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Originally Posted by garnet
Doesn't that show that we are more "civilized" than they are? War is war, but nobody deserves to be tortured the way those assholes in the beheading videos are torturing people. As the most powerful nation in the world, don't we somehow have an obligation to show the world that that's not the way human beings should act?
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We do have that obligation, but we don't have the obligation to commit suicide to defend the principle.
In the case of Abu Ghraib, I believe that is a war crime, and wrong in so many ways including militarily. I also think that the torture aspect is not the part that the top has to answer to. (They have to answer to a larger crime, in some senses, of not putting enough troops in place to make maintaining a prison a simple matter.) I also wonder whether war crimes may be inevitable, given that it's a horrible job having to be done in inhumane conditions by imperfect humans.
Perhaps I'm biased, too, in that I would kind of enjoy having a boyish woman point and laugh at my genitals while I stand there naked. If only we could cap it off with a drink and a laugh about it. "Hey, thumbs up, ha ha ha." I'm not so enthused about having to be in a pyramid with other naked guys but it would only take me about 2-3 years to reach the point where I could look back it and laugh a little. "I didn't like it, I'm just happy they put Salaam on the bottom row, he was putting on the pounds, you know?" I don't think it would even take therapy to get over that. "Hey they were just having a few yuks for the peeps back home, get in a few shots with the new digicam, you know? Nobody got wood - well except for Omar, but he's hardly got anything anyway, you know?"