Tag: war on terror[ism][ists]

Current Affairs

Who Should Have to Answer for Torture?

islamoyankee

Money quote: But, if full justice remains impossible, surely some injustices can be corrected. Whenever crimes of state are adjudicated—at Nuremberg or The Hague, Phnom Penh or Kigali—the principle of command responsibility, whereby the leaders who give the orders are held to a higher standard of accountability than the foot soldiers who follow, pertains. There can be no restoration of the national honor if we continue to scapegoat those who took the fall for an Administration—and for us all. h/t TPM.

Read More
Current Affairs

Torture and Cowardice, Pt.2

islamoyankee

JMM hits it out of the park with this piece. Being bold means taking responsibility for being bold. As I’ve argued before, I think the answer to the ticking time bomb rationale for torture is this: that in the extremely unlikely circumstance that government officials ever found themselves in that position of having a ticking time bomb ticking away, they might have to make the decision to break the law. Not fudge it or keep their actions hidden, but take the decision on their own responsibility that it was the best thing to do in the situation — despite it…

Read More
Current Affairs Religion

Is Torture Utilitarian?

islamoyankee

Glad other people are speaking up about the immorality of torture. As politicians argue, and our pragmatist-in-chief tries to find an angle, we can agree that not all moral dilemmas can be reduced to a cost-benefit analysis of pleasure and pain. There are some kinds of pain a morally serious person ought never to inflict. [From Is Torture Utilitarian?]

Read More
Current Affairs

Radicalizing

islamoyankee

Follow the link to Krugman’s piece. Down the memory hole is right. As Krugman says, the period leading up to the Iraq war was indeed a radicalizing experience. I think there were plenty of people like me who had a degree of faith in elite opinion, in the sensible people in nice suits, which I never will again. And those people hate the dirty fucking hippies more than ever for the simple crime of being correct. [From Radicalizing]

Read More
Current Affairs

It’s All About Us Indeed

islamoyankee

Either we are doing this to people, or there were no people were involved. In which case I’m sure PETA can launch a more effective drive than the human rights community. From TPM Reader CR: One odd thing about this torture debate is that it’s all about *us.* Whether we committed a crime, how it affects our collective soul, how the wheels of justice ought to move (if at all). But nobody is talking about the victims–it’s as if torture were analogous to smoking the marijuana you grew in the woods behind your house. Something technically illegal, but something that…

Read More
Politics

Torturers For Hire

islamoyankee

But didn’t CIA officers have to approve the request? Former FBI supervisory special agent Ali Soufan, writing in an op-ed in the New York Times today, makes this parenthetical point regarding CIA torture: (It’s worth noting that when reading between the lines of the newly released memos, it seems clear that it was contractors, not C.I.A. officers, who requested the use of these techniques.) I’m not sure if that puts a different gloss on Obama’s decision not to prosecute CIA officers, but it’s a point worth noting. [From Torturers For Hire]

Read More
Politics Video

DHS don’t like them Swarthies

islamoyankee

This article is almost a year old, so it’s part of the old pattern. My suspicion is that some agent just finished watching True Romance and was thinking about the Sicilian scene. Key lines for those who don’t know: So you see, way back then, uh, Sicilians were like, uh, wops from Northern Italy. Ah, they all had blonde hair and blue eyes, but, uh, well, then the Moors moved in there, and uh, well, they changed the whole country. They did so much fuckin’ with Sicilian women, huh? That they changed the whole bloodline forever. That’s why blonde hair…

Read More