dartagnan wrote:Several posters have recently opposed Romney and a couple of them have noted that they do not support the use of torture.
Tonight I was watching the O'Reiley Factor and this was one of the topics discussed. They showed an interview that was originally aired on ABC, whereby an Al Quaida operative gave in to water-boarding after 30 seconds. He said he heard Allah tell him that he should tell the Americans whatever they wanted, just to easy the pain of his Muslim cell mates who would have to go through the same ordeal. The guy they interviewed looked Middle-Eastern as well, but I assume he worked for an intelligence agency for the US government.
Anyway, the results were astonishing. According to this person, the terrorist gave them all sorts of data that apparently resulted in several foiled terror attacks on US troops, saving an unknown number of American lives as well as innocent bystanders. He went on to say that the notion that torture never works, is purely a myth.
Then they had a discussion with two pundits arguing pro and con. The Democrat who disagreed with this tactic was asked a question:
"If your children were missing, and you knew water-boarding a suspect could provide information that would save their lives, would you support it?"
She answered yes.
OF COURSE she answered yes.
Then I had to ask myself the same question. If someone had my two kids, I knew I would do whatever was necessary to save them. So I felt somewhat hypocritical to criticize politicians who felt obligated to do whatever they could, to save the lives of US troops.
So why is it that when the President of the United States has the choice to make the same decision, we're inclined to oppose it? Is it because our kids aren't the ones who would be saved?
Is it immoral to use torture if the end result is saved lives?
Yes, I would probably torture the bastard. Where would I draw the line, I don't know, but I disagree that parent's would do anything to save their children. I hope I would not, for example, trade other innocent childrens' lives for my childrens' lives. There's always a line . . . well, almost always, even for those who say "anything to save lives" is justifiable.
That said, I think that there is a difference between torture on a case by case basis and torture as a means of state policy. I see the ethical case for the former but am unpersuaded by the latter. Justifying a state policy of torture because a desperate parent would resort to torture to save his/her child is not good reasoning. It smacks loudly of fallacy of composition (I think that's the term--what is good for the one is not necesarily good for the whole) as well as flying in the face of common sense.
One can always come up with some kind of hypothetical extreme case to justify torture, but whether this should be systematized via official state policy (which is what I understand the Bush admin has tried to do) is questionable for moral and practicality means. There IS, I think, a very dangerous slippery slope here, and I agree with Sethbag, we need to think carefully about what this implies for the kind of society we live in.