When Torture is Right and Moral

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2024/mar/25/russian-officials-lauding-torture-was-unthinkable-now-it-is-proud-to-do-so

This article appeared in The Guardian in response to the Russian treatment of ISIS-K terrorists who attacked a Moscow concert hall in March of 2024, an act of murder that led to over 100 deaths.

It's basically yet another hit piece against all things Russian - slamming their grotesque culture that since the Ukraine War has become even more base in its open display (and thus official approval) of torture. Only in an anti-Russia piece can Western media attempt to make ISIS members the objects of sympathy.

Of course torture is wrong and heinous. All moral people would disapprove of it and yet how soon we forget.

Why isn't The Guardian taking the same tone with regard to the United States? Have we forgotten the Black Sites? How about Guantanamo? Khalid Sheikh Mohammed?

The US may have been momentarily condemned for these acts and yet The Guardian and so many outlets like it just move on and the history is no longer relevant it would seem. The US and Russia are never treated as moral equivalents - a true heresy in the eyes of modern Western ideology.

This is why the US can protest the ICC's investigation of Israel or US personnel on the basis that they are not signatories to the treaty.

And yet neither is Russia - and so why does the Western Establishment applaud the indictment of Putin? If this point is raised with any spokesman there's an immediate retort that the US and Israel are not equivalent to Russia. It's a false analogy not permitted within the fictional framework and moral bankruptcy of American Exceptionalism. Even supposed Christian commentators like Albert Mohler fall into this self-serving and completely deceitful mode of reasoning.

Is the Russian regime harsh and immoral? Of course it is. If you'd bother to read any Russian history you'd understand that compared with historical precedent the Putin regime is rather mild. They are not a liberal culture and never have been.

But the empires and formers empires of the West can point no fingers. Some act as if what the US did after 9/11 (and for all we know still does) was an anomaly. It was nothing of the kind. Read the history of the Phoenix Program, read about what the US did in Vietnam and Korea. Read about what the US did during the World Wars. Read about the US occupation of the Philippines and the way it tortured those who resisted its domination.

Does The Guardian think the American public would have been upset if Timothy McVeigh had been tortured? I suppose they could argue that British citizens wouldn't like their government doing that sort of thing today - we'll leave aside the long history of British actions during its imperial period and even what occurred in places like Kenya and Malaya. Let's just consider something that most middle-aged folk can remember - The Troubles. Was the British public really upset over harsh treatment of IRA prisoners? Would they have been had those who killed Mountbatten or those who nearly killed Thatcher in 1984 been subjected to such? I highly doubt it.

Does that make it right? Of course not. The point here is merely to call out The Guardian and expose its hypocrisy on such questions.

They seem to suggest that the Russian public has been brutalised or de-sensitised to images of violence and the like. I don't doubt it. War does that. Why do you think some of the extremists in the Middle East and Africa behave the way they do?

The US and UK governments try to shield the public from the ugly realities of their wars and yet in a place like the United States, the images come through and the public is brutalised by an endless stream of mass shootings and the youth certainly are by reason of the endless cycle of gun violence in the schools.

Everything reported regarding the Russian security services could be said about US soldier in Iraq and Afghanistan, not to mention Vietnam where the basest forms of torture and trophy-taking were exercised by US troops against the people of that country.

This dehumanisation is playing out in many spheres - more than people realize. It's affecting not just mass media culture but politics as well. The Guardian piece is ridiculous as they have no standing to make such claims and accusations.

War is bestial and should never be glorified.