The US Has Fallen into the Perfect Trap

[bemildred]

Published in Die Welt (Germany) on 14 December 2014 by Stefan Aust [link to original]
Translated from German by Rachel Hutcheson. Edited by Gillian Palmer.
Posted on December 23, 2014.

The practice of torture has discredited the U.S. because it allowed the enemy to incite it to throw its own moral standards overboard. But fundamental rights must also apply to the enemy.

Terrorism is propaganda — communication with real dead people, preferably in public view. In this sense, Sept. 11, 2001 was the perfect crime: First, an aircraft flew into one of the twin towers of the World Trade Center. Then, when all the world’s cameras were focused on the burning tower, the second airplane followed. The result was the death of 3,000 people — and the wrath of the U.S. However, while seeking revenge, you should dig two graves, or so they say.

The second grave has now been opened and evidence of pure horror lies within: a striking, 499-page summary of 6,300 pages of internal CIA documents that sets out, in detail, how forces from the U.S. systematically tortured al-Qaida prisoners. Such occurrences are nothing new; the names of the Abu Ghraib and Guantánamo internment camps are synonymous with the brutal interrogation methods known as “enhanced interrogation.”

The images of tortured and humiliated prisoners, mainly from the Iraqi prison, were seen worldwide and show that the U.S. had walked straight into a trap, giving every terrorist action true meaning for the first time: that of causing the opponent to throw their own moral standards overboard. The German Red Army Faction called it forcing the opponent to “show their true, fascist face.”*

http://watchingamerica.com/WA/2014/12/23/the-us-has-fallen-into-the-perfect-trap/

[Sweeney]

1. Yes; And one of those old stupid Muslims laid it for us.

How in hell could he have ever killed as many more Americans and blown up so much of our junk if we had not gone to him?

The idiots who allowed those attacks when they had been warned and warned again should have been thrown into prison, and our going to those places and staying there pointlessly was a failure of our government and of the general staff of the military. What an idiot place to fight a war.

We all make jokes about how stupid Mr. Bush was; but we are obviously stupid if we cannot figure out how to prevent idiots from dragging us into hell for a beating. Bin Ladin was too smart for the guy. They are all too smart for Mr. Obama; but what is he going to do? He can't exactly run or stay; and yet it is our mess, we made it; and we have to deal with it.

[bemildred]

2. Played us like a flute.

George W. is not the problem, and he never was, George W. Bush was the symptom, the indicator or marker for where we are, like the more shallow and corrupt of the Roman Emperors were a marker of the end of Roman greatness. Great nations have great leaders, because they choose well, not mediocre and self-satisfied actors like Raygun and all that have followed in his footsteps.

[Sweeney]

3. I agree.

The man who could buy the army bought the Rome. Now the one who can buy the media can own America, and do any God awful thing to her while she is bound and gagged.

[Lodestar]

4. We didn't go into Afghanistan or Iraq because of what happened in NYC. Don't get me started....n/t

[bemildred]

5. "However, while seeking revenge, you should dig two graves, or so they say."

I really like that sentence.

[Andreboholm]

6. Nice!

Things just get crazier and crazier. I love your outlook

[bemildred]

7. Thank you. It has served me well.

Just trying to save the remaining shreds of a once great nation. You just can't be too cynical.

[gopiscrap]

10. Welcome to DU

[Igel]

8. Two fallacies, interlinked.

The first is a definitional one.

If you have ideals and violate them, you are by definition a hypocrite.

Of course, that first requires redefining "hypocrisy." Hypocrisy isn't violating your ideals--only the perfect would fail to be hypocrites, and that seems a rather high minimum standard for a virtue. Instead, hypocrisy is having two sets of standards, so that your violating them is okay but having others violate them isn't. It's okay to preach against adultery and yet commit it, provided that you're not saying your adultery is moral while everybody else's isn't--that leads to a lot of moral discomfort. However, a more common circumstance is that you preach against it but while intoxicated you are tempted and fail. That doesn't indicate hypocrisy--you can think it wrong to commit adultery even though you've violated your own moral standards--but should instill a sense of compassion and measured thinking in judging others.

The second requires a whole/part fallacy. A group of individuals weren't just in violation of their standards, they did set up a second set of private standards for themselves while holding a set of public standards for everybody else (one can even argue how "private" that first set of standards were, or if they were really different--it rather depends not on how *we* define their standards but on how *they* defined their standards, and I haven't heard Yu or anybody declaim on whether AQ would have been justified in waterboarding American soldiers if the US were suspected of planning an attack not on a military target but on a civilian target).

In any event, the group of people known as "Americans" is not responsible for those who, in relative secrecy, violated the group's standards. The very fact that we're debating it means that it's not a foregone conclusion, but there's a variation in standards in the first place.

Of course, we use precisely the same logic in saying that bin Ladin didn't speak for all Muslims, and acted as that absolved the majority of Muslims. In fact, we rather used it to defend most Muslims and say that they weren't hypocrites.

In other words, we have one standard for others--neocons can't condemn Islam or entire groups of people for what a small number of their group does; and a different standard for ourselves (we can condemn an entire group of people for what a small number of their group does.

Then there's another kind of moral self-castration: "I have sinned, world, therefore I have no right to stop anybody from doing anything bad or even say that bad things are bad--let them kill my kids and rape my wife before my eyes, for I deserve no less, and cannot so much as condemn such acts." Rather makes one's own sins greater than the worth of the rest of the world, that, and makes the goal of one's life to exult in one's own sense of guilt. One thing that religion offers, at least, is forgiveness and a way to accept miscreants back into the community. Zero-tolerance religion is a bit of a misnomer.

[bemildred]

9. People can and will justify anything.

I'm not much interested in what labels to use, just put it in front of a jury and give them the evidence, and see what they think.

[blkmusclmachine]

11. ,

,

[Ryan Fitzomething]

12. You Mean...

Your thread is recommended, and your fee will be paid. (Old Peter O'Toole reference.)

[bemildred]

13. I don't get the reference.

But I can say I like What's New Pussycat better than Lawrence, and I fell in love with Romy Schneider.

[Odin2005]

14. We have become the monster we were supposed to be fighting.