Jay Currie talks about torture and its use in the War on Terrorism:
On Interogation
...
So when I look at the so called "torture narrative" I am looking at a balance. Innocent lives lost to car bombs and motar attacks versus waterboarding a jihadi or Baathist...I don't think this is a hard call.
I must strongly disagree with Mr. Currie on this topic. As pointed out at Tilting at Windmills, torture is unethical, it rarely provides reliable information in a timely manner, and it does not work better than much more humane methods. If we are going to continue to have the moral authority to consider our society "good", we have to make the "good" choices and not give in to the wrong choices in the name of expediency.
Update: I should address the question of the Geneva Convention as Jay Currie brings it up in his post. Justifying torture based on "they are doing worse than us so its ok" logic is weak at best, and childish at worst. We should not compromise our morals and ethics because the other side has abandoned theirs. To do so makes me wonder if we are that morally upright as we pretend we are.
1 comment:
I can appreciate the distinction you are trying to draw. I can only counter with the presupposition that the incidents where torture actually leads to useful information that saves lives faster than other methods is rare if not inexistant.
If anyone can provide proof that reilable information was gathered quickly by torture and saved lives due to its timeliness I would be interested in hearing about it. I doubt it can be found because I do not believe it exists.
Thanks for the response!
Bill
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