[mikegi]

Any "moral superiority" this nation enjoys is a function of our refusal to engage in certain practices, practices we rightly deem beneath us. To approve of torture in any form is to abandon all claims to moral altitude.

Our "moral altitude" in this war was assured when we refused to use nuclear weapons in Afghanistan on 9/12/2001. Instead, we fought an extremely gentle war there after losing thousands in our own country.

Please tell me which war we, the USA, fought in the past that meets your definition of "moral altitude". Was it World War II? Back then we firebombed and nuked relatively defenseless enemy cities at will, killing hundreds of thousands of civilians (old men, women, children, etc.).

[Petronius]

As a culture, we have traditionally shunned torture. That some of our posters (and liberals like Alan Dershowitz) are second-guessing this stance disturbs me. On what grounds do we consider ourselves better than "them" if this highground is abandoned?

Are you suggesting that given atrocities from past wars we have no moral altitude, or that it scarcely matters what we do now? And I thought I was a cynic . . .