Post by Harkovast on Jan 26, 2017 21:34:09 GMT
Look Donald Trump is horrible and awful and a lot of his plans are demonstrably terrible ideas.
This gets over stated so much that it feels really redundant to state it, like its doing more to signal what side you are on than you actually convey information.
For this reason, I probably don't lay into Trump as much as a lot of people, I guess because everything I could say has already been said.
In fact, often the rush to condemn everything he says and does can get so overly eager that the seriously bad things he does and says get drowned out.
When people are freaking because he said it stopped raining at hte start of his speech when REALLY it stopped raining part way through, we kind of lose the wood for the trees.
But I want to just lay something out, that to me is a REALLY serious bad thing Trump is doing that needs a light shined on it.
Trump is bringing back torture.
To be fair it never completely went away. Obama cut it back but things like isolation, stress positions and anal feeding tubes all continued.
But Trump wants to go right back to the days of hte Bush administration, when inflicting pain and injury to try and get info was normal operating procedure.
Torture is terrible. It's weird that I have to even explain that but since 9/11 I kinda do.
Its a horrendous moral evil that no country claiming to be civilised should take part in.
And I'm not being smug at Americans over this! The UK and plenty of other countries were happy to play along with passing on info or prisoners to assist the Americans in getting this done.
But even if one truly has no morals an no shame (insert Trump comment here) torture DOESN'T work.
Yeah don't trust 24, that show is not a documentary!
Torture is useful for getting people to say what you want, but thats the problem. Under torture you can get people to say ANYTHING! If you 'break' someone, you put them in a state where they will just say whatever they think their capture wants in order to make the suffering stop.
There are plenty of very effective ways to interrogate people, based around building bonds and persuading them.
Hurting then till they agree is only useful for getting forced confessions.
Also it gives enemy combatants an insentive to fight harder. Why would you surrender, knowing you will be tortured horribly? The promise of being well treated makes people lay down their arms, the promise of suffering makes them fight on!
And of course there is the fact that once you declare torture okay, it makes it okay for the other side too.
People often forget that Iraq insurgents didnt' initially behead prisoners. That only started as a response to pictures that cmae out of American troops sexually humiliating and abusing Iraqi men.
The tactics of ISIS did not spring out of thin air, they evolved from what happened in Iraq. America fed that fire.
Obama had a chance to stop us getting here.
He could have prosecuted the people responsible for torture under Bush, and carried out his promises for shutting guantanamo bay.
But just like when he didn't punish a single banker for the great crash, he didn't punish a single person that was behind the torture of prisoners.
He and others like him thought they could sweep torture under the rug nad forget about it, that we needed to "look forward".
But becuase those crimes went unpunished, they are about to be repeated.
One of the most shameful chapters is in Americans history in my life time is about to get reopened, and Trump is already putting this terrible evil into motion.
I guess these are the times we're living in.
This gets over stated so much that it feels really redundant to state it, like its doing more to signal what side you are on than you actually convey information.
For this reason, I probably don't lay into Trump as much as a lot of people, I guess because everything I could say has already been said.
In fact, often the rush to condemn everything he says and does can get so overly eager that the seriously bad things he does and says get drowned out.
When people are freaking because he said it stopped raining at hte start of his speech when REALLY it stopped raining part way through, we kind of lose the wood for the trees.
But I want to just lay something out, that to me is a REALLY serious bad thing Trump is doing that needs a light shined on it.
Trump is bringing back torture.
To be fair it never completely went away. Obama cut it back but things like isolation, stress positions and anal feeding tubes all continued.
But Trump wants to go right back to the days of hte Bush administration, when inflicting pain and injury to try and get info was normal operating procedure.
Torture is terrible. It's weird that I have to even explain that but since 9/11 I kinda do.
Its a horrendous moral evil that no country claiming to be civilised should take part in.
And I'm not being smug at Americans over this! The UK and plenty of other countries were happy to play along with passing on info or prisoners to assist the Americans in getting this done.
But even if one truly has no morals an no shame (insert Trump comment here) torture DOESN'T work.
Yeah don't trust 24, that show is not a documentary!
Torture is useful for getting people to say what you want, but thats the problem. Under torture you can get people to say ANYTHING! If you 'break' someone, you put them in a state where they will just say whatever they think their capture wants in order to make the suffering stop.
There are plenty of very effective ways to interrogate people, based around building bonds and persuading them.
Hurting then till they agree is only useful for getting forced confessions.
Also it gives enemy combatants an insentive to fight harder. Why would you surrender, knowing you will be tortured horribly? The promise of being well treated makes people lay down their arms, the promise of suffering makes them fight on!
And of course there is the fact that once you declare torture okay, it makes it okay for the other side too.
People often forget that Iraq insurgents didnt' initially behead prisoners. That only started as a response to pictures that cmae out of American troops sexually humiliating and abusing Iraqi men.
The tactics of ISIS did not spring out of thin air, they evolved from what happened in Iraq. America fed that fire.
Obama had a chance to stop us getting here.
He could have prosecuted the people responsible for torture under Bush, and carried out his promises for shutting guantanamo bay.
But just like when he didn't punish a single banker for the great crash, he didn't punish a single person that was behind the torture of prisoners.
He and others like him thought they could sweep torture under the rug nad forget about it, that we needed to "look forward".
But becuase those crimes went unpunished, they are about to be repeated.
One of the most shameful chapters is in Americans history in my life time is about to get reopened, and Trump is already putting this terrible evil into motion.
I guess these are the times we're living in.
