Jonathan Last: This Is the Land of Wolves Now

[Nevilledog]

https://www.thebulwark.com/p/this-is-the-land-of-wolves-now

*snip*

The use of prisoners for propaganda purposes is as old as war itself. But there are a few recent examples you may recall. ISIS made extensive use of videos and pictures of imprisonment and execution. The Viet Cong and North Vietnamese alternated their approach. Sometimes they used American POWs as props to suggest that all was well in their camps and that prisoners were being treated properly. (They were not.) Other times, they used images of American prisoners as tools to spread fear. They would parade captured American soldiers before mobs and display them at press conferences.

The goal is always the same, though: To use prisoners’ bodies as weapons of political war and to do so against their will.

This is what evil, illiberal regimes do.

Liberal regimes have standards for the treatment of prisoners. These standards are codified under the Geneva Conventions, which the United States has signed and ratified.

Among the standards dictated by the Geneva Conventions is this: Prisoners may not be publicly exploited for purposes of propaganda.3

Another standard of liberal governments is that people who present themselves through legal pathways as refugees fleeing oppression are vetted and provided due process, not disappeared into foreign gulags.

And yet here we are.

*snip*

[dchill]

1. Those are NOT wolves. They are jackals in cheap wolf costumes.

[sinkingfeeling]

2. Yep, "We're now the bad guys". I grew up when America was viewed as the "guys in the white hats".

He's so correct. I also wonder what this country will be like in a year.