George Washington on torture

[bush_cheney2004]

Really? So where would you draw the line if you were Bush in terms of treatment of prisoners? You think Abu Ghraib was ok?

Yes.....I haven't seen a good naked man pyramid since my college days!

I find such quaint notions about prisoner hospitality to be inconsistent with armed warfare between belligerents intended to end with injury and......DEATH.

[bush_cheney2004]

......Why are some people more concerned with revenge in the "war on terror" than taking the high road & sticking to basic moral principles (oh, and international law)? Were all the messages/lessons about "being the good guy no matter what" that i learned over and over again in the comic books, movies, cartoons, and books i grew up reading/watching just a pile of rubbish to seemingly 50% of the population?

Pretty much......people stopped buying those kind of comic books so we created darker, conflicted characters who were not so goody two shoes. Character flaws make for more interesting characters. Even though Superman was never allowed to directly kill some perp, he was still allowed to kick their ass.

Daniel Pearl's severed head is really no different from those on Wake Island or Bataan at the hands of the Japanese....and it invokes the identical kind of response.

[Pliny]

Pretty much......people stopped buying those kind of comic books so we created darker, conflicted characters who were not so goody two shoes. Character flaws make for more interesting characters. Even though Superman was never allowed to directly kill some perp, he was still allowed to kick their ass.

Daniel Pearl's severed head is really no different from those on Wake Island or Bataan at the hands of the Japanese....and it invokes the identical kind of response.

I could have kicked his ass better than you did! Actually.. you did a good job!

[jbg]

Daniel Pearl's severed head is really no different from those on Wake Island or Bataan at the hands of the Japanese....and it invokes the identical kind of response.

There is a huge difference.

The severed heads found on Wake Island or Bataan at the hands of the Japanese were those of military personnel. Thought their treatment would offend the acolytes of the Geneva Convention they were still troops who were there to kill Japanese.

Daniel Pearl hurt nobody and planned to hurt nobody. He was unarmed and defenseless. Huge difference.

[bush_cheney2004]

....Daniel Pearl hurt nobody and planned to hurt nobody. He was unarmed and defenseless. Huge difference.

So are POWs....the sentiment back home during WW2 was not so discerning. Technically, Pearl's case was a kidnapping, aggravated assault, and murder. But just as before, it was elevated because of geo-political context.

In Washington's time (and well afterwards), decapitation was a routine form of execution in Europe and elsewhere.

[Moonlight Graham]

Pretty much......people stopped buying those kind of comic books so we created darker, conflicted characters who were not so goody two shoes. Character flaws make for more interesting characters. Even though Superman was never allowed to directly kill some perp, he was still allowed to kick their ass.

Ya, nobody buys Spider-Man and Superman comics anymore

Yes, character flaws do make for more interesting characters. Spider-Man (nerdy teenager), Iron Man (an alcoholic), and basically any character created by Stan Lee in the 60's had some kind of flaws to appear more human and easier to relate to. But at the end of the day most from the pre-70's era were still always-do-rights & learned from their lessons.

Darker characters like Wolverine, Punisher, Ghost Rider, Swamp Thing only came because comic readers started to become adults (same happened to pro-wrestling). I grew up on Luke Skywalker, He-Man, and Hulk Hogan as my fictional heroes, and all were squeeky clean. Few (good) parents throw their 7 year-olds a Punisher mag or let them watch 'Stone Cold' Steve Austin.

[yankhadenuf]

From an editorial by Paul Hill of the Boston Globe:

Well said, in my opinion.

It never ceases to amaze me how much wisdom with foresight our Founding Fathers had, and there were quite a few with this ability at that time, such as Thomas Jefferson, Ben Franklin, etc, etc, etc. Thank God it was their generation that founded our country of USA.