Torture is Necessary?

I am trying to deal with why someone who is quite intelligent, and well read, would support torture. This someone I am talking about is someone who I am quite fond of, a friend if you will, and I am horrified to find out that someone I care about would think torture is acceptable in any circumstance.

In what passed for our conversation my attempts at logic and reason were dismissed as emotional, and a sign of weakness, because we “have to do whatever it takes to defeat the evil terrorists.” And apparently if what it takes is for us to become “evil,” well then we have to do it. Lest you think we were discussing the exigent circumstance of the faux ticking time bomb, rest assured we weren't.

I realize that many virulent anti-communists on the right have discovered their inner Stalin. But when it is close to home, and make no mistake about it, I grew-up in a Right-wing home filled with the rhetoric of “Law and Order,” I am dumbfounded as to how to react to such a pronouncement on torture. After all, torture is against the rule of law. When logic and reason are dismissed as “pure emotion and a sign of weakness” what can one say other than isn't “fear” "pure emotion and a sign of weakness?”

Just as nuking the communists was considered an acceptable solution in the cold war, because we were afraid, very afraid, of the red hordes, it seems that likewise anything is acceptable to destroy those “Islamic Extremists” who are out to “destroy” the U.S.A and our way of life.

Why do folks hold such beliefs? I believe it is fear and paranoia being fed by those who control the message and need to control the population. The question is also why are some folks more susceptible to the propaganda of fear?

Why would “Law and Order” types be so willing to break International and Domestic Laws? Does the law only apply to others? We have seen in this current administration that the law doesn’t apply to them. We have seen that our Citizens are willing to give up the right to “Habeas Corpus” and find it perfectly acceptable to hold American Citizens in detention indefinitely and without recourse. We have seen that Citizens are more than willing to give up their “Fourth Amendment” rights, and have their every communication collected by our government and recorded for posterity with the promise, and only a promise, of a little more security. After all, in this “War on Terra” our country’s actions have lead to more “Islamic Extremists” and an increase in World-wide terrorism. So, the promise to make “us” more secure is merely a “promise” that hasn’t been delivered on.

Are the Citizens of this country so insecure that they are willing to engage in totally immoral behavior because they are frightened? If intelligent, or what I assumed were intelligent, people can be driven by fear to accept illegal and abhorrent behavior, what are the other sheeple willing to accept?

Whatever happened to the “Land of the Free and the Brave?”

I guess everything really did change after 9-11, and not in a good way.

I am bereft and Dr. King is rolling over in his grave.

Update: Joseph Goebbels and his acolyte Karl Rove understand how the rhetoric and politics of fear works and how to use it. Why do our Citizens fall for it?