People today consider torture as a modern day witch hunt - our private little spread out Salem. In truth I do not see torture in limited quantities and under strict guides awful at all. I see it as extremely beneficial. I wont get into how I think its pretty unfair to slam the US for this when it is running rampant through an estimated 132 coutries at greater extent and higher frequency then the US, but thats a bitch session for a different day. On to the witch hunt...
Witches do not physically exist., nor have they ever. Aside from that the "tests" to determine if someone was a witch was set up to kill them either way. If the woman floats, then she is a witch - burn her; if she sinks she was not a witch - oops. Interrogation techniques are not set up to KILL your subject, as dead men do not talk. You kill them when you are done with them, not before hand and if we did kill them off after we were done, then we'd not know it was being done.
Now, torture has many different methods. Some Id definitely agree with and others not at all. Each method can be used for a different purpose, and we have to assume that while SOME of the victims would say anything to make the pain stop, we cannot assume ALL of them would. We also have to assume that the interrogators today will not phrase a leading question, and in turn ask more than one source. Without this, then yes - the method, any method - would be wrong as it is just excuse gathering and not information gathering. I would also assert that OF the countries who openly or otherwise partake in torture - the US is the most humane of them. Sure, its pretty sad what people go through, but were not injecting hot water, forcing them to chew glass, bamboo slivers or flaying them. We just beat them pretty badly, electro-shock, and humiliate them. Of any interrogator friend I've had, I've been told that we definitely are not the worst, most inventive, or consistent.
I was info gathering - not necessarily an interrogator. I don't deal with stubborn people well so asking them the same question 360875987 times with no answer until I realigned their jaw doesn't fit my personality 99% of the time.
I hunted for military targets not military reasons - politics in this area isn't my bag.
I can't tell you how torture is effective as I've never practiced torture. I haven't seen someone tortured, and the closest I've come to torture was SERE. At the heart I believe it to be effective because we continue to use it as do other countries. It is not as widespread as asserted by anti-torture groups and there is definitely an overly negative stigma surrounding it. Not that torture is a happy thing, or something you depict on a public mural, or even celebrate. However, I think that using torture has helped out many times and saved more lives than it has cost.
Most of the evidence you can bring to me showing that torture is ineffective if as full of holes as the evidence I could bring to you. It is impossible to have two opposing views equally undeniable. You have to deny both or deny one. It doesn't work the other way around. It is a question mainly of morals and if torture should be allowed to continue. I say "yes", but with limits.
Torture is fine where the evidence suggests that this is the only way, due to the urgency of the situation, to save the life of an innocent person or obtain information that will result in a perceived greater good.
Torture a defensible and necessary reason that is worth justifying because the justification spawns from the closest thing we have to an inviolable right: the right to self-defence, which comes from the defense of another. Given the choice between inflicting a relatively small level of harm (considering the harm done to a victim or the threat of harm to a victim), on a suspect and saving an innocent person, it is moral indecency to prefer the interests of the suspect.
Consider a hostage-scenario (like Douglas Wood), where a suspect takes a hostage and points a gun at the hostage's head, threatening to kill the hostage unless a certain (often unreasonable) demand is met. In this case it is not only permissible, but desirable for the police or defender to shoot (and kill) the suspect if they get a "clear shot". This is MORE desired if the suspect has a history of violence or if the hostage is at an extremely unfair advantage (woman or child / already been severely beaten). You can also apply this thought to someone like a kidnapper that has made the same kind of demand and offered to have a co-suspect kill the hostage if the demands are not met. There is no logical or moral difference between either scenario.
In the hostage scenario, it is universally accepted that it is permissible to violate the right to life of the aggressor to save an innocent person. How can it be wrong to violate an even less important right (the right to physical integrity) by torturing the aggressor in order to save a life in the second scenario? It can't be...
There are three main counter-arguments to the above limited approval of torture.
1.) The first is if you start allowing torture in a limited context, the situations in which it will be used will increase.
This argument is not sound in the context of torture. The floodgates are already open - torture is used widely, despite the absolute legal prohibition against it. Amnesty International has recently reported that it had received, during 2003, reports of torture and ill-treatment from several countries since the UDHR, including the United States, Japan and France. It is, in fact, arguable that it is the existence of an unrealistic absolute ban that has pushed torture beneath the radar of accountability, and legalisation wouldn't reduce it's instances.
2.) It is a main argument that torture will dehumanise society.
This is no more true in relation to torture than it is with self-defence, and in fact the opposite is true. A society that elects to favour the interests of wrongdoers or suspected wrongdoers over those of the actual innocent, when a choice have to choose between the two, is in need of serious ethical rewiring. Remember again about immediacy in making that choice, as time is always of the essence when the safety of others or lives of others are at stake.
3.) That we can never be totally sure that torturing a person will in fact result in us saving an innocent life.
This, however, is the same situation as in all cases of self-defence. Consider the hostage example, the suspects gun might actually be empty, yet it is still permissible to shoot. As with any decision, we must decide on the best evidence at the time. We can even look at Flight 193. A "shoot down order" was given, yet we were unaware of it's true destination - only that an unknown number of people on the ground were in extreme danger and that the plane was not in the control of the sanctioned pilot.
Will a real-life situation actually occur where the only option is between torturing a wrongdoer / suspected wrongdoer or saving an innocent person? Perhaps not. However, a minor alteration to the Douglas Wood situation illustrates that the issue is far from unpractical. If Western forces in Iraq arrested one of Mr Wood's captors, it would be a perverse ethic that required us to respect the physical integrity of the captor, and not torture him to ascertain Mr Wood's whereabouts, in preference to taking all possible steps to save Mr Wood - right?
Even if a real-life situation where torture is justifiable does not present itself, the above argument in favour of torture in limited circumstances needs to be made because it will encourage the community to think more carefully about moral judgements we collectively hold that are the cause of an enormous amount of suffering in the world.
So, why should torture be allowed?
1.) No right or interest is absolute.
2.) Rights bow to consequences, which are the criteria that the soundness of a decision is gauged. Lost lives hurt a lot more than bent principles.
3.) We must take responsibility not only for the things that we do, but also for the things that we can - but fail to - stop. The retort that we are not responsible for the lives lost through a decision not to torture a terrorist or suspect because we did not create the situation is code for moral indifference.
The claim that we in the West have no responsibility for more than X thousand people dying daily due to starvation is equally empty. Hopefully, the debate on torture will prompt us to correct some of these fundamental failings.
Personally - The belief that torture is always wrong is, however, misguided and symptomatic of the alarmist and reflexive responses typically emanating from social commentators. It is this type of absolute and short-sighted rhetoric that lies at the core of many distorted moral judgements that we as a community continue to make, resulting in an enormous amount of injustice and suffering in our society and far beyond our borders.
