Making Terrorists Sleepy =’s Torture To The Left

by John Hawkins | January 18, 2005 6:26 pm

If you want to understand how ill-equipped liberals are to fight the war on terror, you only need to read this post by Jesse Taylor from Pandragon[1].

After reading my 40 Question Reality-Based Community Quiz[2], Taylor took umbrage at the following question,

“24) In your opinion, is sleep deprivation a form of torture?”

Of course, I stuck that question in there just to show how incapable many liberals are of differentiating between real torture, like flogging or attaching car battery to someone’s nether regions, and doing things like making members of Al-Qaeda “sweepy” for a couple of days.

Taylor proved my point and then some.

In his post[3], he for all intents and purposes defines torture as…get ready for this…non-consensual activity…

“1.) Is having sex with someone once a day for a year torture?

2.) Is being bound and gagged, and whipped until you bleed torture?

3.) Is eating food until you vomit torture?

4.) Is watching racist propoganda for 24 hours torture?

There’s a simple answer to all of these questions: if you consent to it, no; if you don’t, yes. Saying “I didn’t get sleep once” or “people in a particular type of job don’t get sleep” isn’t an answer, because in both cases, the people in question are not getting sleep because of conscious life choices they made. They weren’t kidnapped or captured and made to work on their final history paper, they weren’t snatched up by terrorists and made to get a Ph.D.

I’m sorry, but if you’re gonna talk about torture and not realize the difference between consensual and nonconsensual activity, you should probably shut the f*ck up about torture, all things being equal.

So “if you consent to (an activity), no, (it’s not torture); if you don’t, yes (it is torture).” Right?

Well, by that standard, most high school principals practice “torture” all the time. After, all they force kids into detention and worse yet, sometimes paddle them! You ever been paddled by a high school principal? By Taylor’s standards that guy ought to be on trial right beside of the soldiers responsible from Abu Ghraib.

Heck, if you think about it, since terrorists are being detained against their will, doesn’t that make the very act of locking someone up in Gitmo or for that matter, any prison at all, torture in and of itself?

But don’t worry, Taylor does have some minimum standards for non-consensual activities that he doesn’t consider torture…

(And yes, there is a threshold of nonconsensual activity under which it’s not torture, such as making a child brush their teeth – I realize that pro-torture conservatives don’t like to believe there’s anything more complex to the definition of torture than whether or not the person in question requires major medical attention, but there is.)

That gives our soldiers in Iraq and Cuba a lot of room to work with when they’re interrogating terrorists who may be planning to pull off another 9/11 doesn’t it?

Sgt. Jones: Ok Khalid, either you tell me where the terrorists are planning to drive the truck bomb or I’ll make you wash behind your ears!

Khalid: You’re bluffing infidel!

Sgt. Jones: Oh? You don’t know what I’m capable of buddy. So help me God, either you let me know the license plate of that truck or I’ll make you clean up the garage. There’s old newspapers in there, crates, it’s sort of damp and smelly too…

Khalid: You American, Zionist-infidel, son of pigs and monkeys! You will never get away with this!

Sgt. Jones: Sorry Khalid, but I had to do it….Oh and Khalid? Do a good job or you get no cupcake with desert tonight!

Khalid: No! I’ll tell, I’ll tell! Just let me have your sweet, decadent, American pastry now and I will talk! Please infidel, please!

On the upside folks, just be happy that John Kerry lost. Because if he didn’t, you’d have people who think like this in the White House, actually running the war on terrorism…