I'm going to restate the OP here and see if we can avoid the derailment, achieved within one page primarily by Scratch and his alter ego, Kishkumen, followed by Harmony.
If you want to bash and insult Droopy, please start another thread (there have been many) dedicated to that. I'll try it one more time, and then move it to the Celestial Kingdom, and see if the moderators can control the environment there a little.
Here was the OP:
At what point, or under what conditions, should "torture" be allowed, or, perhaps more to the point, under what conditions would the moral restraints and normative civilizational principles that, under most conditions, would prohibit enhanced interrogation be forced to confront a moral conflict in which not to torture becomes, when contrasted to the moral implications of torture, the morally indefensible position?
Are there any conditions whatever, under which torture should be administered for the purpose of stopping violence, and especially, mass violence, including large scale atrocities such as the 9/11 attacks, the Bali bombings etc.
As the scale of the atrocity increases, does the moral demarcation line for torture recede? In other words, in the context of WMD attacks, in which tens of thousands or hundreds of thousands could be killed/injured, is the moral weight increased in favor of torture, or does the number of lives lost have little to do with the moral questions involved?
It would seem that their are roughly two fundamental positions one could take on this issue.
1. Torture is justifiable in some circumstances, but not in others. Further, such interrogation would be limited in its severity.
2. Under no circumstances whatever should torture be used.
If one takes position 2, as do many liberals/leftists in North America, one is obliged to justify that position morally (as it is claimed to be a position grounded in moral concerns).
To do so, one would, at a minimum, I would think, have to show:
a. Upon what basis the physical, emotional, and psychological well being of a single individual (with, we will assume, murderous, violent intent on a mass scale against innocents) can be morally contrasted with the lives and suffering of thousands, tens of thousands, or hundreds of thousands and found to be in fundamental balance, such that the death/suffering of these thousands can be morally traded for the well being of the terrorist?
b. How, if the torture of a single individual, wholly dedicated to terrorism and mass murder to achieve his ends is understood to be morally indefensible, it follows that allowing the death and torture (through maiming, mutilation, and intense suffering due to wounds sustained in a terrorist attack) of many times this number of innocent human beings, by choosing, of our own free will, not to extract the information from him by any means necessary, can be, at the same time, defended as morally legitimate.
c. As I've asked time and again on MAD in several threads on this subject, and to which I have received as yet, no philosophical engagement, If you knew that a prisoner in your custody had information that could be used to thwart a terrorist attack and save thousands of lives, and you chose not to extract that information by whatever means were necessary to do so, and then the attack occurred, how would you explain your actions to:
1. Your fellow citizens, should this knowledge become public, and
2. God (if you are a theist).
Question: If there are no circumstances under which waterboarding, for our major example, should be used (and hence, by definition, nothing beyond it), then this would seem to imply that there are no greater principles or values worth defending in comparison and contrast to the avoidance of causing pain and suffering to another human being. This would include allowing , when we could have prevented, the terrorist to inflict far greater suffering on others.
For example, if you are a British or O.S.S. operative in WWII, and you have a German officer who has knowledge of a secret weapon (let's say the Germans, for the purpose of this thought experiment, had perfected the atom bomb before we did), you have a conflict of relative moral imperatives: not to torture, can be thought of as the overriding imperative or as a relative one. To act to avoid the destruction of many more lives, if torture is required, could also be the prime imperative. The second assumes that there are greater values and core principles at stake (the millions being tortured in the death camps, as contrasted against the torture of a single perpetrator of those camps, or the loss of the war, which would mean loss of national sovereignty and the destruction of our own democratic system and the imposition of the Nazi system of values upon our civilization) than those at stake in the torture of one human being, who, by definition, is not innocent but morally culpable in both the destruction and suffering already caused by WWII as well as in the situation in which he finds himself).
The ethical question now becomes, to what degree can inaction that allows the horrible death and suffering of many be morally distinguished from simple acquiescence to the death and suffering of the terrorist act you failed to prevent?
Are not those who refuse to torture, under any circumstance, in essence complicit in the terrorism they recuse themselves from preventing?
Here were the intellectually substantive responses:
From Gad:
Let's say that an innocent person who happened to be in proximity of the terrorists overheard part of their conversation, the person for whatever reason though, be it fear or just not wanting to get involved, refused to divulge anything learned. The authorities have good reason to believe that this information will be enough to prevent an attack that will lead to the suffering or death of hundreds of thousands of people. Should they proceed with torture?
Is the physical an psychological well-being of a single innocent person comparable to the needs of millions?
From Moksha:
Loran, so how would you as a member of the LDS Church reply to the questions and issues you have proposed? Would moral relativism tend to be the deciding factor?
From bc:
I think you answered your own question of certainty with your simplest answer, that of simple revenge or in other words, justice. You are talking about known and dedicated jihad warriors (some of whom have caved to "torture" and provided answers) who by definition, deserve such treatment simply because it's part of their own philosophy on how to treat others.
TD:On another question, does God cause famines to occur? Is he not therefore a "torturer"? Isn't starving someone to death torture?
I think you answered your own question of certainty with your simplest answer, that of simple revenge or in other words, justice. You are talking about known and dedicated jihad warriors (some of whom have caved to "torture" and provided answers) who by definition, deserve such treatment simply because it's part of their own philosophy on how to treat others.
On another question, does God cause famines to occur? Is he not therefore a "torturer"? Isn't starving someone to death torture?
And Beastie:
Before this topic can be discussed meaningful, it must be irrefutably demonstrated that torture actually works in producing reliable information, AND it must be shown that information could not have been obtained without said torture.
If these two conditions cannot be met, it should be obvious why torture is immoral.
The rest of the posts (outside of Dale's, which was not insulting but was extremely difficult to read as well as being an attempt to transpose the thread into a moral assault on BY) were a rash of ad hominem attacks on me, my character, intelligence, and education, and utterly irrelevant to the OP.