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Justice Dept. Releases Bush Administration Memos on Torture, Rendition, & Wiretapping
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That supposes that Obama and Pelosi were ever the ones raising this debate, or that they are some how the masters of it.
Newsflash - opposition to torture is not a partisan game of revenge, it's opposition to torture.
This isn't a new kind of war. Counter Insurgency is just the bullshit euphemism for Colonial Warfare. It's been around for a very long time, we are just taking our turn at it.
And also a very large percent (I won't say what percentage since I don't have the figures handy) of the prisoners that we have tortured didn't come from the battlefield. We got them by paying off scumbag mercenary criminals.
The hissy fits worked.
We've been taking our turn at it for a while. Ignoring many nations in Latin America briefly, turn your attention to the brutal suppression of the Philippines, something that we're still not completely clear on as a nation.
Yeah, we've been an imperial power since at least the 1890s, hell, TR explicitly pushed for imperialism. We've had an actual for real globe spanning empire for 60 years. This is more the death throes than the birth pangs.
I was speaking more in reference to the centuries of Colonial Warfare as practiced by the European powers. We're relatively new at it, compared to the English, French and the rest of that gang.
Eh, the Phillipino resistance and Vietnam are basically the same idea.
I have no shame about us trying to spread our way of life to other countries, it's a question of how we do it that concerns me.
I'd obviously prefer they all align themselves with investigations, since it doesn't take any party unity to overcome inaction.
https://twitter.com/Hooraydiation
The problem comes that, in implementation, spreading the American way of life frequently means suppressing or exterminating the existing way of life (let's face it, the American way of life is, well, big). And that's ignoring that other, weaker but still sovereign countries have a variety of reasons for not wanting us to spread our way of life (from "You are evil. There." to "Actually, we'd much prefer avoiding certain aspects of American life, as crazy as this might sound to you.").
It's basically a case of "America doesn't take 'no' for an an answer." In complete fairness, we're hardly the first country to do that either, and our global domination is actually less cultural and more military and economic than previous world-spanning empires.
That doesn't change the fact that we've practiced (and in many respects, still practice) imperialism. You can call it cultural imperialism, but there's still the economic imperialism and military imperialism too. And it's not always bad either (look at the Marshall Plan).
What you're looking for is 'hegemony.' Which is what we are; a Hegemon, not an Empire.
This is why I hope the Republicans never win an election ever again, because we will never hear from these people nearly as much as we do now.
e: And that quote got a +24 "thumbs up" on yahoo news.
I guess the best description of us is a democratic hegemony. The elite can only exert direct authority on a global scale if the public sentiment is behind it, otherwise they must resort to more subtle means. And really, we're not that powerful. We can go 1v1 with any country, but we can't take on the whole world.
But if it was just "pouring water on someone's face" how would that be an "enhanced interrogation method"?
Maybe it was really, really cold water. They didn't want to catch the flu... The Swine flu.
https://twitter.com/Hooraydiation
edit: re Hoz
my unofficial autobio will be accompanied with tips on how to smile
cause I've found that when they don't see you frown, they never know that you're a threat
and they don't sweat you when you came around
First, I think it's fairly clear that "we can't take on the whole world"--frankly, "wanting to take over the whole world" is not a requirement for an imperialist government. Really, the only 'power' requirement for imperialism is just barely enough force to exert on your neighbors--practically any nation that happens to be stronger than its neighbors can resort to colonial imperialism (and this is frequently how they become more powerful in the start). How America vs. The Rest of the World ends is pretty irrelevant.
There are plenty of times where we don't rely on 'subtle' influences--overthrowing governments and installing dictators is not a form of subtle suggestion. It wasn't subtle when the USSR did it in Eastern Europe, and it's not subtle when we do it in South America. To me, it's imperialism.
I personally find there's a very fine line between hegemony and imperialism, but that's just me--you say we only want the rest of the world to play by our rules, but that doesn't really change the fact that we've vigorously supported the overthrow of openly democratic governments simply because we disagreed with the results of democratic elections (Chile and Iran are two examples that come to mind).
Personally, that strikes me as much as "Do it our way, because we said so," as "Play by our rules, all right?". We deliberately shaped Cuba and the Philippines to our own choosing, often times at the point of a gun (or driving people into camps and letting them die en mass), though I'm not going to pretend to know how everyone responsible justified it. To me, that says colonial style imperialism, as much as Spain or Germany's behavior in the same time period. I guess you could call it "Hegemony with guns, bombs, and on occasion, mass murder."
But hey, that's just me, and now, we're drifting further off topic.
Id rather be aborted than waterboarded. Probably less painful.
It is just one of the few things the xkcd guy got right.
Ed & Larry : "Doesn't matter."
I recently was gifted a thing in Steam. If it was from you, thank you very much!
This being the other thing: