My Alleged Last Post on Torture

I heard this last night on 950 am "The Savage Nation"

'These people, crying about terrorists' rights, calling for the end of torture are aiding the enemy' (yawn) 'listen people! torture works! look at Saddam! How do you think a small group of Sunnis kept all those millions of people in line? TORTURE! Intimidation!....'

Where oh where to begin.....let's seeeeee. Ah! One of the things that the neocons screamed in regards to the invasion of the sovereign state of Iraq was the badness of the tyrant - Saddam Hussein (said with a looming dooming tone of voice). He tortured people! We thrust our hands to cover our mouths, eyes shot open! NO! The horror! Hitler-esque references ensued.....and now he's the example? What did I miss? I feel so out of the loop.

I got blasted by several delightful readers saying that I should not be in charge of national security (for those of you wondering, I'm not) and that I don't understand that these are people that want to kill us. Ok. I'm going to backtrack a little here. When email first came out, I made some scathing attacks on some poor souls and I was told that I should never write an email that I would not want published in the newspaper. I will take that a step further. You should never do to others what you would not want done to your mother (or if you don't like her - someone you really like). Over and over, studies and history tell us that when the human person gets into a situation of captor/captive - terrible things occur. Why? Loads of psychological reasons but predominantly because the captive falls in status to less than human in the eyes of the captor. We label - "insurgent" "enemy combatant" "terrorist" "suicide bomber" which erases the individual and shoves him or her into the category of someone trying to hurt maybe not us but someone we love. That person has to be maintained in captivity which results in resentment by the captor, and the captor often will not comply which cases frustration and anger in the captor. Human beings have an affinity for exercising their will on others with less power. It takes a continuous vigilance to keep that instinctive response under control. When you have a captive under your control and you absolutely believe that he/she has information that will save innocent lives, you will do everything in your power to keep that from happening. The problem is - regardless of what you believe them to be, they are human beings and simply because their names end with -sein or -med and they believe in a guy named Mohammad and not Jesus does not mean that they are less than you. It does not mean that they can be categorized as anything but individuals and human beings. Period.

The Savage Nagging again beats the tired and worn out drum of "kick ass!" This rock'em sock'em approach to foreign policy is embarassing. If you are a tiger, fine, rely on animal/primitive behavior to get what you need to survive. But we humans have this incredible ability to reason, at least, most of us do, I think. We can reason, we can work through issues with our minds. Because all that is happening now with the current approach to others is the copious spawning of more people who have lost loved ones violently and whose rage will be far greater than anything we have seen before. Am I afraid? Come on. Moi? I have never been one to back down, but this approach is not working - at all. The instinct to fight or overpower lives in all of us but it is up to us to quell that urge and think. Can two groups of people with polar opposite views live harmoniously in close proximity to one another? Of course, it just takes respect and tolerance. Two things we have yet to demonstrate.

Racism, culturism and classism is running rampant in our schools, physical aggression is on the rise there as well. Why? Take a peek at the examples being set repeatedly by the actions of our leaders. Torture is wrong. Humans living inhumanely is wrong. Let's be the example that we say we are. Surely we can do better than this.