Author Topic: Torture: Is It Ever Acceptable?  (Read 9954 times)

Offline delalluvia

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Re: Torture: Is It Ever Acceptable?
« Reply #10 on: December 13, 2007, 12:45:08 am »
I guess we better define torture here.

Do we mean the rack?  Cutting off thumbs?  Flaying someone alive? 

Or do we mean psychological torture?  Deprivation situations, etc?

injest

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Re: Torture: Is It Ever Acceptable?
« Reply #11 on: December 13, 2007, 12:51:12 am »
Glenn Beck was talking today about waterboarding...he says it is not torture because there is no physical harm.

they laughed and joked about it....then cut to a commercial for a board game the 'WHOLE family can enjoy". The juxtapostion made me physically ill.

he described how they put a wet towel over a persons face and then pour water over it. They did it to some terrorist and he broke in like three minutes. Beck and a senator were laughing about how reporters and soldiers let it be done to them just to see what it is like. I think it would feel much different if it was being done by strangers who you knew wouldn't hesitate to kill you (and that you knew wouldn't stop if you asked them to)

I think a good rule of thumb (regarding what is or is not torture) is not whether you would subject YOURSELF to the procedure...but if you would subject your loved one to it; a wife, child, lover.


Offline delalluvia

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Re: Torture: Is It Ever Acceptable?
« Reply #12 on: December 13, 2007, 01:15:16 am »
Glenn Beck was talking today about waterboarding...he says it is not torture because there is no physical harm.

they laughed and joked about it....then cut to a commercial for a board game the 'WHOLE family can enjoy". The juxtapostion made me physically ill.

he described how they put a wet towel over a persons face and then pour water over it. They did it to some terrorist and he broke in like three minutes. Beck and a senator were laughing about how reporters and soldiers let it be done to them just to see what it is like. I think it would feel much different if it was being done by strangers who you knew wouldn't hesitate to kill you (and that you knew wouldn't stop if you asked them to)

I think a good rule of thumb (regarding what is or is not torture) is not whether you would subject YOURSELF to the procedure...but if you would subject your loved one to it; a wife, child, lover.



I would put waterboarding as a physical torture.  From what I remember reading, the person is getting water into their nose and mouths and they feel like they are drowning and could conceivably drown.  Drowning someone on purpose most certainly causes physical harm, so IMO it's a physical torture.

I'm in the 'maybe' section.  Like needcrayons implied, facetiously or not, how desperate is the situation?  How many lives are at stake?

Offline serious crayons

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Re: Torture: Is It Ever Acceptable?
« Reply #13 on: December 13, 2007, 11:12:32 am »
I'm in the 'maybe' section.  Like needcrayons implied, facetiously or not, how desperate is the situation?  How many lives are at stake?

Just to clarify, yes, I was being facetious, because on "24" the situation is always as desperate as it imaginably could be. Real life almost never meets that level, where the immediate fates of lots of people rest entirely on information held by an individual.


moremojo

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Re: Torture: Is It Ever Acceptable?
« Reply #14 on: December 13, 2007, 11:15:16 am »
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.

Offline delalluvia

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Re: Torture: Is It Ever Acceptable?
« Reply #15 on: December 13, 2007, 08:17:20 pm »
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'.

moremojo

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Re: Torture: Is It Ever Acceptable?
« Reply #16 on: December 14, 2007, 11:01:55 am »
So, Del, do we only live by our principles when it is convenient to do so? I understand the points you're making, but I find this kind of moral relativism disturbing (I find Lincoln's suspension of habeas corpus a lasting mark of shame against him, and not at all admirable). I realize that not very many of us could die a martyr's death, but those who do are among the true heroes. Jesus showed by his example that it is better to be killed than it is to kill. Likewise, it is morally superior to be tortured than it is to torture.

moremojo

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Re: Torture: Is It Ever Acceptable?
« Reply #17 on: December 14, 2007, 03:03:09 pm »
Thanks for reminding us of that, Gary; Jesus is probably the single most important figure in human history.  I should point out here that I am not a Christian, though I do find much to admire in Jesus as a human being and teacher.

Offline serious crayons

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Re: Torture: Is It Ever Acceptable?
« Reply #18 on: December 14, 2007, 03:16:23 pm »
Thanks for reminding us of that, Gary; Jesus is probably the single most important figure in human history.  I should point out here that I am not a Christian, though I do find much to admire in Jesus as a human being and teacher.

On "The Colbert Report" yesterday, Larry King was the guest. Colbert asked King who he'd most like to interview on his show. And King, who BTW I guess is Jewish, IMMEDIATELY said "Jesus."

His runner-up, BTW, was Abraham Lincoln.


injest

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Re: Torture: Is It Ever Acceptable?
« Reply #19 on: December 14, 2007, 08:33:03 pm »
First, consider the American and European witch trials. During these trials a significant number of people confessed, under brutal torture, to being witches. If torture is an effective means of acquiring truthful information, then these trials provided reasonable evidence for the existence of witches, magic, the Devil and, presumably, God

http://www.philosophers.co.uk/cafe/provocations20.htm

Del, studies consistantly show that torture does NOT provide accurate information. People will say anything to get the torture to stop.

If I were a terrorist with the location of a bomb about to go off and I was being tortured...i would give the wrong location...knowing the enemy would look in the wrong place and by the time they figured out I lied, my bomb would have done its work.