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Amnesty International condemns U.S. failure to act on torture report

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TheDemSocialist

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Read more @: Amnesty International condemns U.S. failure to act on torture report

As always, direct human rights violations that the US condemns in other countries, but once we find ourselves partaking in such actions, is swept under the rug. US politicians release the study, but once it comes to actually taking action on their findings, its quietly silent. Obama wont convict or even further investigate the study, it just quietly put under the rug where Americans will forget about it. How can you "promote human rights overseas" when your own forces cant even uphold them? How can you "promote human rights overseas" when your own country wont even protect the others the US imprisons?
 

Obama doesn't want to torture anyone. He doesn't want to capture anyone. He'd rather just drone them to death.
 
sawdust said:
Obama doesn't want to torture anyone. He doesn't want to capture anyone. He'd rather just drone them to death.
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Exactly my point. Even his own citizens without due process. And we are the authority to say what is just or not?
 
TheDemSocialist said:
Exactly my point. Even his own citizens without due process. And we are the authority to say what is just or not?
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Here's the way I feel. Amnesty International is not an organization I would look to when we are involved in war. While I wish war was never necessary, if it is to be fought, I am not in favor of rules of engagement which put our troops in danger. I think that if war happens, we should use the full might of our military to do whatever is necessary to make it short. Then, when possible, we should just leave, with the understanding that if the wrong things happen in our absence, we'll be back. In this way, it will be understood that we mean what we say, will back it up and we could avoid conflict because our words are backed by action.

Therefore, I don't care what Amnesty thinks.
 

What happens when we are essentially an occupying force? Insurgent and or guerilla attacks? Iraq can be an example, Vietnam, etc? What happens when we are essentially not wanted? What about reasoning for war? How far does this "full might of our military" expand?
 

Under my beliefs of the use of military force, we would not occupy anything. I said that I believe we should fight to win by any means and then leave. In Afghanistan, my war would have been over in a month, then we'd leave and let the Afgans figure it out.

When I say full might, I would commit one hundred percent of our conventional military assets. Nuclear assets are only a deterrent, used as leverage against other nuclear powers.

Our military is the strongest in the world and the only countries who could give us a match are China and Russia. In the Middle East we've fought wars of attrition which are wars in which we loose in public opinion. I would avoid wars of attrition at all cost.
 

How? How do you realistically fight a force that hides in rural ares (oftten rugged covered areas), adapts to the population, wins a lot of the populations support? What does this actually mean? Is a simple bombing run on Talibani camps it? Or more? What?
 


Promoting peace isn't always the same as promoting human rights.
 

AI is brave when condemning America....
 
TheDemSocialist said:
How dare you criticize 'Murica! 'Murica is never deserving of criticism!
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I wasn't. I was mocking this brave organization standing against America cause ya know, we're soooo scary and dangerous to dissenters.
 
sawdust said:
Obama doesn't want to torture anyone. He doesn't want to capture anyone. He'd rather just drone them to death.
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Oh he wants to do both. The only difference is, we used to torture directly and we used to do extraordinary rendition so someone else could torture people for us. Now we just do the latter, but not the former. It isn't really an improvement, it just adds a layer of deniability.
 
MrVicchio said:
I wasn't. I was mocking this brave organization standing against America cause ya know, we're soooo scary and dangerous to dissenters.
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Have you not seen the videos of what happens to protestors? Police beat protestors, its just that idiots pretend it is justified, because it isn't happening to them. Is the American government as overtly violent towards its own people as many dictatorships? Of course not. Firstly because our government has far more sophisticated methods of control. However, even when those break down, and our government does use violence, they keep the violence hidden from public view.
 

Its... a CONSPIRACY!
 


We rolled through Kuwait and Into Iraq in Gulf 1 stopping short of Bagdad, which at the time I thought was the right thing to do. We rolled through Bagdad in Gulf 2. We should have stopped there and declared victory and left. If Hussain had come back to power, he would have been our lap dog because of the threat we posed. Protracted war with no popular local support is not something we can ever win. We should never make our goal killing an individual with an army. Israeli's do it right. We are big and clumsy.
 
MrVicchio said:
Its... a CONSPIRACY!
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Is it? Where does the conspiracy come in? Of course there is no conspiracy. You just have no argument to make, so you fall back on mindless attempts to distract from the issue, because nowhere in my post did I ever imply or state a conspiracy was taking place. However, if you don't think it is happening, here is some evidence to the contrary.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OQy-psNy2L4


How about this one? Clearly the protestors initiate the violence here!! :roll:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B_f06VQOkI4

We live in a virtual police state, but surveillance, self policing, and propaganda are the main tools of control. Violence is only used under particular circumstances. Especially when they can beat peaceful protestors and people like you won't care. I mean the dirty hippies deserve it anyways, right!!
 


How would that have possibly been any better? We should have never gone in. That is the only reasonable answer. And under a circumstance where going in is a foregone conclusion, having a competent plan for how to deal with a post-war Iraq, and implementing that plan, would be the only option. Instead there not only wasn't a competent plan, there was actually no plan at all. That is not hyperbole or an exaggeration, but simply a statement of fact. We didn't even have a plan for how to secure the country after the war, let alone rebuild it. Instead we allowed Paul Bremer to act with carte blanche and he made calamitous decision after calamitous decision (De-Ba'athification, was probably the most incompetent decision, where any person with any affiliation to the Ba'ath party was removed from government positions, even if they were school teachers. That decision basically jumpstarted the insurgency and isolated Iraqs Sunni population. A move whose consequences are still being felt today). After that point, we hastily imposed a government of entirely incompetent Iraqis, and then tried to avoid political catastrophe in Iraq to bolster Bush's election campaign. We didn't have a real coherent plan for securing Iraq until 2006-2007. So not only was invading at all a terrible idea, we handled the post-war situation just about as badly as was possible.
 

But Israel is essentially an occupying power controlling what and who can enter both the West Bank and Gaza strip. And its also going to be very hard to convince many people that we should just do what you described in Iraq, because now apparently many on the right wing thought we should of stayed and occupied Iraq for a very long time.
 

You have emergency stores of tin foil on hand dont you?
 

Israel has been attacked by it's many adversaries every day since 1948. They occupy more area than they were originally granted by Balfour, but such are the spoils of war. That area is no longer occupied territory, it's part of Israel.
 

The point is that we need an intelligent, consistent military and foreign policy. Quite unlike the one we currently have. We should not only talk, we should do. We should be good to our word and understand who are friends and enemies are. Also unlike the policies we currently have. I am totally opposed to wars of occupation and protracted conflict. Our military is so strong that properly used occupation and protraction should be unnecessary. I could care less and believe that we should not be involved in nation building. We should support the good, crush the bad and then go home.
 
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