A Torture Rant

Reader Kyle commented on my recent post about torture.

i've been writing our elected officials on this very issue for six years now.
for me, the question isnt "when is bush leaving office?" but when is the american public going to stand up and condemn torture.
up to this point, the american public at large has condoned torture. if we honestly believed that torture was wrong, we would not have re-elected our current president. we knew, way back then, that torture and extrodinary renditions were taking place.
when i first started hearing of the crimes against humanity carried out at the behest of our president and his administration i thought very seriously of leaving america.
this is the very reason i refuse to be a "one issue voter". i refuse to allow abortion (which the president is highly unlikely to change) to effect my vote more than torture or our treatment of the rest of the world (which the president (as shown during the last 8 years) CAN effect.

I think the problem, though, is that most people are too complacent about anything that isn't directly impacting them. If we have a leader who condones and authorizes torture, most people aren't going to care because it doesn't really affect their lives. If Joe Citizen's brother was being carted off to Gitmo there might be more outrage, but otherwise people are just content to go on with their normal routines. If you ask them, most would, of course, say, "Torture is bad. I don't support it," but they don't get worked up enough to do anything about it.

That means we need leaders with integrity. Sadly, politics doesn't seem to attract people like that too often. Or if it does, they don't keep it very long. Still, I'm not sure we can get anyone worse than Bush.