No, torture is never acceptable. I can't believe that a nation founded on Enlightenment principles (one of which is an antipathy to "cruel and unusual punishment") is now engaged in precisely this practice. It shames all Americans.
The argument goes "We're in a war. And in a war, principles get set aside." Indeed humane behavior does as well. So much for Enlightenment principles. In the Civil War,
habeas corpus along with other 'civil rights' were set aside. During peacetime, the rights did come back.
I think it was the Morality Thread we were discussing the hard decisions that have to be made in war.
One that comes to mind is when the Brits broke the Nazi secret code in WWII. They found out that the Nazis were about to bomb a certain section of English countryside, where they thought some munitions plant or something was.
The Brits had just evacuated hundreds of children out of London to that very area.
What do you do?
Evacuate the children - and risk having the Nazis figure out the Brits had broken their code?
Or let the children be bombed but in the long run, save more lives and win the war?
I'll let you figure out what the Brits decided on.
In a circumstance where thousands of lives are at stake during a war...what would you be willing to do or condone?
In Israel, you only hear about the terrorist activities they fail to stop. You don't hear about the ones they do stop. How do they get the information they need?
In the U.S. we haven't had a real terrorist event happen since 9/11 and the anthrax scare. Is it because there haven't been any attempts or because the perps have been getting caught?
Terrorism isn't just about the act, it's about instilling fear. They want to
terrorize you with violence or just the threat of violence. A responsible government would not want to constantly advertise
all the terrorist activities they have stopped. That would cause, fear, anxiety, paranoia and witch hunts to spring up and turn society into a tinderbox. The government has enough to worry about with foreign problems, much less domestic ones.
Currently one of the big fears is a nuke falling into the hands of terrorists.
needscrayons says s/he doesn't condone torture, because it is rare that one person holds such crucial information.
I'll go for that.
But what if multiple people might hold different parts of the crucial information needed? When the lives of millions are at stake, how many people tortured is too many compared to what is at risk?
And it doesn't even have to be as dramatic as a nuke. How about someone flying a plane into a nuclear power plant? Or the Hoover Dam? These would be disasters on a massive scale, thousands of lives affected if not lost outright.
[shrug]
That's why I'm a 'maybe'.
