Blog #4

I agree with Andrew Sullivan who said torture is obviously wrong. I didn’t really have to read the article to come to that conclusion; I have always though that torture was morally wrong and it goes against what America stands for. Charles Krauthammer believes there are three types of war prisoners, first the ordinary soldiers caught in battle that “we have no right to disturb a hair on his head”. Second, the captured terrorist whom is defined as an unlawful combatant meaning he does not abide by the law, also hiding among civilians and targeting innocence. Krauthammer believes he deserves no protection which a lot of people would agree with as an instinct that this person is an awful human being who deserves nothing. Everyone can see that point, but once you get down to that they are human beings too and even though nothing can get lower than what they might do to innocent people they do not deserve to be tortured to any extent.
Finally there are the terrorists with information. Now as the author says this is where the issue of torture gets complicated he is absolutely right. This should be the bottom line reason that torture should without a doubt be abolished. We can all see Bin Laden being tortured and most would just look the other way because we all share the hatred towards him because of what we know he has done to our country. What about those that we aren’t sure of, those we have no proof for? Torturing innocent lives to try and get information is no different in my eyes than what terrorist do to other innocent lives. Krauthammer put a quote in this article I could not help but laugh over, “we do not descend to the level of our enemy”. How can he even think of saying such a thing when we Americans have taken innocent lives and physically and mentally destroyed who they once were?
Sullivan made two incredible points in his half of the article that really stood out to me. “The entire point of war on terrorism, according to the president, is to advance freedom and democracy in the Arab world. In Iraq, we had a chance not just to tell be to show the Iraqi people how a democracy acts. And, tragically, in one critical respect, we failed.” Now to me that says a whole lot in a couple sentences such as we have realized we failed why are we still over there and what else could we possibly be looking for? His last quote in this article stuck to me and relates to my first two lines, “If we legalize torture, even under constrained conditions, we will have given up a large part of the idea that is America. We will have lost the war before we have given ourselves the chance to win it”. That quote is pretty self explanatory and supports my idea that torture is cruel, inhuman, and no where close to an idea when I think of what it means to be an American.