That was painful to read, that poor man. Absolutely disgusting behaviour from the US.
kidnap... and assassinate.
Is not the US people in any case, is their government. And some of those people seem to have severe and worrying sadistic undercurrents in their personality. As human beings, torturers are a real failure.
This a million times. I'm speaking broadly as I'm not from the US, however this applies pretty much to every country: "People are not their government" should be always considered when criticizing any nation or being criticized by others because of government politics. Identifying people with their government choices is the 1st step towards building hatred that will be used to convince weak minded citizen to enroll and invade that country. Most wars happened because governments screwed their own people convincing them there were enemies ready to kill them, where in fact there was nobody.
Disagreed completely.
In a democracy, people are responsible for their governments. That's the whole idea of democracy. If you can pick your leadership you are responsible for who you pick and every single action they take. You get the credit for the good, and you get the blame for the bad. With great power comes great responsibility and whatnot.
In an autocracy where people cannot choose their leadership, it's more murky.
[edit] It's so weird to see this American blame shirking from the ground floor all the way to the president. "Well, I'm not responsible for the government just because I pick them," to staying home on Election Day and responding "well he's not my president," to POTUS' perennial "well, Obama and Hillary are really at fault."
Is nobody taking responsibility for anything anymore?
But what if we have a representative democracy instead? Then people's choice is limited to picking one of the options provided by dominant political parties; and the parties are responsible for providing those options.
Just imagine the idea of "representative X" applied to things other than democracy, to see what difference it makes. For example, "representative freedom" = you can't have it, but you can choose one of two people, and they will. Or "representative sex" = you are free to choose people who can actually have sex; feels great, doesn't it? Or "representative free speech" = you are not allowed to speak your mind, but here is a list of a few pre-approved people, choose one of them, and they will speak their mind freely. Isn't it amazing how different things get when they become "representative"?
If I'm presented with two candidates, neither of whom I agree with, what am I to do? If I can't trust a word of any politician, how can I make an informed decision?
What do you mean by responsibility? I assume you don't mean every American civilian should be prosecuted for the crimes of their government? If you don't mean this, please clarify what you mean.
Which country are you from? Are you responsible for all of their actions?
Last time I checked I don’t get to vote for policies directly. Last time I checked I didn’t get to vote for every representative position and in some cases people won those elections but didn’t even get a plurality of the votes.
Why exactly am I responsible for something I cannot control?
Politicians, bar some exceptions, always represent the worst of given population. Sociopaths, power hungry, fucked up inside, very good presentation / talking. Always thinking how to use given situation and people around them to their advantage, and there can never be too many advantages.
The fact that people keep voting the same 1 / 2 parties over and over is a proof for that - nobody disagrees with them enough, en masse, to vote otherwise (or not vote).
The real shocker here is not that people do cruel things. Murderers carrying out abhorrent fantasies exist and existed everywhere, anytime.
Suppose I have such a personality, and that becomes known, my government then should do the appropriate medical and judical procedures.
When the government then goes "oh, here is 10k/month and a ticket to Macedonia and go live your dream", there is something truly, truly fucked up and it is not the individual in question.
And that grievance is a systemic one and therefor a responsibilty of the people should they have the intention to declare themselves as a democracy...
I believe the major issue that everyone affected likes to avoid is their profit of that behavior. Not necessarily torture itself, I don't think it helps for interrogations but may serve as a deterrent, but global power and regular war and demonstrations of strength. That gets you a lot of favorable trade deals, you get to be the world's reserve currency, and you can borrow without any limits. That's pretty good, and probably more than makes up for the insane military spending - and citizens profit from that as well.
I don't think there's a lot of motivation to be overly critical in that regard, much like most people won't be too critical of their company when they get half a million in total compensation.