ZERO DARK THIRTY: What’s wrong with a film that justifies torture?
Zero Dark Thirty represents the CIA’s view of the world: an eleven year illegitimate, unjust, immoral “war of terror” on Muslims as revenge for 9/11.
What happened on 9/11/01 in New York City was a horror. The forces that attacked the World Trade Center are totally reactionary.
BUT – what was done by the U.S. in the name of 9/11 – whether justified by “safety,” “justice,” or simple revenge – turned out to be a far worse horror, a war for empire:
• More than a million people have been killed and millions more turned into refugees in the American war against Iraq (a country which was not even connected to 9/11). Tens of thousands have been killed in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Yemen, Somalia, and other countries.
• Drones used to kill suspected militants and thousands of innocents, including children, with the U.S. military now justifying targeting even children as young as 6 years old as “enemies” fit to be killed.
• A worldwide network of CIA torture sites run by the U.S., including Guantanamo was built, and a system of indefinite detention without trial put in place through law and executive orders by Bush and Obama. What they call “enhanced interrogation techniques” the world knows is torture.
• Stripping of fundamental rights within the U.S., giving the state unlimited power to spy on people¹s personal communications and lives, to hold people without trial based merely on an accusation or suspicion that they might do something bad, and kill people without trial in targeted assassinations directed by the President meeting in secret session.
We as a people are further brutalized and degraded by the celebration and justification of torture as in this film. Torture produced no useful intelligence in the pursuit of Bin Laden. Even the government has admitted this. Yet this film claims the opposite.
There were people in the wake of 9/11 including some who had lost loved ones at the WTC who declared “NOT IN OUR NAME.” That captures our sentiment now. End these wars now, and stop torture.
If you agree, contact World Can’t Wait worldcantwait.net 866 973 4463
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