Some Call it Torture

When the attorney general appointed a special persecutor [sic] to harass CIA interrogators, I got to wondering if these people were missing something.  I tend to think of this gang as a bunch of liberal whiz kids, and one thing about liberal whiz kids is that they mostly do not avail themselves of the chance to serve their country by being in our military. 

Lacking this military experience may prevent them from being able to understand the big picture.  Now I will grant that extreme interrogation measures are not nice, but look at these from the perspective of millions of American servicemen. 

In boot camp they take you apart with various physical, mental, and verbal abuses and then put you back together the way they want you to be. 

After boot camp the main theme is to do harm to the enemy.  It is OK to kill the enemy with small arms fire, artillery, bombs, and mines.  It is OK to attack the enemy with really nasty things like flame throwers, napalm and white phosphorus.  None of these things are nice. 

While our service men and women are attacking the enemy with these nasty implements and methods, they understand that the enemy will be attacking them with similar weapons and techniques.  There is no question that such experiences are comparable to the worst torture possible.  But they have always been the standard deal for millions of Americans who, unlike the whiz kids, served in uniform.

There are lesser things to deal with as well.  Sleep can be hard to get.  Meals are missed, and the food was not always great, and you have to learn to live with the fear and separation.  You know that if you are captured the enemy will torture you if he sees any advantage in doing so.  I have to wonder if we have ever fought any enemy that did not torture our troops.  It is pretty much the standard deal.  Try not to get captured.

Given all that, I have to wonder if we are about to start treating enemy prisoners better than they were treated by their own side before we captured them.  We must make sure they get enough sleep.  They must not miss any meals.  Can't say threatening things to them.  Looks like we are going to treat them better than we treat our own people.

Waterboarding is romper room stuff compared to what happens when a ship goes down and all hands are lost.  Over the years we have lost a lot of ships.  Our people have died in a lot of other ways that are easily comparable to the worst torture.  War is not nice.

Our new administration, the whiz kids with little or no military experience, want to be nice to the enemy.  I don't think they get it.  The enemy is at war with us.  We need to be at war with them. 

In the good times a person can take to the moral high ground and look pretty.  In the bad times (that be now) people will look at them over there and wonder why they are not over here in the mud where the fight is.  It is going to look like they won't fight.  At least not for our side.

--Jerry 9/3/09