There are important reasons why the most sacred medical oaths and doctrines prohibit doctors from participating in torture in any way.
Comment: Correction: A quick internet search reveals that roughly 110,000-120,000 Japanese Americans were interred by the United States during WWII (not millions as I stated earlier). Perhaps two thirds of those were American citizens.
Comment: For a nation proud of its institutions of fairness and justice, it is unthinkable that Americans would exact, much less allow to be commonplace, acts of cruelty in her name. And yet, justified by fear and bigotry, we have found it easy to do just that. Again. How? Through the use of labels.
By labeling someone an Islamic extremist or a terrorist these days, one can be instantly demoted from the ranks of those worthy of due process, habeus corpus, presumed innocence. Rightfully so? Perhaps. But how do you know someone is a terrorist? And how many Americans take that a step further? Watch in amazement at how easily Americans have been suckered into agreeing, with a wink and a nod, that the labels "Arab" and "Muslim" really are synonymous with "terrorist" and thus worthy of the same aforementioned demotion.
Could one argue that torture is justified to thwart an imminent threat? Perhaps, but such scenarios are rare and short lived---quite possibly no one at Guantanamo ever possessed knowledge worthy of stirring the debate.
Guantanamo prison is a huge, self-inflicted black eye on the image of a supposedly kinder & gentler nation. Yet it continues to operate, as it has for years now, fueled by the labelmakers in the White House, supported by all those other "conservative" Americans, all of whom will insist to their dying breath that their cause justifies the means, just like those who happily and in clear conscience canceled the rights and stripped away the property of an entire ethnic group of its fellow countrymen a few decades ago, taking them from their homes and putting them in concentration camps for no reason other than their heritage.
I'm not referring to the Holocaust. I'm referring to the internment of millions of Japanese Americans in the wake of Pearl Harbor.
Most Americans (not all) look back at those events and shake their heads in shame that we were capable of such acts. And yet today, at this very moment, our government is lashing out with the same blind fervor prevalent during WWII. Will we wait again until a new generation has emerged before we see the shamefulness of our current deeds?
Comment: Could torture be looked at another way? Not to be used as a means to obtain information about suspected enemy action, but rather as a means to exact revenge on an unseen and untouchable foe. Consider the actions of a sociopathic lust killer. In the highly evolved fantasy world in which he lives, he has total control over the various acts played out over and over again in his mind. After enough time has pased, he will ultimately act out those fantasies much to the detriment of the object of his desire. He does not go after the cause of his anger and fustration, but after a surrogate. Could this, then, explain the motive for torture? We cannot get Bin Laden, but we can get his minions. In trying to exact information, we exact revenge on a man that we cannot see or touch. And in doing so collect payment that is due on atrocities that have been committed against the innocent.
Comment: We've already shown a national willingness to tolerate the killing of unborn children using methods so barbarous that, while they're not specifically designed to inflict suffering, nevertheless rival anything Josef Mengele ever dredged up. Roll your eyes if you will at my unfashionable take on the subject, as the fashionable did so long ago at those pesky abolitionists. But if we're willing to vivisect human bodies for an expedient like "reproductive freedom," why would we be expected to have any scruples in the prevention of terrorism?
Comment: Wow. It never ceases to amaze me how barbaric we will become in the quest to curb barbarism. How much like what you despise do you need to be before someone says "enough"?
Comment: It never ceases to amaze me how barbaric we will become in the name of stopping barbarism. How much like what you hate do you need to be?
Comment: We torture over 4,000 innocent people every day. Check out a medical journal on how soon a fetus (Latin for little child) develops the ability to feel pain and then check out forms of abortion. Having your skin burned off, your limbs torn from your torso, or being half delivered and having a doctor stick a pair of scissors into the back of your neck and then opening them are pretty good examples of torture. And, they work very well. Of course, there are a few survivors of this torture, too. We like to think that a state that tortures is ALWAYS wrong, and that a nation that kills is ALWAYS wrong, but we have already laid the foundation for this in killing and torturing the most innocent among us. Until the foundations are changed, we have no hope for true human rights to prevail.
Comment:
It is agonizingly ironic that Americas moral compass has collapsed in direct correlation to the blurring of the lines between Church and State. The vocal Christian right wing of the republican party, who have endlessly claimed divine insight into the moral high ground are polluting our nations culture with their belief that all is fair in the defense of the homeland, because the homeland is of divine creation. I find them to be disingenuous at best, and treasonous at worst. This type of naivet?? has resulted in billions of agonizing deaths since the dawning of so called civilization. We need men of intellect and logic to be heard, and heard soon, or the stone age throwback religious zealots amongst us may actually get the Armageddon they so desperately seek. Individuals who seek vengeance are inevitable, but they have a right to be passionate as individuals The state on the other hand has an OBLIGATION to be rational and treat all humans with a basic understanding that life is not a commodity. A state that kills is ALWAYS wrong, a state that tortures is ALWAYS wrong, and unless we can understand this basic premise the greatest nation to ever exist shall wither and die, and deservedly so.
Comment: Let's put waterboarding to good use. We can start with Bush, then Cheney, presidential candidates, Congress...
Comment: Let's put waterboarding to good use. We can start with Bush, then Cheney, presidential candidates, Congress...
caryallenstone@aol.com
Comment: It is really very simple. Is it right or wrong? Do we not know the difference any more? It appears not when a committee has to convene to determine if it is right or wrong to torture someone. Does the word itself give anyone a clue? When I see we cannot answer such simple questions I know the bigger ones that are blowing mankind???s way are way over many of our leaders heads.
Comment: Police departments across this country use canine units(dogs) to pursue/attack people. How the hell is this blood-letting justified??!! I must say it fits under the definition of torture as per Douglas Johnson from CVT and the United Nations. One of two things is happening here...either this kind of torture is somehow justified, and obviously overlooked; or there has been no honest,qualified,written-in-stone definition of what exactly TORTURE is !! No other topic on earth has recieved so much chatter with so little authoritative absolutism, which is what it gravely needs.
Comment: If torture is illegal, why is it that canine police officers in every major city all across the country are allowed to order their dogs to attack - often inflicting serious physical damage on people they're pursuing? Seriously, we don't need to look across oceans to see torture. If you read the defininition of torture as per the U.N. - this example fits. The definition of torture itself is either not conclusive, or what we are calling torture, really is not.
Comment: How do you define torture? How far do you go or should we go to obtain infromation as framed in the opeining of the discussion...someone has your wife and child and will...? Something of critical national importance, lives rest on pursuasion. Is sleep deprivaton torture? Waterboarding? I agree that historically man has been cruel and inhumane, and not just as a nation at war. The US military has the best records on treatment of prisoners of any nation in moderal times (in spite of the headlines). I wish that before eveyone takes the total high road, define the problem and what is torture, and then put yourself in the scenario. I would not suupport barberic acts, but I would freely support that their is a time for the application of pressure to obtain critical information information. And before you judge, besure you have walked in those shoes.
Comment: I totally agree with Dr. Ornish. Torture is what it is, and it is never justified, regardless of whether one has taken an oath to do no harm. NO ONE should do harm to anyone else. Ever. The pain of losing a loved one is not eased by the vengeance of torture. Usually, the victim of torture had nothing to do with the loss, anyway. I am amazed that there should even be debate about this issue. As if being morally decent had to be DEFENDED. When a person allows raw emotion to rule, that person loses the capacity to freely make choices. There is the danger. Not terrorists, but terror itself.
Comment: This is an articulate, clear line in the sand -- on the beach where so many of us are now sunbathing blithely.
It is only through respected leaders, such as Dr. Ornish, speaking out so openly that enough of us will awaken, and add our own voices about who we are -- as individuals and as a nation.
--Jack McClure, Petaluma, California
Comment: This is a clear line drawn in the sand, and it's on a beach where many Americans are now sunbathing passively.
It is only through respected leaders such as Dr. Ornish speaking out so clearly that enough of us will arise from our doldrums and make our voices heard.
Comment: One of the most unnerving aspects of WWII was the barbaric use of torture by our Japanese and German enemies. America does not tortue its prisoner s of war. Adopting the methods of our terrorists enemies is the wrong path to take. It is as big a mistake as suspending our civil liberties in response to terrorist actions. Suspending our civil liberties is part of the jihadist agenda. We shoulld not become that which we oppose.
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