Zowie Professor....those comprehension skills are deteriorating rapidly. If you go back a few, you'll see I was responding to Tom's rant about this being a "religious war" which he describes as impossible to win. Your comparison is way off base. No, there doesn't need to be a "leader" or "head" or a flag for surrender to take place. And your version of what constitutes "torture" is obviously much different than most folks. And nobody is condoning evil.
We did, as I recall, defeat the Japanese and the Germans.
So what exactly was the point?
When you compare things, it helps if they are alike. WWII is nothing like what we are doing today, for the reasons I mentioned. There is no place we could drop a bomd and terrorize anyone into surrender. No country we can invade that will end it. There is no one who can surrender. No way to kill our way out of this.
Now, I don't really know what most people call torture, but I know the US government has prosecuted both foreign soldiers and US soldiers for waterboarding prisoners. The US government determined in the past that waterboarding was in fact torture. And have signed agreements to that effect.
I also think it possible that most people absent politics and fear would accept that acts which can nad have lead to causing the death of the person ebing tortured would classify as torture, and such is the case with stress positions. I would also argue that asking others to do it for us isn't really any better than doing it ourself.
So, yes, those who make excuses for us using torture are in fact condoning evil.
