The US Senate has decided that “torturing” TERRORIST captives is in violation of the Geneva Convention and the US Constitution.
What they don’t say is: What constitutes torture?
To a TERRORIST holding prisoners, torture is where they begin. You know: eye gouging, fingernail pulling etcetera.
To the West, it’s forcing a prisoner to sit naked in a cold room listening to loud bad music. In my case, I hate eating coconuts. So I guess forcing me to do so would be a form of torture too.
One of the leaders of this anti-torture issue is Senator John McCain who would very much like to be the next President of the United States of America.
McCain’s single claim to fame was that he was a long held prisoner by the North Vietnamese, where according to him, he was routinely subjected to torture, which I have no reason to doubt.
As a US Senator, there is very little that makes McCain in any way outstanding, other than he seems to be all over the board on just about every popular issue.
But this Editorial is not about McCain or anyone else like him who wants American authorities to be gentle with TRERRORISTS.
It’s about tying the hands of America’s fighting men and women when it comes to battling an evil implacable foe sworn to murder Americans, and utterly destroy those democratic tools which define the Secular West.
I won’t bother delving into the Geneva Convention which has no provision for stateless TERRORISTS.
Nor will I expound on the part of the Convention that allows for the outright execution of enemy combatants who fight out of uniform.
But I will focus on common sense.
If someone I loved would be killed or maimed by a TERRORIST, because John McCain, or anyone else like him forbade the authorities from doing whatever it took to extract information from a captive TERRORIST, I would hold McCain, or whomever else, personally responsible for that loved-one’s demise.
The fact that we are fighting an enemy without nationality, or regard for any rules of war seems to be lost on many of the people in government who make the decisions that have the greatest effect on our security.
I would ask McCain and the others who share his sentiments: What they would have done to a captured TERRORIST had they known that the information they could have squeezed out of him (her) could have prevented 9/11?
I would ask. But I would be frightened to hear the Politically Correct answer.
I do not suggest for a moment that we should condone torture, especially the brand of physical coercion that is practiced by our TERRORIST enemies.
But I have no problem in doing whatever has to be done to stop them before they murder us again. In other words: Torture as a means of interrogation should not be a policy. But nor should it be totally ruled out regardless of the situation.
And just as important to the debate over torture is this question: What really constitutes torture?
In my opinion, being forced to sit naked in a cold room listening to bad music doesn’t come close.
I also don’t draw lines of equivalence between us and our TERRORIST enemies in as much as: If they can do it. So can we.
This type of thinking would only serve to make us as evil as them. And if that was the case, what principles of value would we be fighting for?
But, to subscribe to rules that put all of us in jeopardy because we want to show that we are better than them, is nothing short of absolute stupidity.
It’s not as if I’ll sleep better knowing that I’m a finer person than them because I won’t support any form of coercive interrogation, if within that knowledge, I would be placing into severe risk people who should otherwise be protected.
For all the American political “warriors” who don’t want the USA to get its hands dirty fighting a dirty enemy, all I can say to them is this:
You can’t clean-out a sewage pipe without somehow getting into the crud. And as much as we don’t want to stink like “them”, we better be prepared to get as dirty as necessary if we truly want us and our way of life to survive.
One Comment
As we notice that there is another clear but secret way that obama is using to get his wishes done. Through the various departments of which I want to see nearly all of these bureaucratic department removed. They are like civilians used to shield Hamas. State Department doing nothing during the Benghazi attack; the IRS intimidating conservative grassroots organizations; now this FAA action against Israel all orchestrated by this Hamas president, who has great-hands for the Muslim Brotherhood.
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