Release of 2,100 Photos of US Soldiers Brutalizing Iraqi/Afghan Prisoners may threaten National Secu

[Shogoll]

[QUOTE=Xystus234;45910236]You see, the problem with your argument though is that the conventions were routinely followed in almost every single war till then with the exception of the Vietnam War. We didn't torture German prisoners during WWII, nor did we do so in any other war aside from the Iraq War and the Vietnam war. And we still won all of those wars. The fact of the matter is that torturing people doesn't help, doesn't do anything but make people talk - and say anything they want. There's[I] far more efficient methods[/I] of getting more relevant information, and the fact of the matter is that to [U]rationalize[/U] torture as acceptable and normal is not only morally wrong, but unacceptable. It goes against our own principles and to say that "people will be people" is absolutely correct, it doesn't change the fact that it shouldn't be an offense worthy of discipline, so that when people do these horrible things and get disciplined they're made an example so that unacceptable behaviour doesn't happen and tarnish our image. To rationalize something absolutely horrid as acceptable when there's absolutely no reason to do so with far better alternatives is dumb.

And frankly, this whole torture-is-acceptable thing that has happened in the wake of 9/11 is not only wrong, it's a fucking rationalization made after the terrorist attacks to justify cruelty against our opponents, despicable as they might be. To see it as anything else is delusional. Before 9/11, nobody would have even begin to make the suggestion that torture was justifiable. Save lives? Sure, maybe that bullshit they're spewing while their ass is getting a broom shoved up has some relevance, but don't even tell me that you couldn't find the same thing out by simple investigation, mental probing, or psychological pressure.[/QUOTE]

I think the main difference separating the Iraq/Vietnam war aside from all the other wars is the mutual respect present in more conventional warfare vs asymmetrical warfare. It's one thing in a conventional war when you know who your enemy is, and conflict is a rather straightforward affair, and there is knowledge that your treatment of POWs will to an extent be mirrored by the opposing country's treatment of POWs, versus asymmetrical/guerrilla warfare where you don't even know exactly who the enemy is, and everyone is a potential enemy. The whole aspect of asymmetrical warfare being centered around not playing by the rules also comes into effect, where treating enemy POWs doesn't guarantee proper treatment of your own captured soldiers. The effect of that is easy to see in WWII's eastern front, where the Russians and Germans basically fucking hated each other and had no issues treating each other's POWs rather brutally.

I don't believe that torture is rational or justified, but I think to think of the soldiers directly responsible for the abuse as "bad apples" or specifically criminal in nature severely undermines the message we should be taking away from these incidents.

When you cloak yourself in a false sense of security thinking "I'd never do anything barbaric as that" is when you leave yourself the most open to doing terrible acts in the name of good. Rather than looking down on the guards like they're inherently worse people than we are, it's far more effective to realize that what they did is well within the capacity of any person. Rather than assuming all soldiers are inherently morally perfect actors, oversight and safeguards should be implemented to prevent these kinds of incidents from occurring ever again. This is reform that needs to be implemented at a far higher level than punishing individual soldiers or prisons. Punishing the soldiers when by this point they are likely to have realized the wrongness of their actions does nothing to help fix the underlying problem.

[Rofl_copter]

some of the guys in that photo on the article look so fat and rear echelon it's ridiculous