Tuesday, November 15, 2005

Stumbled across this post by Andrew Sullivan, quoting an e-mail he had received defending torture. The gist of it is "We have to be good to good people and bad to bad people!" A few things caught my eye:

Like most people today you judge western society by how well monsters and evil people are treated, especially if they fall into a couple of protected categories. This is false - it is how well ordinary people - especially the vulnerable and the weak - are treated that counts.


I haven't read the post he's responding to, but I rather suspect the first sentence to be the e-mailer gallantly slaughtering a straw man. Who on earth judges the entirety of western society by that measure alone?

But what really gets me about this is that he's defending torture by saying that we should look at how we treat "the vulnerable and the weak". Because, you know, prisoners locked up in cells without much in the way of personal items, much less anything that could conceivably be a weapon, aren't vulnerable or weak.

But what caught my eye the first time was this excrement he somehow managed to convert into digital form and transfer via e-mail:

You mentioned cruelty to the SS by the British during WWII. The only cruelty was to the world around by permitting such monsters to live. The SS had no human rights - they forfitted them when they perpetrated what they did. Islamofascists are in the same category.

...

The enemy being fought is undeserving of humane treatment, and the Arabs and Muslims must be made to understand this. Indeed, it is an affront to morality and decency to so treat people with humanity.


Apparently it doesn't even cross this person's mind that a number of the people locked up aren't terrorists.

So, how do we look now when judged by how we treat the vulnerable and weak?

Emetic bastard.

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