[BigV]

Originally Posted by mrnoodle

If an enemy has information that you need to keep your own people alive or help them win the war, at what point do you stop trying to extract that information? Can we only question the willing? If we catch someone planting a roadside IED and want to know where he got it, who from, and how many more there are, what are our options? Ask once (nicely, don't verbally assault the poor man), then shrug our shoulders and leave when he tells us to go fuck ourselves?

I think it may depend on who you're torturing. Sounds barbaric, but in every otherwise civilized nation, there are people who work as blunt instruments, who use unsavory methods to get information that that country needs. That, to me anyway, strikes a different moral tone than a militia group who breaks the fingers of anyone who doesn't like them.

/waves white flag/

Parley? Ok.

If an enemy has information that you need to keep your own people alive or help them win the war, at what point do you stop trying to extract that information?

This is a good question, THE question, really. You sidestepped my question and riposted with another of your own. Ok, I'll try to answer yours. I would apply the same amount of pressure I would want applied to my guys were the situation reversed. I realize I'm repeating myself. Your absurd sarcastic example of asking once, nicely, then quitting is unhelpful.

If we catch someone planting a roadside IED and want to know where he got it, who from, and how many more there are, what are our options?

Hey, let’s follow this for a minute…You caught the guy! Hoo-ah! Your further questions are good ones, just freeze frame that image for a second. Let’s say one of our troops is caught—certainly not planting an IED, but captured on patrol. The group of people holding him are for sure marked men. We don’t leave anyone behind. And these men want to know the movements of the patrols in the area since they’re certain people on their side are in grave peril from our military might. With me so far? Ok, They got our guy and they want information from him. Now I would like to pose your question to you: What are their options?

I think it may depend on who you're torturing. Sounds barbaric, but in every otherwise civilized nation, there are people who work as blunt instruments, who use unsavory methods to get information that that country needs. That, to me anyway, strikes a different moral tone than a militia group who breaks the fingers of anyone who doesn't like them.

This, this provoked the hypocrisy charge, and you know it. It depends?! Yeah, I guess in some chicken-shit lawyerly way it could depend. I mean, my pain threshold is different from, say, my kids. But I think even you don't mean that kind of scenario. You and me, we're talking soldiers and soldiers. Right? Right.

You're right on another count: it does sound barbaric, for a good reason, it is barbaric. What’s unsavory? Um, breaking fingers of anyone who dislikes them? What the hell does that mean? It is clear that when to sides are in opposition, each would reasonably cast itself as the good side and the other, the ENEMY. I bet you can understand that the other side does the same and sees us in the role of the ENEMY. Now what behavior is ok for us to do to the enemy but not ok for the enemy to do to us?

Name ONE, I defy you.

Uh huh. Thought so.

Don’t try that childish he hit me first crap either—it works no better now than when you were eight. Know why you can’t? Because we have, for want of a better phrase, higher standards. Those higher standards almost certainly represent an additional burden for our side, self-imposed tactical and strategic limitations we impose and accept for the very reason we got into this cluster flop in the first place. We imagine, for good reason, that our way is better. But the ends do not justify the means. If that were the case, why not just nuke’em all and let God sort them out? No? What’s your objection? Materialistic—destroys too much of what we want to conserve? Inhumane—kill all for the trouble of the few? Economic--*snorts*! If you object, and perhaps you may not, why do you object?

Although they are not used on the battlefield, the concepts I learned in church have traction here. Mercy, compassion. To love one’s neighbor, to love one’s enemy, to turn the other cheek are so sublimely and universally true that they utterly transcend the bounds of the western culture in which I learned them. Between nations, these truths wear the clothes of diplomacy. Even if it is in our nation’s interest to destroy our enemies, torture is NOT the answer.

Thousands upon thousands dead, year after year, in the name of destroying an enemy. Abraham Lincoln knew something of enemies, war, compassion and humanity: “Am I not destroying my enemies when I make friends of them?” Destroyed indeed, utterly destroyed.