Protest in Afghanistan after Quran burning

[Med911]

Re: Protest in Afghanistan after Quran burning

@nikhil25

this is rather bizarre logic.

we should pretend that our human rights standards are no different from the taliban’s or else we risk accepting waterboarding?

i think the false equivalence is far more dangerous and devalues the thousand year gap in standards. internal american dialogue and evolution of our human rights standards should obviously continue. this doesn’t require us to afford the enemy and it’s apologists an opportunity to elevate themselves and be graced with a comparison they don’t deserve. there is no comparison.

Good job completely ignoring every point I made. What are you onjecting to exactly?

What American dialogue? Last I checked, Water boarding has been accepted as “enhanced interrogation.”

In fact, if anything, Human rights standards have deteriorated further, not improved. Or is the murder of US citizens in foreign countries without even the basic standard of due process a step up in your book?

I hope that thousand year gap was a joke. Slavery and all its inequities only ended in the mid 1800’s. Or do you believe that throwing people into the hulls of ships bound together by chains is an example of American standard…

My point is

1. We should avoid categorizing torture.Torture is torture. To categorize torture risks legitimizing it.

2. Internal dialogue is internal dialogue. How it impacts the psyche of “the enemy” is irrelevant. Whether they are elevated or not has no baring on the standards we hold for ourselves.

There is a comparison. The comparison you are making is between a severe form of torture, and what you perceive to be less severe (although you have never been water boarded so you dont REALLY know what the difference is).

Ideally, there should be no comparison, because the US should not torture. The problem is that it does.