Thursday, February 14, 2008

Here's the thing..

Waterboarding will be all over the news again because John McCain was against it when courting independents, but just voted for it after becoming the Republican nominee. The liberal joking goes that this is because, apparently, conservatives are for waterboarding.

But once again I think a serious discussion has been reduced to a stupid left / right - blue / red situation that isn't that simple (or shouldn't be).

Me, I find it easy to be against waterboarding because I listened to John McCain the first time and he said torture doesn't work. A person will say anything as you are being tortured. Kali Sheik Mohammad apparently said he was behind the 9/11 attacks. And, as torture continued, there were upcoming attacks planned against the Brooklyn Bridge, the Washington Monument, the Pee Wee Put in Myrtle Beach. The US sent teams all over America as he designated plots, but it turns out none were true. He would say anything to stop the torture.

Now, IF waterboarding really saved thousands or millions of lives, then we would have to have a serious discussion about it.

But it annoys me (and offends me) that politicians on the right pretend torture works and that if you vote against torture you are soft on Terrorists. Equally, it annoys / offends me that politicians on the left seem to say that it is inhuman to torture IF it really saved thousands of lives. (I had friends in the London Tube that day a couple of years ago. IF torture would been the fulcrum on which their lives turned - torture away baby.)

But Politicians don't want to have discussions and think we are stupid enough to fall for it. And so we end up in this position where the Right screams at the Left, "You care more about Terrorists than Americans" and the Left screams at the Right, "You are sadistic psychopaths that dehumanize all Muslims so you Waterboard at will."

I don't think either is an accurate description, but I do think that it plays into Politician’s hands as they want to divide us and get elected. So all of us self-rightous Democrats, before you assume that your Republican friends are Neanderthals; and you Neanderthals, before you assume that your Democratic friends are gutless chum - try to remember that we all are working to make the world as good and safe a place as possible.

Except Politicians. They are bastards.