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05/23/2004 Archived Entry: "Torture"

Most people are simply repelled by not only the images of torture from our current war in Iraq, or since the war is supposedly over, the current peace in Iraq. It a good sign that people are disgusted. However, there are those who take the attitude that as nasty as all this torture business is, such things might save American lives. I think many of these people who think this are simply nasty people. It is with satisfaction that they see middle eastern people humiliated. “There, that’s what happens when you mess with Americans” they think to themselves. Such an mindset is silly enough not to be worth further discussion.


There are some however who believe that we can extract, through severe torture, information that is so valuable as to compensate for the gruesome nature of inflicting pain and suffering. This sounds plausible, but some thought experiments are in order. Say we capture the teenage son of a known terrorist in hiding. Agents believe that it is very likely the boy knows the whereabouts of his father. Do you torture the boy if he refuses to talk? Say agents torture the boy and decide they have all the information you can get from him after using a litany of unpleasant and degrading procedures on the captive. Should he then be let go? He will be telling everyone in his community how horribly he was treated. Do we want such negative propaganda just running amok? Maybe it would be better to kill him, than to release them if you are thinking just in terms of saving American lives. Maybe he should be kept captive for life.


Is this the way we should be fighting our battles? Is it unreasonable to expect better from conflict? Is it worth it?

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