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The LA Times reports on the passing of Jeremiah Denton, the US Navy pilot held by the Viet Cong, who let the world know in a TV interview that POWs were being tortured by blinking out the word "torture" in Morse code. From 1965 to 1973, Denton was held at the "Hanoi Hilton" and several other infamous Vietnamese prisons and was held in isolation for lengthy periods totaling about four years. At points, he was in a pitch-black cell, a cramped hole crawling with rats and roaches. His beatings opened wounds that festered in pools of sewage. Frustrated that Denton would not confess to alleged American war crimes or reveal even basic details of US military operations, jailers subjected him to horrific abuse.
Taking command of fellow POWs he usually could not see, Denton fashioned a secret prison communication system using the sound of coughs, hacks, scratching, spitting and throat-clearing keyed to letters of the alphabet. "When you think you've reached the limit of your endurance, give them harmless and inaccurate information that you can remember, and repeat it if tortured again," he told his men. "We will die before we give them classified military information." Thinking they'd broken him, Denton's captors allowed a Japanese TV reporter to interview him on May 2, 1966. "The blinding floodlights made me blink and suddenly I realized that they were playing right into my hands," he wrote. "I looked directly into the camera and blinked my eyes once, slowly, then three more times, slowly. A dash and three more dashes. A quick blink, slow blink, quick blink." While his impromptu blinks silently told the world that prisoners were being tortured, he was unabashed in the interview, which was later broadcast around the world, in his denial of American wrongdoing. "Whatever the position of my government is, I believe in it yes, sir," said Denton. "I'm a member of that government and it is my job to support it, and I will as long as I live."
(Score: 3, Insightful) by hatta on Thursday April 03 2014, @07:23PM
"Whatever the position of my government is, I believe in it yes, sir," said Denton. "I'm a member of that government and it is my job to support it, and I will as long as I live."
This kind of thinking is behind every atrocity in history. Nationalism is every bit as bad, and bad for the same reasons, as racism, sexism, or any other form of bigotry. Critical thinking is a responsibility of every human being. Those who abdicate that responsibility are terrible people.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Foobar Bazbot on Friday April 04 2014, @04:31AM
That sort of blind loyalty to anything is absolutely harmful, but I don't consider that statement, made in those circumstances, adequate evidence to conclude that Denton necessarily believed that. (Though you may be drawing from other evidence I missed... I didn't RTFA.)
Suppose for the sake of argument that he did not believe it, but did believe his country was right about some things (obviously including some justification for the war, else he wouldn't be there). In the face of torture, with the goal of producing propaganda video of US POWs repudiating the US, would he state that position honestly? I don't think it would be unreasonable to forgo an honest statement, which might be misrepresentable for propaganda purposes (if he mentioned any points of disagreement, they could use those out of context), in favor of the simple and defiant statement he made, which not only denies any propaganda value, but also portrays him as an unconvinceable fanatic, which he might hope would discourage further efforts.
Moreover, even if he truly did believe it, it doesn't follow that he believed it before he was tortured -- while I'm no psychologist, it sounds plausible to me that one might adopt that opinion as a reaction to torture. If so, it seems harsh, though not technically false, to focus on him and call him a "terrible person" because his captors made him a terrible person.