Torture creates terrorists?

[Liberty Star]

If a torured people are left alive, can they become monsters?

Lawrence Wright's Trip to al-Qaeda

Wright, unlike most Americans, has an intimate knowledge of the Middle East. He taught English in Egypt over three decades ago, learning Arabic and making life-long friends in the process. "The Egyptian people loved America then," he tells his audience. When Wright returned to Egypt in 2002 to research Ayman al-Zawahiri, the doctor and ideological leader of al-Qaeda, the yang to Osama bin Laden's charismatic (and moneyed) yin, he found it a changed place, electric with anger and bitterness.

In part, this anger stemmed from the tactics the Egyptian government had taken against Islamist radicals like Zawahiri. During the show, Wright presents a clip from the early 1980s: Zawarhiri had been convicted of smuggling guns used in the assassination of President Anwar Sadat. Behind bars, packed in with other inmates, the young surgeon is articulate, proud, and defiant: "They put us in the dirty Egyptian jails … they whipped with electric cables, they shocked us with electricity! ... And they used wild dogs!" "Torture," comments Wright, "is a potent deterrent. Indeed, many of these prisoners were psychologically destroyed. But Zawahiri emerged … hardened, resolute, and bent on revenge…. He entered prison a surgeon. He came out of it a butcher."

http://www.prospect.org/cs/articles?...rip_to_alqaeda

[apc3161]

Of course. All of our foreign policies right now are only making our country worse off in the long run.

This is why I want to scream every time I hear Giuliani say " I'll keep America on the offense against the war on terror".

Every time you kill a brother, sister, mother, father, or cousin in Iraq who was an innocent civilian , you just created a handful of terrorists. You think these people will forget that their family members died as a result of the US occupation? Of course they wont. Look at Israel and Palestine, that crap has been on for years, and all of the terrorists attacking Israel today weren't even around in the 50's 60's 70's.

Bottom line, violence leads to violence. You need to have a strong army yes, but you should always maintain the moral high ground and only act in self defense.

[Liberty Star]

Good points.

Why pro-torture folks like Cheney don't understand this?

[brandon]

If torture makes someone into a "terrorist", then what does that make the person who tortured them in the first place?

Who is worse?

Who is the real terrorist?

[Steeleye]

Why pro-torture folks like Cheney don't understand this?

They don't know it, but deep down, they need terrorists to exist. It validates their existence and keeps people afraid. The fearful elect their kind.