If It's OK for Jack Bauer...
When I watch news reports about prisoner treatment in Guantanimo Bay and Abu Ghraib prison, I think how aweful it is that they mistreat prisonors. Yet when I'm watching Fox TV's 24 and coercive pressure/torture is used when interrogating terrorists, my reaction is "You go, Jack!"
Yes, one is real life and the other is fiction. But I still feel that my reactions to real and fictional situations ought to be the same. I guess one difference is that on 24, we know most of the time who the terrorists are because we see their activities.
Actually, I'm not really concened with how 9/11 mastermind Khalid Shaikh Mohammed or would-be hijacker Zacarias Moussaoui were treated in custody. The people I empthize with at Guantanimo and Abu Ghraib are often innocent bystanders who became suspects only by an accident of circumstance. When the United States locks up people for months or years and subjects them to torture and mistreatment based on the thinest is suspicions, it makes it difficult to argue to much of the world that we're better than the dictatorships we're trying to save them from.
Yes, one is real life and the other is fiction. But I still feel that my reactions to real and fictional situations ought to be the same. I guess one difference is that on 24, we know most of the time who the terrorists are because we see their activities.
Actually, I'm not really concened with how 9/11 mastermind Khalid Shaikh Mohammed or would-be hijacker Zacarias Moussaoui were treated in custody. The people I empthize with at Guantanimo and Abu Ghraib are often innocent bystanders who became suspects only by an accident of circumstance. When the United States locks up people for months or years and subjects them to torture and mistreatment based on the thinest is suspicions, it makes it difficult to argue to much of the world that we're better than the dictatorships we're trying to save them from.
posted by Dancar | 8:01 AM
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