Don't infringe on my liberties! My freedom is worth everyone else's! My freedom gives me the right to torture those who may upset my fragile free world!
Apparently, a majority of the people in the freest of the free countries (you know, the freedom lovers, the U.S., U.K., France, etc.), believe that torture can be justified. Even after all we have seen, all the abuses of power, they trust our fearless leaders to make smart choices and only torture those who, you know, had it coming.
Most Americans and a majority of people in Britain, France and South Korea say torturing terrorism suspects is justified at least in rare instances, according to AP-Ipsos polling.
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In America, 61 percent of those surveyed agreed torture is justified at least on rare occasions. Almost nine in 10 in South Korea and just over half in France and Britain felt that way.
I have held out hope....hope that the people who besmirch my good name with torture and unjust wars were just those who had hijacked the country, not the populace whom they "represent." I was fooling myself, it seems. It is obvious now that the thugs in charge represent the populace far better than I had dared to fear, far better than I represent the populace, anyway. My countrymen are sick. They are sick and I am losing ground.
How can I be losing? More and more people are coming around on the Iraq issue, more and more people are starting to realize the world of hurt the rethugs have placed us in. Aren't these all good things? Doesn't this mean we are headed in the right direction, at least?
No...it doesn't. I realize now that I have had it wrong the whole time. My take on the situation was wrong from the start. I was fighting with the idea that most people were rational, if uninformed or naïve, people who, given a clear choice, would choose something that truly follows all the values they claim to love and adhere to. They couldn't help but choose it, not if they truly believed in all they claimed to. Love, justice, freedom, liberty, everything else that the western world touts at every chance....if they really valued them, wouldn't they choose to uphold them when given a clear choice?
Some may be thinking, "Well, look at how many people went in for the Iraq disasterbacle. Of course people won't choose what is truly best." In that case, however, there was so much lying, so much propaganda, that one might actually believe we were doing the right thing by going in there. I'm not one of those people, and never have been, but at least I could understand why people chose to believe the lies, to drink the kool-aid. If you didn't know any better, the story did make sense. Those of us who did know what a crock of shit Iraq was destined to be look at those people with a mixture of pity and disgust, but we'll still welcome them into our camp should they decide to open their eyes. They made a bad choice, but we understand why they did it. Some people just don't know any better. They are like children who do something unbelievably stupid. We don't cast the children out on their own when they make a mistake, we try to help them learn what the mistake was. Sure, we may be mad as hell that the mistake was made, but, hey, we're dealing with children here!
But these aren't children, and I was wrong to believe they were worth trying to teach. Children are worth teaching, these people are, I see now, not. Why? Because this isn't a "fuzzy" issue like Iraq was (it wasn't!!)...this is a clear question with a clear answer. This is a "with us or against us" ultimatum: Do you support torture, yes or no?
This is the clear question and answer that finally made the issue clear to me. This question might as well be, "Can you be trusted to make sound decisions regarding our country and its place in the world in the years to come?" If you answered yes to the torture question, your answer is a resounding NO!! to this question.
I had hoped that the turning of opinion on Iraq was due to all of the pain and suffering we are causing...but it isn't that....people are worried about the money and the lives of our soldiers. Everything else, they could give a shit about. When I see that this many people support torture, I see our society in ruins. When we can't even be trusted to choose correctly on this issue, how can we be trusted to maintain a society worth being a part of?
Answer the question yourself. Do you support torture? There is no grey area. If you think, "Well, sometimes torture can be justified," then you are in the "Yes" group.