Because professional torturers themselves say that's not the purpose of torture. Being the Good Guys is not a pragmatic decision. You don't do it because it "works". You do it because it is the right thing to do. You don't have to be the Good Guys of course, but then don't pretend to be. Actually they don't always know. I refuse. The Good Guys don't always get to win. But false moral dilemma's have nothing to do with the use of torture. For the same reason people have prayed for hundreds of years. Because they want to believe it works. The end does not justify the means. Didn't make a difference though, did it? Everybody still lived in fear.
If harming one person meant saving hundreds of people, and those people included all the friends and family you have, wouldn't you? Everyone appears very reluctant to answer this type of question. But if we don't act upon information given to us, what do we do? Just sit there and hope for the best?
You don't just blindly act on information just because you have it. You weigh up the veracity of the information in order to determine whether it's likely to be accurate. I'd suggest that information obtained via torture has a significant probability of not being accurate. The point is that info obtained by torture is going to confirm preheld suspicions, but has no actual value. As such, if the info you have prior to the torture is compelling enough for you to act, then it's no more compelling just because you've tortured someone into "confirming" it, and conversely if the information before torture isn't sufficient for you to act, it's still insufficient if "confirmed" by torture.
Of course I would. I would kill everyone to protect my family. And so what? Are you basing governmental policy on what I feel? Should the government kill everyone to protect MY family? The reluctance to answer is because it's a silly question. Would I torture people? Absolutely... (for fun, not information). Should the government do it? No. I am not a reference.
You base your replies on the presumption that we already have a suspicion about something. If this is the case then I completely agree with you. But what if we know this person knows something vital that we don't know? Let's for example be very stereotypical and say that there is a bomb in a large building. He is the only person that knows where it is. Do we just allow it to explode?
Ok, how do you verify that the information you have gathered via torture is accurate or reliable, given that the person being tortured will say anything to have the torture stop? Again, you're saying that the end justifies the means.
It's not a silly question at all. I use it as reference to the public's expectation that the relevant agencies keep everyone safe, so we can all sit safely in our bubble-wrapped cocoon's. And since when is the Government killing everybody? Torture and murder and two different things, very rarely entwined.
You can't, unless you go and find out. And if they don't go and find out the public will criticise them. Apologies, I'm trying to do a hundred and one things in between posting on here, and feel I'm not really conveying what I want to say. Basically, agencies like the CIA are damned if they do and damned if they don't. We all know this. I see a much more horrid side of the world than most and although I don't agree that places like Guantanamo Bay exist, I can't help but feel that they are a necessary evil. Edit: 1,000th post... Only took ten years.
I answered it. Transformation: to break a person down, rebuild them into what you want them to be. Make them a convert to your cause, an instrument for your purposes, a puppet confessing whatever you want the public to see them confess. Torture is a political tool. Where are they going to send them? They incarcerated them without due process, so if they were inserted into the legal process they'd have to be released. Some are terrorists, so they'll be dangerous, and their countries won't want them back. Some are innocents who are now transformed into terrorists, so again they'll be dangerous, and their countries won't want them back. Some are innocents but are now tarred as terrorists, so their countries won't want them back. Their lives are destroyed, their bodies and spirits broken. They're not going to just step on the plane with some souvenirs from the airport gift shop and fly back to their previous lives. It's not about how others see you; you can't control that. Being a Good Guy is about who you are. More than you realise. Think of national security as a religion, and of torture as a ritual sacrifice. Well, here you're assuming that torture actually elicits reliable information and that this information could not be obtained in other ways. And then of course how do you decide where to draw the line on what torture is "harmless" and "justified"? Tricky. Evil is evil. Whether it is "necessary" is a pragmatic, not moral judgment (and that's fine, but then we're not being Good Guys anymore). Perhaps people should stop having unrealistic expectations of safety, and perhaps the CIA and government should stop colluding with those. But they won't, of course, because people are prepared to give up a lot of power and freedom for a sense of security.
But was your answer that of morality and in context to this discussion, or of what you genuinely feel you would do in the situation, when all sense of rationality goes out of the window? This would be a fair comment, if torture was broadcast on television. Side note: Do you feel a document like this should have been released to the public? And if so, what does it achieve? Very true. I doubt some cheap fags will help rehabilitate. But do you think the public will stop to think about the person that put you in that situation? Of course not. They'll just see you as the bad guy, because you had the ability to save thousands and chose to sacrifice all for the sake of morality. No one's going to think, 'ah... good for him'. Interesting metaphor. I suppose it's for the government to 'approve' certain techniques. But then if you read the report in the opening post, they already do approve some and the CIA went above and beyond, even with the Director's approval. So, who do you blame? The interrogator for doing what he was told, or the Director for approving such horrific acts? Agreed. Edit: Stop editing! How can you be the good guy when you refuse to push either button? Are you not then concerned in the murder of these people, when you had the ability to let them live? And were then cowardly enough to allow yourself to die as well?
As I said, I think I would refuse (I'm stubborn like that). If it was my family? I might kill/allowed to get killed an innocent to save them, but I would not consider that a morally justified decision, and I would not pretend otherwise. Depends. If you want a spy, you just want to turn him and be quiet about it. If you want him to be a message to others, all you have to do is release him a broken soul. Those who knew him will notice and tell others. And it will terrify them. Fighting for a cause --and being killed for it -- is a way of not just defining, but also preserving your identity. But what if they take who you are? What if they can just rip your identity, your will, your mind, your love from you as if it was a page in a book? That is way more scary than death. "Do it to Julia!!!" --Winston Smith, Nineteen Eighty-Four Yes, even if the timing and motivations are heavily political. The first step to being the Good Guy is being true to yourself and others. What that may achieve in the long run is that we practice what we preach, and that in turn challenges our opponent's belief that we are the Bad Guys. That might in the long run make possible a change in that relationship. If you want to be more pragmatic about it: every time we compromised our values it has blown up in our face or come back to haunt us. Or I save thousands, and the family of the one I sacrificed will think I'm the bad guy. Or the thousands who were saved may abdicate their survival guilt and think I'm the bad guy. Hell, there's doctors who saved millions of children's lives just by inventing a vaccine (in the creation of which no people were harmed!) and they get death threats from the anti-MMR crowd. I would never rely on public opinion for a moral judgement of my actions. Because then I'd be acting in accordance with their morals --whatever they are-- and also abdicate responsibility for the morality of my actions to them. And soon I'd be just another ordinary citizen, doing my bit to gas the Jews or something because everybody else is going along with it. Think about it. Everybody involved. Because every person, except the one being tortured, had a personal choice. Instead they left the judgement of the morality of their actions to others. How can I be the Bad Guy if I refuse? I didn't put them and me in that position, someone else did. Whether these people lived or died was always his choice, not mine. He is the Bad Guy. I can only choose not to be his instrument. This may feel kind of meta, but being the Good Guy means that sometimes you end up dying to preserve what you are. Else what are you?
The crap they are doing with 'terrorists' is the same crap that was done with 'witches' there is absolutely no difference. Only substituting one thing for another, a few centuries apart. It's all a ruse to keep the masses preoccupied with scapegoats to keep them distracted from what is really happening.
But aren't morals decided by those around us? Just because you feel it is moral, does that mean everyone else should? Is this then not the thinking of a suicide bomber, believing that what they are doing is right? Does your own self-satisfaction outweigh the lives of others? It's not the same, it is barely comparable. Acts of terrorism are real and cost thousands of lives, witchcraft isn't. What's really happening?
Do you think that is the outcome of an intended plan or was that the result of people being people and not understanding how they think/rationalise etc.
Several questions here: - Are morals decided by society? Often they are, because morality is about interpersonal relationships. Is that what makes them (more) moral? I argue not. - does everybody else have to subscribe to my morals? Of course not. They can do whatever they think is right. And accept the consequences, just like I do. - Does my own self-satisfaction outweigh the lives of others? Nope, but then I didn't kill anybody, or through inaction allow anybody to get killed. In the moral dilemma you proposed, it is not I that decides over these people's lives; it is the guy who put us all in that situation. But I do wonder whether Americans feel that 3000 dead Americans in 9/11 outweigh the hundreds of thousands dead and millions of refugees in a destabilised Middle East. Just sayin'. That is a complicated question. People rarely do something for one single clear motive. Often it is more like people do things for a network of motives, some of which are conscious, some subconscious; some rationalisations after the fact and some denied or repressed. But often people decide on what they are going to do long before they realise that they are making that decision. They were always going to torture the terrorists, because they wanted to torture the terrorists, because that's what you do with terrorists. The self-rationalisation came after that decision was already made.
As a slight aside, I heard the following on the radio yesterday: I was pretty stunned by this. Is it just me or does this translate to "Yeah, torture happened, but we're still better than everybody else because..." And the word "admit" makes me pretty angry. This is an admission? Over a decade after the fact? OBAMALOL.
It is necessary, if only to stop denial. If only to confirm to the (American) public that this torture wasn't just an urban myth. This sets the internal discussion onto a new base, realising that something went wrong is the first needed step to righting your wrong. Is it going to be uncomfortable? yes. Might it provoke violent reactions against american institutions? yes. But it would be reactions to the torure that has gone on, not to the report confirming it, because those that react believed in the torture all along anyway. This started with some decisions that were simply wrong. The accused were put outside the law, even outside our western....moralic code. These people are "enemy combattants" not captured soldiers (outside the law) Held in "no-man's land", so no rules apply. We, as western allies of the US, watched these decisions and looked away. That said, I'm still waiting for someone to pop aout and say, whoops, sorry, there were no weapons of mass-destruction in irak, we invaded for naught. Here Saddam, have your hat back.
Call me a pessimist but my concern is even with this report being published nothing is going to change. All that will happen is they will continue doing it behind closed doors with a couple of subtle changes to the law to re-define the definition of torture and everything will carry on as it currently is. The only difference is they will do a better job to prevent the information becoming public. My other question is if there is to be criminal charges made, who should they be made against? The senior personnel within the CIA who oversaw the programs? The interrogators themselves? I have no idea but it only seems right someone should be held accountable. In the long run I suspect there won't be any public prosecutions though and people will simply forget about it. The attention span and memory of the public is pretty short.
