The following is a letter that I will be sending both by email and by snail mail to my representatives. Please feel free to use any or all of it to do the same. We need to let our representatives know that; NO, AMERICA DOES NOT TORTURE!
I was almost in tears of frustration as I was writing this. I really can't understand how things could have gone this far...
We have allowed a black soot to settle on our shining city.
It is disgusting that we are EVEN debating whether or not we should torture. We are the Shining City on the Hill. We are the example that the rest of the world looks up to. Geneva Conventions or not, the thought of torture should never even flit like a black shadow across our minds. There is no debate. The answer is unequivocal; NO, AMERICA DOES NOT TORTURE!
At least, it should be.
I think I agree with Bush, but not in the way he would want. If there is ANY question in the minds of our soldiers, our officials, our people, about what is or is not torture, then I think yes, we need to better define what torture is. We need to define it in such a way that makes it absolutely clear that causing physical or mental pain is not in any way acceptable. That desecration of a person's social or religious principals is not in any way acceptable. That sending, giving, or otherwise allowing other countries to perform such actions on our behalf, is not in any way acceptable.
The argument that we need to allow torture in order to protect our country and our way of life is a non-argument. Our way of life is to take the moral high road, our country is as much the ideals embodied in our Bill of Rights and Constitution, as it is the land and the people who live in it. If we loose our principals, we loose our country.
In allowing torture, the USA ceases to be the USA. We remain the America in name only, but we loose our soul. We become a disturbing doppelganger, an Uncle Sam with hollow eyes. We have failed our fore fathers and their founding ideals of Life, Liberty, & The Pursuit of Happiness. On the world stage we join the list of disgraceful countries that allow torture, most of which we call dictatorships, and rogue nations. We have fallen from our pedestal as the world's superpower to a new position as the world's biggest bully.
A world in which the USA uses torture, is not a world I want to leave to my children, it is not a country that I want to leave to my children, it is not a stigma I want to leave to my children. Future generations will look at this as the darkest days of our country's history.
Yes we have our problems; race problems, class problems, education and health care problems. Yes we were attacked by an enemy that is amorphous, that will require tactics different from those we traditionally use. We have atrocious acts in our past, and questionable leaders in our present. These are not reasons to set American principles aside. We can not, no matter our past, no matter our present, stop leading the world on theway forward to that Shining City on the Hill.