Barack sets about proving his VP isn’t the only one who can embarass the country with ridiculous misstatements:
Obama said: “I was struck by an article that I was reading the other day talking about the fact that the British during World War II, when London was being bombed to smithereens, had 200 or so detainees. And Churchill said, ‘We don’t torture,’ when . . . all of the British people were being subjected to unimaginable risk and threat. . . . Churchill understood, you start taking shortcuts, over time, that corrodes what’s best in a people. It corrodes the character of a country.”
This is weapons-grade stupidity. As Jonah points out, Churchill had some expectation of reciprocity, given that Germany was a Geneva signatory (unlike Al Qaeda), and much of what the British did to POWs in the 1940s is in fact now considered illegal torture. Even beyond that, the British did far more horrible things in the course of war than pouring water on faces; they deliberately burned people alive, tens of thousands at Dresden alone, and not even out of any strict military necessity but rather to terrorize the civilian population.
There’s no question we are far more civilized than the society of 60 years ago, or that Bush’s policies have been far more humane than FDR’s or Churchill’s, either of whom would be up on war crimes charges today. But sadly, much of the Obama administration probably really does believe Bush-era policies were some sort of aberrant throwback to medievalism.
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I think you miss the whole point.
The reason for humane treatment of prisoners is to encourage soldiers (or terrorists) to surrender when their situation is untenable rather than fighting to the last man. Your side is going to take more casualties if you have to kill every last enemy fighter. If the enemy fighters believe that they will be tortured, they are much more likely to fight to the last man.
Torturing terrorists just encourages more suicide attacks.
Actually, the point was that Britain under Churchill did far worse than we have under Bush, and that Obama doesn’t seem to understand that.
In any case, your claim makes little sense. Flying 747s into the World Trade Center was a planned attack, not an alternative to surrender, and the same is true for nearly all suicide bombings.
Well, since 50% of the population is historically illiterate and don’t know better than to believe what Obama says, and another 25% are incapable of rational thought on the subject, it really doesn’t matter what history, logic or facts say, does it?
Mike, it’s certainly true that that is one effect of avoiding building up a reputation as torturers. That’s why the buccaneers of the Golden Age of Piracy did exactly that: they were famous for treating surrenderers well, so small and relatively unarmed pirate bands were often able to force the surrender of much larger, well armed military vessels.
But that’s not what we’re talking about here. Torture (or whatever we’re calling it) has many effects, and they have to be balanced against each other. As Dave says, we’re not fighting against groups of regular military who might surrender to us if only they thought they’d be treated well. Hell, from all we’ve heard about Gitmo inmates’ stories of their detention, they may as well be encouraging their friends to get caught by the Americans, because we feed them better than they can expect to get at home. Our reputation as a bunch of big ol’ softies has not exactly been much altered even by Abu Ghraib and such incidents.
But our biggest concern here isn’t how many American soldiers die in pitched battles against entrenched terrorist foes. It’s whether in a highly time-sensitive fashion we can extract material information from high-value detainees about imminent threats. Those two goals are mutually exclusive in some ways, and in October/November 2001 we knew which was the bigger fish we had to fry.
When they say “better to beg forgiveness than ask permission”, sometimes that bill comes due. In this case we actually asked permission, and now we’re being forced to beg forgiveness anyway.
German spies captured by the British were regularly given the choice of being “turned” (continuing to transmit information, but now it would be disinformation provided by their British handlers) or being promptly hanged.
British cryptographer Leo Marks, who provided secure communications for Special Operations Executive, described a plan codenamed Periwig, under which German agents would be parachuted back into Germany as part of an elaborate deception plan. Some of these were to be killed before parachuting in ways that would make it appear that they had met with accidents, so that the codebooks in their pockets would be found by German authorities.
In the U.S., when the U-boat saboteurs were captured, FDR went to considerable lengths to ensure that they were promptly executed.
Obama’s knowledge of WWII, assuming he really believes what he said, is at the high school and Hollywood movie level.
It used to be the case that a spy was just shot summarily. Because that was the rules of war.
Maybe we shouldn’t still take that attitude, but, that’s part of the (historic) Geneva Conventions.
Actually, you know what Sean? It does matter.
Because first off, it’s true that most people were illiterate, but that is no longer true. At least in the United States, and other Western nations, illiteracy is now considered unusual. It happens, but it’s not considered normal. Because it isn’t. Most people can read.
And by the way, it’d be nice if you’d give the liberals some credit on that, because that’s mostly their doing. And no, I’m not being sarcastic: they did that. They totally did that. It was THEM who gave us the public school system. THEY DID IT. “Socialism” and all. THEY DID IT. There’s not a child in the United States who can’t read, unless they’re in a very backwater location. It doesn’t matter where you are, who you are, or what your income is: the “socialists” made damn well sure there was a school there and that your child could read.
Without presenting you with a bill for it.
You know, I used to consider myself a conservative, but you conservatives seriously piss me off these days. It’s like none of you can admit that the government ever does anything good under any circumstances.
I understand you’re getting peeved with a tranche of the conservative movement these days. Some are behaving pathetically and as bad as the “Don’t Blame Us” mooncalves on the liberal side.
But ‘Without presenting you with a bill for it”? ORLY?
Income tax? Property tax? Special assessments for new school construction?
My kid never went to a public school–I only went 3.5 years. But both I and my parents certainly supported the public schools in whatever area through an assortment of taxes.
It was THEM who gave us the public school system. THEY DID IT. “Socialism” and all. THEY DID IT. There’s not a child in the United States who can’t read, unless they’re in a very backwater location. It doesn’t matter where you are, who you are, or what your income is: the “socialists” made damn well sure there was a school there and that your child could read.
The assumption you’re making is that socialism was necessary to that outcome, which is debatable at best. We could have made school mandatory without making it socialist. It could even still be as “free” as it is now. Voucher programs scare the NEA to death because they work: we get better, more accountable schools when people get to make an economic choice.
Now we have very expensive schools that do a generally poor job of teaching because the system is built around patronage and seniority rather than merit and competition. We are building schools to employ teachers rather than to educate children.
It’s like none of you can admit that the government ever does anything good under any circumstances.
The government must fulfill certain roles, such as regulation, defense, and conflict arbitration. But the empirical evidence argues that the private sector can do everything else better.
Dean:
When I said “historically illiterate” I meant “illiterate about HISTORY” not “illiterate at some point in the past.”
I don’t buy your argument about liberals “giving” us public schools, nor your absurd statement that such schools are “free”. But that’s not even close to what I was trying to say.
Those same schools you are defending used to teach world history Dean. These days they are so infested with PC nonsense that it is hard to find a teenager in this country who has any idea what happened in WWII. But I can guarantee you that they have been well coached in the evils of Christianity, European history, White dominance and male aggression.
Yeah, defend those schools all you like Dean.
I would actually piggy back on what CC says and call it “news, reality, and current event illiterate”. Not because the schools don’t teach you to read – they certainly do that – but because they no longer teach critical thinking, and as CC states, exist – at least in part – to indoctrinate the students under the liberal, PC dogma. They were already doing it when I was in HS 20 years ago.
So CC is right that 1) at least 50% have no idea what happened in WW2 beyond what they see in Saving Private Ryan and Call of Duty 2, 2) are brainwashed into believing the liberal mantra of blame America first that they swallow whatever dimwitted nonsense the likes of Biden and Obama hand them, and 3) are generally so disinterested in the actual details and facts that they only hear the Katie Couric headline soundbites, believing one thing (Sarah Palin said she could see Russia from her house) and voting for politicians based on ideas of who they are that are patently false (Obama is a centrist).
Maybe illiterate is the wrong word. Functionally stupid ? I would say that covers a sizeable portion of the population. Though that is only partly their own fault. The media owns more than half the responsibility for that. When Miss USA pageant contestants and people like Joe the plumber and various Tea Party protest attendees get grilled to a greater extent than the President, the world has turned upside down.
Dave, I’m not defending the bombing of Dresden but I think it did have strategic objectives. It’s pretty clear that the intent was to draw German resources away from the Russian Front in order to allow the Soviets to regroup and begin their own assault from the east. Check the date of the bombing. To the best of my knowledge it’s never been documented but I believe that Stalian pleaded with Churchill and Roosevelt to do it.
Yeah, it turns out that Dresden is about 90% Nazi propaganda. Goebbels ordered Dresden city officials to multiply casualty and materiel destruction reports by 10. And the Soviets did ask the Western allies to bomb Dresden, to disrupt rail lines passing through the city.
This came out after German reunification, when the city archives were opened for the first time, This book
http://www.amazon.com/Dresden-Tuesday-February-13-1945/dp/0060006773/ref=sr_1_12?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1241274245&sr=1-12
is based on those archives.
There was an article in the Boston Globe in late 2008, saying that the Dresden city government had appointed a committee of German historians to look into the question. They agreed with the book.
Dave, I’m not defending the bombing of Dresden but I think it did have strategic objectives.
Sure. So did 9/11. Just because something was a terrible act doesn’t mean it had no purpose. I’m just saying it wasn’t strictly military (the Allies didn’t even target military structures in Dresden because they didn’t have any good maps of the city). Your timing is way off though, the Germans were already in retreat at that point, and the war ended shortly after.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bombing_of_Dresden_in_World_War_II
The alliance with Stalin, one of history’s greatest monsters, is another great example of the moral murkiness of Churchill and FDR, in contrast to Obama’s statememt.
We didn’t have to torture the Krauts or the Japs. We had an 8th Air Force, a 21st Air Force, and RAF’s Bomber Command mobilized, fueled up, and armed with some of the biggest and deadliest non-nuclear bombs ever dreamed up, along with warehouse loads of incindiary bombs designed to turn their cities into open air crematoria.
Check out what happened to Hamburg, Dresden, Tokyo and ask yourself if the residents wouldn’t have preferred our leadership to capture and torture some of their leadership elites, rather than burning hundreds of thousands of their citizens alive.
The whole idea of war is to win, and to get it done with as quickly as possible. And don’t imagine even for a single minute that any citizen of the United States of America, the Soviet Union or the United Kingdom during World War II had any concern whatsoever about the hideous toughness of the measures our combined armed forces used to win that war.
Arnold Harris
Mount Horeb WI
Dave,
Voucher programs scare the NEA to death because they work: we get better, more accountable schools when people get to make an economic choice.
do we?
Yeah we do. Numerous studies have shown the same thing. Generally the only responsible studies–you know, done by real researchers using rigorous methodologies subject to peer review–have shown that some school choice programs don’t make MUCH improvement, but all show at least a little and none show detriment to the students. At minimum they give many parents desperately-needed freedom of movement and power over bureaucrats who attempt to control them, and in many cases school choice programs CLEARLY correlate to improved student performance.
A guy who publishes in Washington Monthly proudly advertising himself as the author of a book called “The Conservatives Have No Clothes: Why Right-Wing Ideas Keep Failing” is hardly inspiring; might as well show us an Ann Coulter column from The New York Post, ya know? Personally, I think he’s whistling past the graveyard: school choice programs have continued to expand, just at a shamefully slow pace as ideologues like Gren Anrig continue to fight against parents and children–especially parents and children in low-income circumstances. Shameful, really.
zach,
The authors of the Milwaukee study cited in your link have objected to the characterization Anrig makes:
http://www.jsonline.com/news/opinion/29487039.html
The only logical conclusion is that Anrig is a hack who can’t read a study.
much of what the British did to POWs in the 1940s is in fact now considered illegal torture
Source, please. That’s not a flippant request: I would like to know what Britain did as a matter of policy to POWs that would now be considered torture.
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