Groucho
DP Veteran
- Joined
- Dec 19, 2009
- Messages
- 1,363
- Reaction score
- 933
- Location
- Pocono Mountains, PA
- Gender
- Male
- Political Leaning
- Liberal
We KILL terrorists all the time, yet "torturing" them is totally immoral. How can you justify killing someone but not "torturing" them?
I disagree that "torturing" terrorists is a bad thing.
*sigh* I'm not going to spin off into a discussion of Quirin. Begin another thread if you'd like.
No, emphatically I have not and have stated the opposite the whole way through including the post you just replied to:
Going back further in the thread:
Further still:
Further....:
The beginning:
And though I stated poorly, initially, I clarified my position from that point forward. See above.
No, because the lawyers, such as Kaytal, were successful in forcing Bush into compliance, as I said in the post before:
That is a tricky idea to articulate because some arguments are made, just to make them and keep appeals going rather than moving the case forward. I was trying to quantify the difference. So let me amend, if they are arguing on demonstrably sound principles, rather than the above example, and that is a judgment call, then I wouldn't object to them out of hand.
So the logic here is: We've already done bad things so why not just keep doing them?
Because we kill them on a battlefield during a war where they are trying to kill us.
If they surrender, we DON'T kill them.
But I guess you're right. Let's play God, ignore the treaties we've signed...
...treat anyone we don't like as expendable, go against traditions about how we've deal with prisoners of war that we've held since George Washington, and then wonder why we the rest of the world hates us and wants to kill us.
After all, doing all this under the Bush administration sure did stop all those terrorists, right?
Duh.
But then again, I suppose if I were evil, I'd feel the same way.
Actually, the terrorists are the evil ones, but your confusion is to be expected.
Actually, the terrorists are the evil ones, but your confusion is to be expected.
Anyone can do evil things.
The terrorists believe they are doing god's work and are therefore doing good. And you think that, because you are against evil, that you must be good.
By that logic, Stalin was good because he fought Hitler.
Today's moral for those too simple minded to understand: Both sides can be evil.
The only simplistic ones are the people reflexively labeling "torture" (which is nothing more than physical pain being inflicted on a person) as categorically immoral, that it's never, ever justified no matter what. That is an absurdly absolutist position lacking any semblance of intellectual honesty. We morally justify killing all the time. Killing is worse than "torture" in some instances, yet one is perfectly justifiable while the other is not? Makes no sense, at all.
Well, don't you and everyone else reflexively label "terrorism" as categorically immoral? Or do you think that's justifiable sometimes?
It depends on how you define terrorism.
Well, then, you need to stop using the word "terrorism" as a categorically immoral act.
Repeat: It depends on how you define terrorism. If we can agree on a definition, then I would be comfortable as labeling it categorically immoral and would defend my position.
How are you going to claim that the Bush administration's policies re: tribunals were harsher than ever before, and then run away when I point out that they're absolutely not? It's perfectly relevant to your argument - the fact that it doesn't help you doesn't change that.
If you're arguing that the principles in one are more important than in the other, that's been roundly rejected. If you're arguing that the two are identical in terms of the principles at issue, but one is more "politically important," then I don't know why you think that matters one bit as to the question of what it says about the lawyers who are involved. There is no intelligible way to distinguish the two.
And you think that once the lawyers won Hamdan, they all said "good work guys!" and went home? Of course not. They're still challenging all sorts of policies, both under Bush and Obama.
Every lawyer is required to have a good faith basis for his argument otherwise he can be sanctioned by the court. Almost by definition, if a lawyer is making a claim, then there are demonstrably sound principles supporting his position.
Given that, is it safe to say that if Alberto Gonzales had taken a bunch of lawyers who had spent years dedicating their free time to white supremacists and appointed them to work in the civil rights division, you'd have no problem with that?
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