Quote:
Originally posted by Superbelt
Doesn't matter if they are innocent or not anyway. There is absolutely no excuse for what happened. We don't treat even Charles Manson like that. Why Iraqi insurgents? As such the only option is to denounce the acts. I though moral equivocating is something Rush likes to rail on about Liberals anyway?
You know, things are either black, or white.
I also think the relative harm done is greater than you think from the Ghraib side of the picture. We have "lost" the moral high ground and are helping with recruitment towards anti american terrorism and insurgent iraqi fighting. This is roundly a bad development for our servicemen.
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There's no question that these crimes hurt our perception and help terrorists to recruit followers. But I don't agree that we ever had the "moral high ground" in anyone's thinking but our own. There is such a wide belief throughout the world that the USA can do no good and that they only do some good out of self interest that few give us any credit for doing something in the name of humankind or morality.
The fact is, what I outlined is not moral equivalency it's pointing out the different moralities of the situations. If you want to see an example of moral equivalency go to the thread where numerous people claim the torture at the hands of US soldiers was at least as bad as the beheading of Nick Berg.
In terms of relative harm to the world, Murder = torture is not the same as Murder > prisoner abuse/torture (I am not including the murder of prisoners in these abuse accusations since they appear to be different instances and at least one of the murderers has been brought to justice).