Why America Shouldn't Torture: Sheik Issa
One of 22 sheiks in the UAE has been captured on a 45 minute video brutally torturing a man who may have owed him about $5,000. Our dept. of state had to issue the very milquetoast statement that it “urges all governments to fully investigate allegations of criminal acts”.
Not only is that statement weak for a crime of this magnitude, but it’s also BS. There’s a 45 minute tape. There’s no allegation here, just fact. But the American government has been torturing people in our name and has clearly sacrificed the moral authority to condemn these acts.
And before you start arguing that we aren’t as bad as Sheik Issa, you should know that the Sheik’s victim lived, unlike some of our “detainees”.
Yeah, we don’t do many of those things on the tape. But we clearly shouldn’t be doing anything even remotely like them either. Don’t we want to be able to condemn this behavior without hypocrisy? Wouldn’t you rather that your government do nothing even vaguely like the torture in that tape instead of perfecting the science of suffering to the point that we can be less brutal while inflicting maximum suffering?
-cyranicles
P.S. This was cross-posted on a website frequented by conservatives, thus the tone might seem a little unusual for this blog. Thanks for reading.
