Reopening the Torture Debate

[Woolygimp]

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I don't see what's wrong with it in Iraq. We are fighting a dirty war against cowards who hide among the civilian populace. If they see us coming, they drop their weapons and act like innocents and they have no qualms with murder.


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1. We make mistakes. All the people we have captured aren't really terrorists.
2. We signed the Geneva Conventions.
3. It makes us look awful to the world at large and quite probably inspires more terrorism. We won't win the war on "terrorism" unless we convince everyone that our way of life is better than that.
4. Our captured troops get treated worse
5. Torture doesn't work that well. People will say whatever you want them to say so that you stop the pain.

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Sorry, I got to number 4 and immediately dismissed everything you said. Yeah, worse than being beaten, stripped, beheaded, and dragged through the streets?

Try again.

[PLOlover]

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Sorry, I got to number 4 and immediately dismissed everything you said. Yeah, worse than being beaten, stripped, beheaded, and dragged through the streets?

Try again.

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the british captured in iranian(disputed) waters weren't mistreated. If torture and information pressing were the norm they would have been.

[Jetboy2]

Like I said before...

It's all a game. At some point, the rules will get broken.

What is the procedure (law, rule) for dealing with broken rules?

Is the rule breaking procedure the same for all rules?

???

Get down to it... Is it ok to cheat at poker if the situation calls for it?

jetboy2

[Jetboy2]

The logic comes down to a real mess.

Who cleans up afterwards is the question.

[tsearcher]

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I don't see what's wrong with it in Iraq. We are fighting a dirty war against cowards who hide among the civilian populace. If they see us coming, they drop their weapons and act like innocents and they have no qualms with murder.


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1. We make mistakes. All the people we have captured aren't really terrorists.
2. We signed the Geneva Conventions.
3. It makes us look awful to the world at large and quite probably inspires more terrorism. We won't win the war on "terrorism" unless we convince everyone that our way of life is better than that.
4. Our captured troops get treated worse
5. Torture doesn't work that well. People will say whatever you want them to say so that you stop the pain.

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One more thing to add, the enemy is more likely to surrender if he knows that he will be treated fairly and not be tortured. At the end of WWII, the German soldiers were going out of their way to surrender to the Americans and avoid being captured by the Russians.

[Jetboy2]

D. S. is proposing, "when/if is it ok to cheat?"

Say, my daughter is dying, so is it ok to cheat in this situation to save her life?

How radical does a situation need to be in order to make cheating ok? Say....Obviously colluding online players vs individual? Or...

When is cheating allowed?

[Bill Haywood]

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During the Cold War, when the battle of ideas was so important, the US was very careful about its image and tried hard to distinguish itself from the Soviet block. Twenty years ago, it was unthinkable for mainstream politicos to sanction torture. America did not do that sort of thing (openly).


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Bill,
So you believe that the US didn't use torture during those years, or you just wish that we would continue to keep it hush hush like we used to? Having the discussion out in the open is far far better than not having it.

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To remain human, we cannot allow torture. I recognize scenarios can be imagined where I personally would want to go against that rule. But they are so rare, the danger of allowing torture is far, far, greater than the damage of allowing it in general. I agree with this poster:

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In a case such as this, the interrogator should use the torture and be willing to accept the legal consequences.

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If it is so extraordinary a situation, some sort of torturer's Sophie's choice, then the individual should do what's necessary, and then do the time.

The problem with getting torture out in the open and regulating it is that it accepts the use of barbarism as a standard choice. Once we reach that point, the individual has no more defenses whatsoever against the might of the state, and freedom is over.

Al Qaida types do not remotely have the strength to destroy our democracy. Only we can do that.

[Hoi Polloi]

I hate this scenario because it is really a complete fiction. Ostensibly, it is framed to get at whether there is anything intrinsically off-limits in torture or whether objections are based in generic moral or ethical concerns. It does this by presenting a slam-dunk scenario: a hideous crime unfolding in real-time, a fool-proof technique that can be applied to an appropriate subject who is in possession of an unambiguous piece of information that once obtained almost immediately rectifies the situation. If this is indeed what "torture" is, I don't think I have a problem with it.

But this scenario does not exemplify torture. There is no ticking time bomb scenario, no fool-proof, instantly available, friction-free technique, no reliable pre-torture intelligence that says this is definitely the guy who knows the exact, unambiguous factoid that will save the day, no unimpeachable surrogate (read Jack Bauer) whose motives are beyond reproach.

The foregoing is a red herring; it takes the blood out of the problem and in flattering us that we've considered the true nature of the problem, salves our consciences while simultaneously allowing us to congratulate ourselves for being willing to deal with the harsh realities of the world in which we live.

Torture is institutionalized brutality that requires the mass production of brutes to administer, execute and manage it; a nation of brutes. Historically and humanly, there is no way around that. You cannot just turn it on like some kind of flashlight.

Let me paint an alternate scenario: somehow we've discovered that if you put a person into a room and then kill a baby in front of him every 5 minutes until he talks, it takes between 5 and 20 babies before he willingly confesses everything he knows--virtually fool-proof. We even know that the babies have to be younger than 6 months old. Now, we have a terrorist who claims to have locked 30 pregnant women in a meat locker where they will freeze to death within the next 30 hours. He's a pretty well-known terrorist and the threat is, as they say, credible. So, where do we get the babies we're going to need to kill in order to save these women and unborn babies? We have two choices: 1) we have a baby farm run by the CIA which produces a steady pipeline of 100 babies under the age of 6 months ready for any such contingency; they can be flown anywhere in the world in a few hours and we have personnel specially trained to administer the technique; or 2) we have authorized the police to abduct as many babies as they need from any immediate source (passersby, for example) should an emergency present itself. Individual police officers or other authorities have gotten a basic overview of the technique, but we rely on the urgency of the situation to motivate them to "do what is right".

I would submit that this scenario gets closer to the assessing the human costs; and by human costs I'm not referring just to the babies. What price is paid by people who raise babies for this technique? Who learn to administer the technique? Can it really be so cooly technocratic? What price is paid by those charged with abducting and killing babies in order to solve the problem at hand?

And recognize, even in this scenario as repugnant as it is, we "know" who the terrorist is and there is a magic, unambiguous piece of information that "justifies" the use of the torture technique.

But what is truly scandalous is that we are debating this question and not the much more relevant question that goes like this: you know your government is routinely torturing and otherwise treating prisoners inhumanely; prisoners they have taken care to keep outside the law and away from view. What do you think your responsibilities are given this is a government you empower with your taxes and your votes?

[Gregatron]

I have actually discussed this with some of the classes I teach.

My own position is that torture should not be legal. However, what is legal and what is moral do not overlap perfectly. IMO, the moral thing to do is to save the woman's life. Therefore, I propose breaking the law and torturing in this situation. I also think the person doing the torturing (willingly) should face the legal consequences, and know beforehand that this will happen. This is a form of personal sacrifice.

[tolbiny]

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I also think the person doing the torturing (willingly) should face the legal consequences, and know beforehand that this will happen. This is a form of personal sacrifice.


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I just find this position so bizarre. If torturing is the correct moral action (IYO) why would you want to create a situation that disincentives that action?