Are You Human or Not?
How? How how how? How can people--actual people--carry out this kind of torture on other people? (If you can handle graphic depictions, read about atrocities here, here, and here.) Unlike those forced to watch loved ones being tortured, all I have to see are words on a page, and it still makes me want to cry and/or throw up.
I suppose I can rationalize why the torturers do it: if they don't, they themselves will be killed. And I can articulate why leaders order it done: they are sick, evil, and power-hungry, seeking to secure their status by the use of fear. But I can not hope to grasp why other world leaders, when made of aware of such practices, would not campaign to put an end to it immediately. To me, it makes them just like the torture-masters: able to look on and feel no visceral reaction. France, China, and Russia, what is your deal?