Torture & justifications - obfuscations & shades of grey
Great Britain, not little England has a post about torture. We both agree that it is simply wrong. But he has more truck with the argument that sometimes it can be useful, in extreme circumstances.
That is, and remains, my position. Torture is wrong, and has to be illegal. But sometimes, if you have the proverbial bomb scenario, you break the rules, and get the job done, by whatever means are necessary. After the fact, investigations are made and charges are put.This is a compelling argument. But it relies on the fact that you know that they know something, so you are going to hurt them until they tell you what you want to hear. This is and always has been the basic excuse for torture, the only thing that has changed is what you want to hear. Today what the torturers want to hear is 'I planted a bomb', before that it was 'I helped your enemy', and before that it was 'I am a witch'. So you have to ask yourself do you really know that they know something? Perhaps they said so. But even if they did can you be sure enough to justify torture? Perhaps they where having a, rather tastless, joke. Perhaps they where simply mad? There are a lot more jokers and nutters out there than real terrorists.
posted by chris at 1/03/2006 09:34:00 am
3 Comments:
Oh, I pretty much agree with you; I'm not supporting it or saying it's acceptable, the point is that there are some who don't object to torture, are lumping everyone who opposes it together as some kind of hippy peacenik and refusing to condemn these acts, etc.
If information received from torture saves lives, then torture is ok. No, it's not, but we're not talking about that sort of information anyway, etc. If you point out that we're specifically objecting to this torture and that there are shades of grey, people may not write Murray off as some kind of peacenik and instead listen to what he says. I'm very much in favour of answering the critics on their terms and taking the debate to them.
There are people out there, blogging and commenting on blogs, that are actually saying torture is OK. They're using the 'if it saves lives' argument. My post is an answer to them; this torture doesn't save lives. I'll never condone torture.
But at the same time, the answer to the "known planter of nuclear device - do you" (emphasis on known there) is a moral dilemma I'm still finding problems with.
Again we seem to be agreeing. The point I am trying to make is how much of an obscure and artificial hypothetical "known planter of nuclear device" is.
Basically the only situation where it is applicable is a terrorist walking up to a police officer and saying "I just planted an atom bomb to go off in 20 minutes and I'm not going to tell you where so there" will have vastly more false positives from jokers and nutters than real terrorists.
Oh, I know that it's a ludicrous argument. WBut it's a popular one; even Scott Adams made it on the Dilbert Blog. But because it's utterly ridiculous, you can answer it without pointing out the ridiculous nature of the hypothetical.
In an extreme case, it can happen. But it's such an extreme case, we needn't worry about it in rational discourse. Ah well.
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