Quote:
Originally Posted by Sidd Finch
Okay - so I've been roundly ridiculed for thinking America is better -- in its conduct, values, and aspirations -- than al Qaeda or ISIS. I get it.
So, for those who believe the opposite -- since we're just the same, why should we give a shit about torturing people suspected of participating in and supporting 9/11 and similar attacks? Why shouldn't morality be relative -- we can improve ourselves after those people are dead?
Sidd (a little tired of the sanctimony) Finch.
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Apparently you didn't read the article or see it on Facebook. I was quoting Andrea Tantaros, a Fox News anchor whose reporting of the release of the CIA Report was as follows:
Quote:
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“The United States of America is awesome -- we are awesome," the Fox News host said on "Outnumbered." "The reason they want to have this discussion is not to show how awesome we are. This administration wants to have this discussion to show us how we’re not awesome.”
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Here's Steven Colbert's
reaction.
Now, that being said and done, to move on to your question. I'm not saying we're as bad as al-Qaeda or IS. But, if we're taking people from their homes, after which they are never seen again, and torturing them to get information that we know
before we break the first kneecap they may or may not have, we lose any claim to be standing up for the rights, safety, or dignity of people anywhere we go in. We're just another asshole coming around wanting a little taste.
Next, it's happening to American citizens, too. There's this Constitution thing. If it only counts when we want it to count, then it's just another tool of whoever has the power. It protects only those who are rich and powerful enough never to wind up in the basement of some police station, or Quonset hut at Ft. Benning. I guess the rest of us are just fucked.
What makes America awesome is our commitment to the due process of law, our belief that certain rights are not the state's to give, but are never in the province of the state to begin with. Every time someone says: "well, I guess if it's justified, then it's okay" to ignore due process, we knock one brick out of the wall. Who's going to make that decision, that in this case it's okay to violate everything this nation was founded on? Want to give that power to Ted Cruz?
Finally, think about it from the other side. Your father is taken away in handcuffs, a bag hooding his head, and he is never seen or heard from again. Some informant in the village had a grudge. How is he different than someone who lost a relative on 9/11?
I believe we are exceptional. But the thing that makes us exceptional is we have rules, laws, they call them, and we follow them. That, and the fact that we alone claim to be ready to defend those rights wherever they are being ignored. When we cease being exceptional, we are no longer exceptional. We're just a bunch of killers, liars, and thieves, like everybody else.
