Torture!

I post on left wing and right wing sites, attempting to open my mind as much as possible. Today, I found a post on Little Green Footballs that disturbed me. The contents of the post in question is something I agree with. I generally agree with or at least can understand where Charles Johnson, the owner of the website, comes from. This post refers to Daily Kos, and the following statement written by Markos Moulitas, the owner of DKos.

There’s a reason the Geneva Conventions exist. We’ve lost the moral high ground. What a fucking waste of a war.

I agree with Charles Johnson's perspective, that of course we have not lost the moral highground. Of course we treat the Islamists far better than they treat us - with their beheadings. Furthermore, technically, since the Islamists do not follow the Geneva Conventions, we are not obliged the follow the Conventions, either. However, we should not be measuring our morality by the yardstick of the Islamists. The yardstick we measure our morality by should be higher than the depravity of the Islamists. This is not the "soft bigotry of low expectations," because I do not believe other world agencies have the right to hold America to different standards. However, we ought to expect more of ourselves. We should not be proud to be "better than the Islamists." Any comparison with the Islamists is itself a mark of shame upon America. And so it is with a heavy heart that I read some of the comments on that Little Green Footballs thread in question, where posters will justify torture by saying "we're better than the Islamists." Since when did the bar for human rights get set so low?