Putting these on the destination short list for my next crime holiday.
Stick to Scandyland. They are probably way better than the Germanic nations (even if they are heads and shoulders above the US).
What if the choice was losing a hand, or losing your head?
I’d definitely look into prosthetic hand replacements after getting out of the hospital. And if anyone dubiously asked me how I lost my hand, I’d say I lost it in an accident or was born that way.
On the other hand, no pun intended, what if the hand that was punitively amputated was the hand that you shake other people’s hands with? And the remaining hand was the hand you cleaned your nethers with? And so you couldn’t shake hands with good people anymore because they wouldn’t want to make themselves unclean with your foul discharges?
Then I’d probably try to move to a place that had copious amounts of soap and water in their bathrooms. Plus I could shake their hands with my prosthetic replacement.
I’m not thinking thieves in Afghanistan have a lot of access to prosthetic hands.
What would you choose between losing your hand and having to smell everyone’s farts?
That kind of punishment is abhorrent, but doesn’t a major ally (Saudi Arabia) do this sort of thing all the time? Seems a bit hypocritical to get upset when the Taliban does it.
One could argue (and I would) that the Saudis are a bad ally, and aligning away from them would be long term good.
Yeah, I’m cool with condemning the Saudis.
No argument here.
I totally agree.
Neither the death penalty or dismemberment, as far as I can tell, actually have much of a deterrent effect other than, well, the obvious in the case of the death penalty (it deters one person from ever doing anything again at least). There does not seem to be much if any correlation between the severity of punishments for crimes and the number or rate of criminal acts. Harsh punishments make people feel better, often in a rather unpleasant, revenge-like way, but arguably one could say that for heinous crimes of particular savagery, executing someone simply as a way of ridding society of that person might be justified. Personally, I’m not convinced; it seems there is more mileage to be had from less bloody approaches in the long run.
In the case of the Taliban and Saudis and what not, the real issue is not so much executions or even maiming, but rather that the process appears, to us at least, to be even worse than our own. I mean, if your so-called justice system is worse than Texas’, you are in a world of hurt…
Therein lies the barbarism!
How good something makes you feel should really never be used as a standard for justice.
I don’t mourn a lot of the violent offenders who are executed, but if killing truly is wrong then a state demeans itself by participating in that carnage. Killing someone in a “sophisticated” and “orderly” way - even in retribution for similar or worse crimes - wouldn’t absolve a drug dealer, and it doesn’t absolve a state.
I also don’t think we’ve come up with a system that is nearly good enough to trust when it says “I know for an absolute fact that this citizen deserves to die”. Not consistently.
There are people who don’t deserve to live, that I know, but I don’t think it’s on us to kill them if they’re in hand. Just lock 'em away and let time take care of them. At least that way they don’t rob us of our morality and our dignity.
Only if you think the Saudis aren’t terrible (they are).
Our current system seems to be more: “Well, whatever, we think he did it.” With good odds the prosecutors know he didn’t.
I agree with you about the death penalty. Just want to add that America has proven that even ‘lock em away’ will be systematically abused, and all sorts of people will be locked away for absurd periods of time for even the smallest infractions, because, well, people want obedience and they want punishment and revenge when they don’t get obedience.
There is a senate hearing on Afghanistan this morning. I haven’t watched much of it, but when asked how we missed that the Afghanistan military and government would melt away so quickly one of the few specific things Milley mentioned was that we pulled advisors out of Afghan units three years ago. We had no direct eyes or ears within units.
He just mentioned as one mistake that we mirrored out own forces when training theirs and thus they were too dependent on technology.
Milley just absolutely smacked down Tom Cotton when he asked “why didn’t you resign”.
In answer to another question he reiterated the points of having advisors on the ground and “don’t americanize the war”.
It’s shameful that the narrative that we could have left 2,500 troops in Afghanistan indefinitely and that would have kept things “stable” is getting new life from these hearings. Even the Biden answer that’s getting all the “he lied” headlines was in answer to a question based on the false premise that 2,500 troops had been keeping the country stable for “several years” already. There’s a parade of former military making the rounds of the media saying various shades of “I don’t know why Biden didn’t take their advice”. Zero hindsight. Apparently there’s still an unshakable belief that the situation was stable in the first place and would have remained stable if we kept in a small force.
If all our military advisors were saying we should keep around 2,500 troops there forever then even more credit to Biden to ignoring the same type of fever dreams that kept us there for 20 years.
Really. The Taliban were counting on the withdrawal deadline. If we evacuated people and then kept 2500 troops there they would be dead within a week.
I don’t think this is accurate. Killing 2500 US troops is a much bigger deal than the Taliban are capable of, I think.
Now don’t get me wrong, Biden’s blanket denial was terrible and clearly wrong, but look at this question:
Stephanopoulos : So no one told — your military advisers did not tell you, “No, we should just keep 2,500 troops. It’s been a stable situation for the last several years. We can do that. We can continue to do that”?
How the fuck was this a stable situation for the last several years? This isn’t some guy on the street who is ignorant due to our piss poor media, this is our piss poor media itself.