Hi all,
The moral high ground is easy to occupy when you're not dying in a trench.
Example. As a result of torture inflicted on a prisoner in another country, the British government is informed that a suicide attack will be made on a named school in London tomorrow.
What do the British authorities do?
If they evacuate the school and place armed guards outside,are they supporting the torture of prisoners by validating the process? Or should the 'intelligence' be ignored as it encourages torture?
And terrorists rejoice in the dilemmas they impose on us and the divisions they create. Terrorist play the long game, whilst we live in the 'now'.
Best Regards,
MB_Avro
Your example is poor, since it's fiction.Originally posted by MB_Avro_UK:
Hi all,
The moral high ground is easy to occupy when you're not dying in a trench.
Example. As a result of torture inflicted on a prisoner in another country, the British government is informed that a suicide attack will be made on a named school in London tomorrow.
What do the British authorities do?
If they evacuate the school and place armed guards outside,are they supporting the torture of prisoners by validating the process? Or should the 'intelligence' be ignored as it encourages torture?
And terrorists rejoice in the dilemmas they impose on us and the divisions they create. Terrorist play the long game, whilst we live in the 'now'.
Best Regards,
MB_Avro
It has repeatedly been demonstrated that torture is an unreliable method of information extraction simply because people will say anything to make it stop.
The way to win the "long" game isn't to torture people, assassinate individuals, or drop bombs on middle eastern countries.
It's to appeal to the moderates within these countries. I'm not sure why some of you can't grasp that "terrorism" isn't a state with a capital or an army with a commander. You can't destroy it on a battlefield, and by trying to do so you only make it stronger. How many hundreds of thousands of Muslims have been killed over the course of the "war on terror"? Most of them simply being "collateral damage."
What of the children of this "collateral damage"? Do you think that they're going to stop hating the countries that destroyed their homes and killed their parents simply because bin Laden is dead?
Some of you really have absolutely no idea what this fight is about, and that's precisely why it's going to continue for decades to come. You can't undermine hatred with violence. In fact, all that you can do is strengthen it.
What Avro said.
The whole aim of terrorism is to force the legitimate government to become oppressive & make the general public to turn against not the nutjobs who commit terroristic atrocities, but against the authorities who are (at least at first) trying to protect them from the nutjobs.
The people we have charged with protecting us are always going to be walking a fine line and there are always going to be tough choices that cannot be deferred.
Where do you draw the line, and who will we accept as the ultimate authority and judge? I doubt that we have or will ever have all the facts, so maybe that makes it easier to second guess.
cheers
horseback
Hey Bun-Bun. You could use this for your desktop. It'll help put things into perspective.
It's a big image. Click on the thumbnail and scroll left and right/up and down to see our place in the big picture.
Avro's example may be fiction but it raises a valid point: Are there no conceivable circumstances that could justify the use of torture?
I do not condone torture and agree it is largely self defeating. But neither am I, or indeed, is anyone else here, privvy to what is really going on in the war against terrorism and how various successful operations have been generated by intelligence gathered by such methods.
It is a moral dilemma that does not bother the enemy in the slightest. They view our compassion as weakness and use our laws and morals against us.
And we must allow them to do so or we become as bad they are. Or do we?
Avro uses an example similar to one I have used in this argument with other people: A terrorist cell gains possession of a nuclear device and plants it in a American city. They set in to go off within 48hrs. They confirm this in a video but obviously do not say which city. One of the cell is caught. Do you:
a/ Use torture in an attempt to get him to reveal the location of the device within a time frame to allow its safe deactivation?
or
b/ Allow him full human rights and judicial process and thus allow millions to die but maintaining your sense of morality?
It is actually derived from the storyline of a film starring Samuel L Jackson called "Unthinkable". It deals with this very question.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v...Wzg8&feature=related
I do not know the answer, but then that's the dilemma is it not?
But that isn't the issue at hand.Originally posted by Bo_Nidle:
Avro's example may be fiction but it raises a valid point: Are there no conceivable circumstances that could justify the use of torture?
The issue is that torture has never proven to be a reliable method of information extraction. The circumstances in which it is employed does not change that fact. If it's not a reliable way to obtain information, then a moral dilemma can't really even exist.
If torture produced actionable information 100% of the time, then its use would be a much bigger moral quandary. But it doesn't. It rarely produces anything of value, which means that most torture is essentially torture for the sake of torture.
Very cool... Reminded me of when I had POTS instead of a cable modem.Originally posted by Treetop64:
Hey Bun-Bun. You could use this for your desktop. It'll help put things into perspective.
It's a big image. Click on the thumbnail and scroll left and right/up and down to see our place in the big picture.
Universe Song
But that isn't the issue at hand.Originally posted by GoToAway:
<BLOCKQUOTE class="ip-ubbcode-quote"><div class="ip-ubbcode-quote-title">quote:</div><div class="ip-ubbcode-quote-content">Originally posted by Bo_Nidle:
Avro's example may be fiction but it raises a valid point: Are there no conceivable circumstances that could justify the use of torture?
The issue is that torture has never proven to be a reliable method of information extraction. The circumstances in which it is employed does not change that fact. If it's not a reliable way to obtain information, then a moral dilemma can't really even exist.
If torture produced actionable information 100% of the time, then its use would be a much bigger moral quandary. But it doesn't. It rarely produces anything of value, which means that most torture is essentially torture for the sake of torture. </div></BLOCKQUOTE>
If what you're saying is true, and if torture as you said never proved to be a reliable way to get information, then what is the real purpose of it? : "torture for the sake of torture" doesn't seem enough for me, since the Western countries clearly built institutions for it.
In my humble opinion, the purpose of it may not be intelligence gathering. But there must be a purpose. We should ask ourselves what it really means when a democratic State produces human bodies deprived of any kind of law protection in such an ostensible way. The production of "subhumans" deprived of any status that one could torture or/and kill(without being charged!): what will be the psychological effects of this fact on the tortured bodies (if they are to survive) and their relatives, and what will be the effects on the citizen of the countries that allowed it to happen?
What i mean is that it is not only those "subhumans" that were hit by the State "illegal" violence, maybe we should consider the political decision to restrict the constitutional range (ie OUR fundamental Rights) through PA and european likes as the second and complementary part of the design.
Since after all, what are those Rights we cherish and want to defend, if they can be suspended as easily as they have been? If our fundamental Rights are so easy to suspend, then what is the real nature of our so called Free Countries?