This is a meme making the rounds on social media, defending the use of torture by the U.S.
Videos By Rare
For argument’s sake, let’s try to ignore the shocking insensitivity of politicizing this particularly horrific 9/11 tragedy.
Let’s instead focus on the shocking insensitivity expressed by those would create such a meme—post it, like it, share it—and how their rationale for defending torture isn’t much different from those who murdered 3,000 innocent people on September 11, 2001.
Of the 119 detainees featured in the newly released CIA torture report, 26 were improperly detained or “did not meet the … standard for detention.”
ABC News reports:
One of these improperly detained individuals, Abu Hudhaifa, endured 66 hours of standing sleep deprivation and ice water baths “before being released because the CIA discovered he was likely not the person he was believed to be.” A second “intellectually challenged” individual was detained and used “as leverage” against a family member. Two more spent 24 hours chained in the standing sleep deprivation position, until CIA Headquarters “confirmed that the detainees were former CIA sources,” who had previously reached out to the CIA to try to share intelligence.
All 119 were treated to gruesome torture by the U.S.
There have been allegations of torture at Guantanamo Bay. How many of them were improperly detained?
Reported The Atlantic in 2013:
There are still 166 prisoners being held at Guantanamo Bay. Eighty-six of these individuals have been cleared for release. Forty-six others are being held “without enough evidence” to prosecute, but are still ” too dangerous to transfer.” Only six people being held at Guantanamo Bay are facing formal charges.
Osama Bin Laden wrote in 2002:
If we are attacked, then we have the right to attack back. Whoever has destroyed our villages and towns, then we have the right to destroy their villages and towns. Whoever has stolen our wealth, then we have the right to destroy their economy. And whoever has killed our civilians, then we have the right to kill theirs.
Terrorists justify their violence, including attacks on innocents, by maintaining that none of those people are really innocent. Terrorists also almost always claim they are only matching the barbarity of their enemies.
Senator John McCain, a victim of torture, said Tuesday, “I know the use of torture compromises that which most distinguishes us from our enemies, our belief that all people, even captured enemies, possess basic human rights, which are protected by international conventions the U.S. not only joined, but for the most part authored.”
McCain added, “Our enemies act without conscience. We must not.”
In defending the barbarity in the torture report because of 9/11, you’re basically saying the U.S. should be like the people who caused this:
No we shouldn’t. If we become that, then the terrorists really did win because they will have totally destroyed the values that make us Americans.
We must have a conscience even if terrorists don’t. That’s what separates us from them.
When you become like your enemies, what makes you better than them?