Noisy At The Circus

So there was another “dis­cus­sion” at din­ner today.

I for­got how it came up, but Ong Ngoai started describing/​reenacting the Daniel Pearl exe­cu­tion. Cau Minh then brought up how peo­ple are protest­ing the CIA’s use of water­board­ing, and said that the pro­test­ers should have their chil­dren decap­i­tated like that and then see how they feel about water­board­ing. This brought on another round of “If you don’t like it, go home.”

I just quickly fin­ished up din­ner with­out say­ing a word, and then went up to my room. As much as I like Jack Bauer, I could never stand for some­one like him in real life. Unlike in 24, no man’s hunches can always be right. Prac­tices like water­board­ing are exces­sive and inef­fec­tive. They do noth­ing but cre­ate false leads for us and more ani­mos­ity from oth­ers. I just want to tell them, “An eye for an eye makes the world go blind.” Amer­ica can and should be above that shit.

Tags: America, Minh T