Torture And Morality

Oh my God! Who’da thunk it? Sarin gas found in Iraq…

I suppose now the thing that the media people and the anti-war people and the anti-Bush people will be saying is something like, “Well it was only ONE artillery shell filled with nerve gas. It wasn’t like we found a couple tons of the stuff.”

While that may be true for the time being, it is one more piece of evidence that there IS WMD’s in Iraq somewhere.

I heard a bit of a story today that kind of has to do with the whole search for WMD’s. Back in World War I the Germans built some HUGE cannons (I believe the number was seven, although I may be mistaken) that they used to pound France from enormous distances. These cannons were over 130 feet long and actually had to be moved by train cars because of their size.

With the sheer size of these cannons, a person would think that trying to hide or dismantle these things with any degree of secrecy would be a bit difficult. But you know what? Nearly a century later not a single one of those have been found anywhere (which wasn’t for lack of trying).

Anyhow, I was thinking again today about the people who are so “outraged,” at least on the outside, about the whole “prisoner abuse” thing in Iraq. I’ve been pondering those who actually are angry about the moral side of the issue and aren’t just trying to make a deal out of it because they hate the President and will do anything to try and take him out.

When the people who founded the United States began fighting the British for our independence, warfare was waged much different than it has been in modern years. In those days wars were fought in a “gentlemanly” way. The opposing sides would form battle lines and face each other on a field in full view of each other. They would then shoot at each other until one side decided to charge and thus the whole mix would go wild.

After trying that a few times against the British, who arguably had one of the most well-trained and well-equipped army’s of the time, the American rebels were getting their butts kicked. They needed to try something new.

So a few American commanders decided to try guerilla tactics. They would hide behind cover and take shots at the British while the British stood in the open. They also would intentionally try to take out the British commanders first, which was also something that wasn’t done in a “gentleman’s war.”

The war which pitted American farmers and businessmen against what was one of the era’s superpowers was a new kind of war. As such, the American soldiers resorted to new tactics that not only weren’t commonly used, but were also looked upon as brutal, immoral, and even criminal by those who were supposedly more “civilized.”

When 9/11 happened, a new kind of war forced itself on America. This is a war in which the enemy sees no distinction between soldier and civilian, and in fact prefers targeting civilians. This is a war in which there is little or no warning how or when or where the enemy will strike, because their tactics and methods are limited only by their imaginations. This is a war in which the enemy cannot be negotiated with or talked down because the biggest gripe they have with us is the fact that we exist and they think they have a mandate from God telling them to kill us, and promising them a reward if they do.

As with the revolutionary war, this is a new type of warfare. Although there are certain places in the world where our enemies tend to coagulate, and thus we are attempting to fight them over there on their soil instead of our own, there are no clearly defined battlefields. In fact, any place on earth has the potential for being the site of the next battle or skirmish.

Due to the nature of this new kind of war and the nature of our enemies, I think that perhaps a change of tactics is once again necessary in order to achieve victory. Some of these changes (such as torturing and humiliating prisoners in order to get information in an effort to save the lives of our own people) may be viewed as immoral at the time, but may someday become normal, common practice.

Is it really worth allowing our enemies to wound and kill our people and our allies simply because we are afraid of losing our “moral high ground” or “becoming like them?” Are those who purposely wound and kill civilians, and call it war, even worthy of protecting once we capture them?

The more I think about it, the more I don’t have any problems with us humiliating or REALLY torturing people who we catch that may have information we need (if they aren’t willing to volunteer that information).

Liberals and democrats have tried to blame President Bush for the fact that 9/11 happened. They have tried to paint him as an irresponsible retard who was sitting in an elementary schoolroom while terrorists were crashing planes into buildings (instead of knowing ahead of time what was going to happen from the official White House Psychic, then finding a way onto those planes to personally kick some ass like any REAL leader would have done…).

The thing of it is that he WAS in a classroom full of kids. He wasn’t in a room full of military advisors, he wasn’t thinking of ways to piss off groups of people-he was going about his daily life, as was I, and as was anyone who reads this.

We weren’t the ones who started this, and I can think of no good reason to feel any bit of pity for whatever befalls the people who attacked us and began a fight that they cannot win. I feel no pity for those who face hardships and danger because they protect or aid these terrorists. I feel no pity for those whose lives are made considerably more difficult because they have information that can help us catch these people, but don’t give it to us. I feel no pity for those who claim that the face of their religion is tarnished because the terrorists use their religion as a façade to hide their hatred behind, yet these “peaceful” Muslims who cry so loudly that they are misunderstood suddenly lose their voices when it comes time to denounce the terrorists publicly and tell the world that the terrorists aren’t real Muslims (how was that for a run-on sentence?).

Once again I’ve delved into politics and all that. I really wasn’t trying to, but I suppose it beats writing poems about dying or sitting here cutting on myself, or any of the thousand of worse things I could be doing.

Also once again, no cool lyrics.