Hunt11 posted:

This being a thing made me lose that little bit more faith in humanity.

Lemony posted:

If it's a text arguing that, in addition to its uselessness as an information gathering device and it's general unethical nature, torture is also bad because of the psychological toll it takes on those who do it, then maybe I could give it a pass. Especially if it discusses the ethics of the decision to torture being made higher up the chain, so the people doing the torturing may not have had a choice in the matter, therefore they might also be considered victims of a sort.

I would bet it is instead about how torture is totally cool guys, and we should respect the hard men who made the hard choice to help safeguard their country, especially since they were injured psychologically in the line of duty. I mean, that basically makes them the same as someone whose vehicle got tagged by an IED.

quote:

Phillips sets the book out as an investigation of the self-inflicted death of one US soldier, and his experience of the war. Within that journalistic wrapping, well written as it is, there is a very serious examination of the use of torture in the two wars. The questions explored include how the systematic abuse began, the extent to which it was authorised and directed from above, or equally emerged from the logic of occupation itself. The impact upon both the soldiers and the victims themselves in Iraq and Afghanistan is well handled. The book might appear at a quick glance to be privileging the sufferings of the torturers over the victims, but Phillips in fact avoids this trap and brings home the full horror of the war crimes inflicted upon the occupied populations.

...

However, it is not simply the logic of occupation, or even the inbuilt sadism of the military that created a regime of torture. Phillips shows that there were pre-existing opinions in elite circles of the military, the media and the political world that justified and even celebrated torture. Figures of authority created a pervasive atmosphere in which it could seem possible and even heroic for ordinary soldiers to torture their prisoners, and perhaps commit other war crimes. Phillips shows quite convincingly that film and television, the egregious ‘24’ in particular, had a strong impact upon the attitudes of soldiers in training at West Point, for example, or even those stationed at Guantanamo Bay. Specific orders and plans to direct soldiers to engage in torture were probably unnecessary, and one suspects most of those in charge knew this full well.

Even more than that however was the explicit approval given to what might be called an ideology of torture by figures such as Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia. It is through a web of authoritative influences, as much as the ‘Torture Memos’ themselves, that the responsibility for the abuse and killings of civilians in Iraq and Afghanistan can be found. The soldiers had been convinced by their leaders at home that anything they did to get ‘the bad guys’ was condoned and indeed encouraged. The language of simplistic brutality is not used by ordinary soldiers without the connivance and approval of their superiors.

Arabian Jesus posted:

Reveilled posted:

I googled about a bit, here's an excerpt from a review:


https://www.counterfire.org/articles/book-reviews/7698-none-of-us-were-like-this-before-american-soldiers-and-torture

Remulak posted:

It’s like that bunch of late 70’s to mid 80’s movies about how the Vietnamese war was wrong because Our Boys were traumatized by the terrible things they did.

Sinteres posted:

This is somehow a real quote by the recently departed Prince Philip.

https://twitter.com/sceneryprint/status/1380483623518838788

Thaddius the Large posted:

Say what you will about the tenets of National Socialism, at least it’s an ethos

Kith posted:

zoux posted:

https://twitter.com/glennbeck/status/1381960373536874504

I'd bet a good amount of money that Glenn Beck has been vaccinated