Friday, September 29, 2006

Water-boarding 101

All you people who are still thinking about voting Republican this fall, this is what you're voting for. Do you really think this is the way to win hearts and minds?

I understand the mindset of those who think that voting for Democrats is voting for the equally unthinkable slaughter of innocent babies. But get this through your thick skulls people: the difference between these two situations is that not everyone agrees that a fetus is a baby. It's fine for you to believe it. Don't have an abortion. Use your right to free speech to try to convince others to not have abortions. More power to you. The fewer abortions there are the better off the world will be. But you do not have a right to use force-- you may not bomb abortion clinics, you may not shoot doctors, you may not use the government's power to imprison people -- to impose your beliefs upon others. That is what terrorists do. We don't do that. That is what makes us the good guys.

You right-wingnuts have no idea what the opposite extreme on abortion looks like because no one believes in the opposite extreme. The opposite extreme from illegal abortion is not legal abortion, it is forced abortion, an extreme from which every sane person rightly recoils. Voting for someone who condones torture in order to avoid voting for someone who wants to make abortion legal is no less abhorrent. These are not terrorists we are torturing, they are terror suspects and they are human beings. And many of them are innocent. And if you vote Republican this November their blood will be on your hands. May God forgive you.

11 comments:

Some Yahoo said...

In Nazi Germany, not everyone agreed that Jews were human beings either. You could say "Well, you may think I'm murdering 6 million people, but I disagree".

That said: I beleive abortion is murder. I beleive that bombing others (even to make that point) is: A. Also murder, and B. counterproductive to the cause.

But truth, real absolute truth, is not subject to the opinions of the masses. Murder is murder, no matter how many people vote that it isn't.

It is also morally wrong to take money from those who believe as I do and use it to promote or provide abortion.

blogwart said...

Ah, and there is another reason, why torture - the use of force in order to get information from the suspect - should be abandoned completely: It simply doesn't work well enough!

Yes. Not only is it cruel and sadistic, it's also highly inefficient. Any person with a little instinct of self preservation left, will try to get out of the torture by making things up!

Jesup said...

Exactly - the Canadian who was "renditioned" to Syria by mistake was tortured for months until he confessed to training in Al Quaeda camps in Afganistan - but, surprise, he never has been to Afganistan. Someone being tortured will eventually either a) die, b) go insane, or c) say anything to make it stop - sometimes the truth, but most often whatever makes the torturer stop, which is usually telling them what they want to hear (since if the truth doesn't match what they want to hear, they assume it's a lie and keep torturing). And often they'll implicate people either suggested by the torturer, or other innocent people they know. Leading, surprise, to more cycles of the same.

Chris Coles said...

Whether it is a bond between two individuals; to work together, hunt together, marry each other, or between organizations, even whole countries – each in turn submits to the simple process of one side saying what they believe is in the interest of the other party; and the other agrees to agree or not. Each is free to make any offer, the other is free to accept or reject that offer.

The rules are very clear; Caveat Emptor, the buyer beware. The moment you accept the deal you have to submit to it. On the other hand, no matter what the deal on offer, no matter how good the price may appear to be, the other party is totally free to refuse the deal.

In the free world, that ends the matter. If the offering party wishes to try again, they are free to make a new offer, but what they cannot do is force the issue. Any attempt to force the issue is against the law in any free country. You may not blackmail someone into agreeing. You cannot hit them, attack them, not even verbally if by so doing you infringe their right to not be defamed or libeled against. We seem to have forgotten why all these aspects of our free society are there in the first place. They are there to protect the weaker party from an imposed deal.

Anyone doing anything to weaken that basic principle has no interest in the concept of a free country. None.

www.BNIinvestigations.com said...
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www.BNIinvestigations.com said...
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Peter DeWeese said...

You use very creative logic. You are comparing apples and oranges and show a very narrow path. If we follow your path, we are supposed to believe that the blood of many enemies and some innocents will be on our hands if we vote for Republicans. My question is this: Are the Democrats any better? The Republicans are condoning going too far, but the Democrats condone cowardice. Osama Bin Laden praised Clinton when we ran from Somalia and said that the act emboldened terrorists who then knew that the U.S. were paper tigers. At that time, the Republicans didn't want to nation-build a country unless it was in our interests. The taliban then counted on us having paper tigers. Iran counts on this today. Saddam counted on this when he thumbed his nose at his own capitulation terms from the first Iraq war and every U.N. resolution passed afterwards. By your logic the blood of those who have died as a result (USS Cole, 9-11, Iraq invasion) would be on the hands of people who vote for Democrats. Luckily your logic is flawed. That blood is on the hands of terrorists and despots, and unfortunately also the many desperate people who they controlled. Just as the Republican party has not tortured people, the Democrats did not directly aid the terrorists. What you are right about is that we have to vote for a platform, even though we have judgements for each seperate issue. For someone who believes that fetuses are children deserving protection of life, it makes sense for them to weigh that against everything else in the Republican platform. With each candidate, I pick the lesser of two evils.

TheBFmly said...

While I support YOUR right to have an abortion, I don't want my taxes to pay for it. Why should Americans be forced to support ideas which they find morally reprehensible? Taxes which pay for education, public infrasturcture and safety are no brainers, but when idealogical programs are forced down the throats of everyone, something's got to give. And I for one am sick of giving.

Ron said...

While I support YOUR right to have an abortion, I don't want my taxes to pay for it.

Hm, I didn't even realize that there still were taxpayer funded abortions. The more I think about it the more I come to the conclusion that it's a really bad idea. I wrote earlier:

The opposite extreme from illegal abortion is not legal abortion, it is forced abortion, an extreme from which every sane person rightly recoils.

Forced financial support of abortion seems to be not so far removed from that extreme. If we liberals are going to argue that the right to abortion is based on the right to privacy then the whole thing ought to be kept, well, private. If we want poor women to have access to abortions then we need to step up to the plate and provide that through the private sector, not the government.

lexoteric said...

If you've read "Freakonomics", there's a section in there about the correlation between legalizing abortion and the leveling off of the crime rate increase. If this is, in fact, a direct event->result case, and unwanted children often grow up to commit crime, then from a purely economic standpoint, we would be using fewer tax dollars on the abortion than in welfare to support the raising of the unwanted child, stepping up law enforcement, the judicial fees and reparations to victims. Not a pretty thought, but if you're worried about value per tax dollar, it's worth mulling over.

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