Here are some thoughts I wrote in response to people on the other forum I write on, Historic Battles.com. There are some people on that forum who very much approve of torture, basically they say that some people are bad and deserve it.

Americans are a little unique in thinking their culture is the best thing for the world. The more extreme form of this idea we have seen with the present Bush administration. Their idea that if the whole Middle East could become like America, why there should be peace. Perhaps they had good intentions.

However they forgot that Arabs are not Americans, and do not want to be. So when Iraqi’s resisted, torture was implemented on a mass scale to find out who was resisting America. The key to this was Rumsfeld’s endless pronouncements about dead enders. In his mind, bringing American culture to Iraq was a noble mission for America, only a few stubborn people in Iraq could oppose such an endeavor. This is how the Bush administration saw things and still continues to do so. All this really means is that there are some people in America who have taken over the colonialist mission from the Europeans. Project for a New American Century and all that sort of thing.

Yet Europeans have learned, some countries through war, some through studied thought, that colonialism does not work. Ironically, pre WWII, America opposed colonialism. However, we took the mantle up after the war, albeit one step removed, by creating client states around the globe to counter a supposed Red Menace.

Now in Iraq we have come full circle, attempting, to become colonizers ourselves. And we have also failed.