I’ve had a lot of thoughts on my mind recently as a lot has been happening in the Middle East. Just this morning came news of an attack on a school in Pakistan that resulted in 120+ children being murdered by Taliban militants. Yesterday some nut job took hostages in Australia before being killed. And the debate about the use of torture on hostile detainees is back as the Senate recently released a scathing report about interrogation techniques used in the past. The state of the world we live in right now leaves a lot to be desired. It’s not pretty, but it’s the world we live in. And there doesn’t appear to be a glimmering light at the end of the tunnel to look forward to at this point.

With ISIS wreaking havoc in Syria and Iraq, the Taliban after more than a decade of war are still bringing death and destruction to Afghanistan, Pakistan and loosely affiliated groups in other countries across the world, there are a lot of things to be concerned about. Though there isn’t anything positive from a lot of these events, the best I can come up with is to hope that things like this act as the undoing of these groups. Though I’ve heard people very critical of Muslim culture based on what they see in the news I base my opinions on actual interactions with people and they are just as outraged by these terrible events as we are here. The problem becomes, how do citizen’s stand up to a militant force with modern military weapons? Thinking in strategic terms, lining up for a slaughter doesn’t sound like an effective way to combat.

As for the torture debacle, I can’t even fathom how this is something we are debating. I simply can’t understand how some people can criticize other groups or nations for their terrible acts against other human beings and then in the next breath say the only way to solve these problems is to use similar tactics against them. In my experiences in the Army we saw the results of a lot of torture committed by the bad guys. Things that I don’t even know how a person could dream up let alone be evil enough to do to another person. It’s disgusting. I know that our enemies have done a lot of terrible things to us as well as other people around the world, but I don’t want to be known as a nation that will capture people and then torture them to get what we want. You could make a good argument that America is the greatest nation in the world based on what we stand for; freedom, prosperity, and liberty. There are opportunities and freedoms here that many others could never imagine, and we didn’t achieve that by sinking to the incredibly low levels of our enemies. We have stood for something greater than that, and I feel as though we are better than that. If we want to be known as the greatest nation we have to hold ourselves to a higher moral and ethical standard than our enemies, even when it isn’t an easy thing to do.

Something I heard over and over again as a little boy from my parents was, “Just because the other kids are doing it doesn’t mean it’s ok for you to do.” The same simple concept applies to this. The radicalization of Islam is a problem for much of the world and it’s not going to just fade away without some drastic measures, but it will eventually be defeated. And when it is gone we don’t want to be left with the reputation as a people who will torture our enemies. It’s wrong and inhumane and disgusting when our enemies do it, and it would be no less wrong and inhumane and disgusting if we do it.