There's lots about U.S. public conduct to worry about, but torture gets me. I just can't stand the thought of being on the same team with make-you-eat-dirt kinds of bullies.
A General-type fellow named Miller is responsible for the brightest moral light thus far shone on this matter. The New York Times quoted him today:"We are detaining these enemy combatants in a humane manner," General Miller told reporters in March 2004. "Should our men or women be held in similar circumstances, I would hope they would be treated in this manner." That's sort of the moral minimum: don't do what you don't want done back. As more and more reports come out of Guantanamo and other places, Miller's statement takes on new meanings, for family members and for soldiers.
And I can't see even perverse intelligence anywhere here. If the standard for the treatment of prisoners is awful, our kids have one more reason not to enlist, and terrorists have one more reason not to get caught alive.
But there's this one other point. When somebody is out there in a dangerous place, in the uniform of the United States of America, he or she should not have to think, "I am fighting for a country that forces people to soil themselves in little tiny cells. in prisons not on any map." That doesn't make for a straight spine or a proud heart.
Posted by shea0017 at January 1, 2005 1:44 PM