<<MT excuses the torture by people he likes and we are loth to condemn the misbehavior of people we like .>>
In general I don't. The three days of plunderfreiheit allowed by their commanders to the men of the Red Army after the fall of Berlin was an exception generated by the unprecedented savagery and barbarism of the Nazis in the USSR which cost about 35 MILLION Russian lives, and utilized every form of torture and abuse known to the human race. Even so, I would not have condoned torture, even for uniformed SS men, at any time. But some form of payback there had to be, and I think that the amount measured out by the Red Army commanders was just and appropriate in the circumstances.
Torture may be something that we have always had with us, and it will be a long, hard struggle to abolish completely, but there has never been a concerted effort to abolish torture until the United Nations began to construct the legal framework which led to UNCAT and its enforcement mechanisms. I have always recognized the difficulty and the importance of this work and realized how totally counterproductive to the struggle any form of partisanship would be. At the same time, a false sense of non-partisanship (for example campaigning against "torture" in Cuba to counterbalance campaigning against torture in Central America) is dishonest, unethical and tactically suicidal, since most of the genuine opposition to torture comes from the left and not from the right, just as most of the torture states are right-wing rather than left-wing, as was certainly the case in Latin America. The U.S.A. even runs a school for torturers, which they periodically pretend through various name-changes to shut down, but which continues in operation, as far as I am aware, into the present day.
<<I think I am looking into a mirror image.>>
I hope not - - I remember your attempts to minimize Abu Ghraib - - but I really lack the objectivity to make the call. It's possible I am too twisted against the horrors of fascism to make a stand against torture, but then who the hell is the "pure vessel" who is going to be impartial enough to oppose torture? My feeling is basically that torture is an abomination that has to be stopped and yet we (Canada and the U.S.A.) have been sliding backward into that abyss even before the start of the Bush administration in the U.S.A. and its little admiring clone, the Harper administration here in Canada, and the process of backsliding took off on rocket fuel once Bush and his handlers arrived in Washington.
Maybe Buddha's right - - we all have our secret or not-so-secret pet hates who we'd really love to see tortured to death, Commies in your case, Fascists in mine - - but that's typically the problem with his whole fucking attitude. In his POV nobody would oppose torture because nobody is pure enough to do so, so the whole fucking thing would just go on unopposed for milennia like it already has. I think we just have to accept we are who we are but God damn it, torture IS wrong and it has to be opposed. In the absence of an army of pure vessels who have no vengeful feelings towards anybody, it falls to less perfect beings like ourselves, with whatever imperfections we have, to advance the struggle. The people who founded the UN, the diplomats who negotiated and hammered out the terms of the UNCAT, if you took Buddha's view of them, they are probably all corrupt sods serving corrupt governments and unworthy to be the bearers of the anti-torture flame, but then where would that leave us? Back in the fucking Dark Ages.
So if you're looking at a mirror image, it's not a fully accurate mirror. There were more similarities than I wanted to admit, but at bottom, I oppose torture and you don't. You already said, in effect, if it works and if it promotes our survival, you're for it. I don't believe in survival at any price. To me, that's a form of moral cowardice. You or your cause should be able to survive without torture. As in WWII. And I think today as well. But even if it could not, I don't believe that it SHOULD be saved if the price of saving it is torture.
