05-06-2009, 01:19 PM
Quote:And who decides "correctly". The Chinese wouldn't think we behave correctly. Most of Europe has never felt we have either. We are at the same time too liberal and too conservative. We have been accused of using our power too quickly and not using it quickly enough. We've been asked to help police the world and we've been asked to "keep your interfering nose out of that situation" on the same situation by close allies who you would think agree with us.I was just pointing at torturing, not about the Iraq war. Liberal or conservative doesn't make a difference. Torturing does. If you fight against barbarism, don't use torture because nobody takes you serious.
I can make a comment related to this, but about the war in Iraq. I don't want to discuss if it was right or wrong to go there and if it is good or not what the west tries to do there, I want to discuss about image.
If you go and fight such a war you know you are going to be critized, no matter how well you behave. But still, if the whole Abu Graib scandal didn't take place, what would that have done for the opinion of the people about this war? And how much higher would be Bush' approval rate? I think chances would be very big that even you would have had a different president right now. And this was just talking about the influence on the american people. The image of the US in the world (as you probably know) also changed a lot.
You should realize how big consequences such small things can have. So instead of torturing somebody hoping to find number 635 on the list of most wanted terrorists (or just for getting a nice picture) maybe they should have thought about all that was lost when they started doing it.
And about your last remark? Well maybe you should try and look at things from different perspectives sometimes. Or do you also believe that now Obama is looking at getting better relations with Cuba the chances of Cuba (with their massive Army) invading Florida have increased dramatically?:)
(by theway; my remark which was half joking and that as I expected got allready some angry replies was about the fact that Cuban cigars were illegal in the US, and that many people were anyway still smoking them, and that it should at least be slightly funny to make it illegal to import cigars from a country....I hope I got my facts right here.....if it was not correct please tell me so that I can edit it away and apologize)