a response to Peter Beinart (not sure I would say the same, but I think he says it well, and is directly responsive):

No, actually, we’re not. There’s something bizarre about responding to a 600-page document detailing systematic U.S. government torture by declaring that the real America—the one with good values—does not torture. It’s exoneration masquerading as outrage. Imagine someone beating you up and then, when confronted with the evidence, declaring that “I’m not really like that” or “that wasn’t the real me.” Your response is likely to be some variant of: “It sure as hell seemed like you when your fist was slamming into my nose.” A country, like a person, is what it does.

The implication of the statements by Obama, King, and Yarmuth is that there is an essential, virtuous America whose purity the CIA defiled. But that’s silly. Aliens did not invade the United States on 9/11. In times of fear, war, and stress, Americans have always done things like this. In the 19th century, American slavery relied on torture. At the turn of the 20th, when America began assembling its empire overseas, the U.S. army waterboarded Filipinos during the Spanish-American War. As part of the Phoenix Program, an effort to gain intelligence during the Vietnam War, CIA-trained interrogators delivered electric shocks to the genitals of some Vietnamese communists, and raped, starved, and beat others.

America has tortured throughout its history. And every time it has, some Americans have justified the brutality as necessary to protect the country from a savage enemy. Others have called it counterproductive and immoral. At different moments, the balance of power between these two groups shifts. But neither side in these debates speaks for the “real America.” The real America includes them both. Morally, we contain multitudes.

Why does this matter? Because when you claim that the United States is intrinsically moral, and torture therefore represents an aberration, you undermine the fight against such practices. There is no innate moral sense that pushes America’s leaders to respect human rights. To the contrary, the U.S. political system is based on the recognition that since Americans, like all other human beings, are sinful creatures, and will abuse power, the best way to limit that abuse is to ensure that power is divided and balanced. In the 20th century, when American presidents helped establish first the League of Nations and then the United Nations, they recognized that—to a far more limited degree—the United States should submit to international laws and institutions that checked its power overseas. This stemmed in part from the belief that only by binding itself in systems of domestic and international law could the United States act differently from the totalitarian empires it opposed. The most dangerous aspect of totalitarianism, wrote Arthur Schlesinger in The Vital Center, was its attempt “to liquidate the tragic sense which gave man a sense of his limitations.”

Being a successful American politician today requires declaring that America is different, blessed, exceptional. Thus, when other countries torture, it reflects their basic character. When we torture, it violates ours. But the wisest American thinkers have found a way to reconcile this need to feel special with the recognition that, as human beings, Americans are just as fallen as everyone else. In the mid-20th century, men like Schlesinger and Reinhold Niebuhr argued that, paradoxically, the more Americans recognized their sinfulness, and restrained it within systems of law, the more America would prove its superiority over those totalitarian systems that refused such restraints.

After 9/11, while George W. Bush was announcing that God had deputized America to spread liberty around the world, his government was shredding the domestic and international restraints against torture built up over decades, and injecting food into inmates’ rectums. Those actions were not “contrary to who we are.” They were a manifestation of who we are. And the more we acknowledge that, the better our chances of becoming something different in the years to come.

[Adder]

A quick reminder about the board title: no, Dick Cheney is.

[Tyrone Slothrop]

Originally Posted by Adder

A quick reminder about the board title: no, Dick Cheney is.

I see people saying that Dick Cheney lied. Isn't that beside the point? Does anyone think that Dick Cheney worries even a little about the accuracy of what he's saying? He always seems to be speaking for purely instrumental reasons.

[Greedy,Greedy,Greedy]

Originally Posted by Adder

A quick reminder about the board title: no, Dick Cheney is.

Silly Adder. Satan has many names.