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OT and contentious: Torture photos from Iraq
Larry Cable wrote:
seldom_seen wrote: Does anyone else recognize this language, and get a bit of a chill from it? "We provided advisors, in particular fire control and forward air controllers, to the Northern Alliance. The US did not command the unit nor have control over the action of its troops." Pete, we have provided arms and advisors to many an ally that we didn't control thier political or command structure, that's why they are called advisors. Some that get supported are strictly politically expediate, think Stalin, and some are long term relationships. Should we take responsiblity for the slaughter of Polish Army Officers by Stalin because we supported him when he entered the war with Hitler? If there were U.S. advisors at the scene of the slaughter, then you definately should take responsibility. Just standing around doing nothing when people are being tortured or murdered means that you're involved as well. It's not as if these so called advisors aren't a party in a war, even if their designation seems to point in another direction. The Advisors are often in a pretty hairy position. They are often supporting groups that don't particularly like the US, but want the technical and tactical support that we can provide. Afganistan is a perfect example of this type of situation. Does that make them any less involved in the conflict or the U.S. government any less responsible? Often these so called advisors are in effect leading these groups of foreign troops and if these troops don't work on the U.S. orders (direct or indirect), and the group will lose all (material, financial and direct military) support from the U.S. if they go out on their own, ignoring orders given by the so called advisors. That's a pretty strong pressure tool, especially in times of war. Sure, at times they are just bystanders unable to stop something horrible from going on, but I seriously doubt that this is the case most of the time. As for this being an all out war: you can't have it both ways. Either you adhere to things like international law and the Geneva conventions for example, using them to call this a fight for freedom and against terrorism, or you engage in similarly disgusting tactics as the terrorists, agreeing with the commonplace use of torture, prisoner abuse and locking up great quantities of innocent people without looking after their human rights. You can't keep the moral advantage on your side if you invade sovereign countries with lies as the only motivation, severly limiting freedom for the people of such a nation and supporting regimes like Israel that consider murder and attacks against civilians to be normal policy. The U.S. government has been using double standards and strong arm tactics for quite some time now, but I'm surprised that it takes so long for the limited international support for this behaviour to fall apart. -- Wilko van den Bergh Wilkoa t)dse(d o tnl Eindhoven The Netherlands Europe Look at the possibilities, don't worry about the limitations. http://wilko.webzone.ru/ |
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