In my classification, there are two types of torture: physical pain and mental pain. The worst type is physical pain. It seems hypocritical of us to try enemies for physical pain like waterboarding and then do it ourselves and say it legally is not torture. Physical pain is torture.
Mental torture includes things like sleep deprivation which has been said to get the best results. Our enemies have used it and we adopted it. I'm not sure it is a crime. I would tend to say it isn't. I don't know what long term damage it does to the recipients.
People speculate on how more modern parts of warlike drones - will be viewed in 10 years, largely because of collateral damage. It is naive to think that using group troops instead of drones would result in no collateral damage or even less collateral damage. Plus how many of our troops are you willing to sacrifice to get the target? I support drones, but not indiscriminately. If in 10 years it is decided that they should be illegal, then so be it.
It is incredible to think that war should be done in a surgical manner involving only military personnel. War is messy and violent. In WW-II, how would you classify the Dresden and Tokyo firebombings and the Hiroshima and especially Nagasaki* atomic bombs? Such events were not made against military targets but in an attempt to break the will of civilians and their leaders.
* It seems like we dropped it because we had it.
About Me
- Everett Estes Ford
- Sandhills Area, NC, United States
- Born and raised in St. Paul, Minnesota, the author is a published poet and author of the monograph "Lead Isotopes." He received a Ph.D. from the California Institute of Technology in 1960 and a D.Sci. (Honorus causa) from the University of Missouri in 1989. As a scientist, he published more than 100 technical papers in the areas of isotope geology, mineral resources, and environmental concerns. He was involved in the Apollo Program and post Apollo Program in the late 1960s and early 1970s and the National Acid Precipitation Program with the National Park Service in the 1980s. He was the first Western scientist to give the Vernadsky Memorial Lecture in Moscow during detente in 1976. He worked for 34 years for the U.S. Geological Survey in a variety of research and administrative positions, including tours as Chief of the Branch of Isotope Geology and as the Assistant Director of Research. He was president of the Geochemical Society, and, as an amateur tennis player, he served as President of the Fairfax County, Virginia, Golden Racquets Tennis Club for two years.
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