2 Nov. 2009. The immorality of torture is rhetorically weighed against the morality of saving lives. I hope my case for torture is wrong, as I would be much happier standing side by side with all the good people who oppose torture categorically. After all of the trials the state of Massachusetts apologized to the people for all of the horrors that had occurred. David Gushee states that torture violates the dignity of a human being and that it mistreats the vulnerable and violates the demand of justice (Gushee). While many people have objected, on emotional grounds, to my defense of torture, no one has pointed out a flaw in my argument. The Nature of Terrorists. No, there is no ethical difference to be found in how the suffering of the tortured or the collaterally damaged appears. Now let me make clear what I mean. It is considered the victims whole life because the trauma of torture follows the victim their entire life. I believe the American advent, the American idea, and the American experience are exceptional: a nation of laws, and not of men and women, a constitutional democracy founded in and devoted to the liberty of its people, a culture and nationality not of ethnicity or spiritual uniformity, but of the … “Torture is not wrong because someone else says it is wrong…. In an earlier part piece of this essay it was made clear that torture only provides false information: but at what cost? If torture had never been used to obtain evidence, it would have saved many lives. Torture not only is counterproductive in saving lives but effective in destroying a human being. By the time officials trying to prevent a catastrophe have realized that information given was false, it may be too late to stop the terror strike. "You must agree to out terms of services and privacy policy", Don't use plagiarized sources. What would happen if interrogators tortured an innocent person to no avail? To demonstrate just how abstract the torments of the tortured can be made to seem, we need only imagine an ideal "torture pill"--a drug that would deliver both the instruments of torture and the instrument of their concealment. This essay has addressed main arguments for the support of torture. Where it is not applicable, it is seems flagrantly immoral. For the sake of argument, imagine the right person is obtained. Sign up for membership to become a founding member and help shape HuffPost's next chapter. Torture is inflicting pain on someone to get them to say or do something.Torture is one of the crimes that humans have committed for many centuries. Opponents of torture will be quick to argue that confessions elicited by torture are notoriously unreliable. Can torture ever be justify? Template tips. How to change this sidebar. I would be sincerely grateful to have my mind changed on this subject. First, the interrogators must have the right person in order to get any information about this alleged terror strike. As a means to obtain information, it is of questionable merit because the victim will tell you anything the torturer wants to hear. Cathleen Kavenly quotes a statement issued by fifteen experienced former investigators:”the use of torture and other inhumane and abusive treatments result in false, misleading information and loss of critical intelligence” (Kavenly, 6). The ethical divide that seems to be opening up here suggests that those who are willing to drop bombs might want to abduct the nearest and dearest of suspected terrorists--their wives, mothers, and daughters--and torture them as well, assuming anything profitable to our side might come of it. Fifteen experienced former investigators came up with that statement. There is no question that Abu Ghraib was a travesty, and there is no question that it has done our country lasting harm. We would do well to reflect on Gandhi's remedy for the Holocaust: he believed that the Jews should have committed mass suicide, because this "would have aroused the world and the people of Germany to Hitler's violence." ... provides arguments against justifying torture based on consequentialist grounds and attacks interrogational torture … In the aftermath of Abu Ghraib, this is not a comfortable position to have publicly adopted. “Should High-ranking Captured Terrorists Be Tortured to Obtain Information?” Balanced Politics 4 Mar. Torture ruins the life of the victim. According to Michael Levin’s article, “The Case for Torture,” his view on torture is that there are many situations in which torture would be against the law but would be obligatory for someone’s conscious. An analogous argument holds that human decision-makers are fundamentally prone in certain situations to believe that their judgment is better than it is, and that, to be ethical, they must pre-commit themselves to a particular course of action in those situations. Imagine that a known terrorist has planted a bomb in the heart of a nearby city. If there is even one chance in a million that he will tell us something under torture that will lead to the further dismantling of Al Qaeda, it seems that we should use every means at our disposal to get him talking. Hi - I know most people are against the use of torture, but was wondering if anyone can give me ideas for a debate in which I must ignore in favour of t While we hold the moral high ground in our war on terror, we appear to hold it less and less. All rights reserved. The “ticking bomb” argument is the idea that in the case that there is a limited amount of time to stop a terrorist attack and the terrorist is in custody; officials should be allowed to torture vital information about the terror strike from the captive. This lesson - that torture is habit-forming and … Even the strong main arguments in support of torture fall flat when stood up against its opposition. Schell, Jonathan. This causes a slippery slope that can be very hard not to fall down. You can get your custom paper from We use cookies to give you the best experience possible. The acts of torture during these trials caused many innocent people to die. The concept of a torture warrant has primarily been offered by Alan Dershowitz, with an ex ante authorisation of the practice via judicial channels. By continuing we’ll assume you’re on board with our cookie policy, The input space is limited by 250 symbols. To learn that one's grandfather flew a bombing mission over Dresden in the Second World War is one thing; to hear that he killed five little girls and their mother with a shovel is another. An argument made apparent by Andrew Coyne is the idea that someone being tortured will say anything to relieve the pain, even the truth (Coyne, 34). I will now present an argument for the use of torture in rare circumstances. And a broad one… severe mental anxiety and suffering. It had to be pretty slim. What is the difference between pursuing a course of action where we run the risk of inadvertently subjecting some innocent men to torture, and pursuing one in which we will inadvertently kill far greater numbers of innocent men, women, and children? This anti-torture argument, in fact, works by positing that human knowledge has intrinsic limits. If a conventional explosion doesn't move you, consider a nuclear bomb hidden in midtown Manhattan. [1] Yet abundant evidence indicates that it does, directly or by proxy—and in fact always has. What started off as permission to apply mild torture in extreme cases avalanched into an all-pervasive and pernicious practice. Why let torture happen, if the reason for torture never happens? I am one of the few people I know of who has argued in print that torture may be an ethical necessity in our war on terror. This chapter provides arguments for a minimal absolutist prohibition on torture. Another problem to this “ticking bomb” argument is that the person who is captured may very well choose death to torture (Messerli). But there seems no question that accidentally torturing an innocent man is better than accidentally blowing him and his children to bits. U.S. officials now believe that his was the hand that decapitated the Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl. What was the chance that the dropping of bomb number 117 on Kandahar would effect the demise of Al Qaeda? Effects of Torture. Such analysis would necessarily lead to a lesser evil choice in favour of torturing the terrorist. “What is Wrong With Torture?” Nation 280.5 (2005): 8. Even if we can't quite muster a retort to the ticking bomb case, most of us take refuge in the fact that the paradigmatic case will almost never arise. the ‘nuts and bolts’ of moral or legal arguments for or against torture per se. I have already expressed my views with regard to There seems no question that if all the good people in the world adopted Gandhi's ethics, the thugs would inherit the earth. Torture is a short-cut for good intelligence practices. It is absurd to believe the ideas that supporters of torture … com states torture as “extreme anguish of body or mind; agony. In modern warfare, "collateral damage"--the maiming and killing innocent noncombatants--is unavoidable. “The Church Can Help Survivors of Torture.” News Network 26.1 (2006): 14+. Messerli, Joe. All you need to do is fill out a short form and submit an order. However, there has been one notable argument for the moral and legal permissibility of torture; torture warrants. Join the Discussion. “Bad Evidence: Not Only Is It Torture, It Doesn’t Work.” Commonweal 12 Sep. 2008: 6. Enter Khalid Sheikh Mohammed: our most valuable capture in our war on terror. Torture in the modern world is a relic of the distant past. Sorry, but copying text is forbidden on this website. ” A second definition at dictionary. There is no reasoning with those facts: torture is wrong. No, there is no ethical difference to be found in how the suffering of the tortured or the collaterally damaged appears. How is one to know whether or not the information received through torture is reliable or not? The Moral Landscape: How Science Can Determine Human Values, The End of Faith: Religion, Terror, and the Future of Reason. It has also been said that “torture destroys the soul of the torturer even as it destroys the body of his victim” (Schell, 8). “Where to Draw the Line?” Maclean’s 14 Sep. 2009: 34+. It is absurd to believe the ideas that supporters of torture come up with. Many of their arguments only work in very specific situations that may never happen. A utilitarian would say that performing the torture would maximise pleasure for all the parties affected and do the greatest good to the greatest number therefore they would torture the convict. Here is a character who actually seems to have stepped out of a philosopher's thought experiment. The authors in the book have no interest in debating why exactly torture is so terrible and is rejected by all civilised persons. ” Torture does not sound pleasant at all and yet people insist upon defending and supporting the barbaric deed. Arguments for Torture. References. Web. I invite any reader who discovers a problem with my argument to point it out to me in the comment section of this blog. 3557 days since Project Due Date. Opponents of torture will be quick to argue that confessions elicited by torture are notoriously unreliable. It would also be a problem even if we resolved to fight only defensive wars. Our casual abuse of ordinary prisoners is largely responsible for this. Tap here to turn on desktop notifications to get the news sent straight to you. What incentive does cruelty give than to be counterproductive and not cooperate? Torture is illegal: international laws prohibit the use of torture against anybody. One sinful man will be hurt and a city full of people will be saved. If your daughter won't tip the scales, then add the daughters of every couple for a thousand miles--millions of little girls have, by some perverse negligence on the part of our government, come under the control of an evil genius who now sits before you in shackles. Video conferencing best practices: Tips to make meeting online even better He now sits in your custody. Throughout this author’s time in research and study, there has yet been a reported case found of which a real life scenario of a “ticking bomb” incident has actually occurred. So we can now ask, if we are willing to act in a way that guarantees the misery and death of some considerable number of innocent children, why spare the rod with known terrorists? Today is National Voter Registration Day! I close by clarifying just what the Kantian case against torture is. 2006. One could argue the arguments for and against utilitarianism. Water-boarding clearly counts as torture by the second definition, perhaps the issue isn't clear given the first definition. Torture is sometimes used to destroy the autonomy of the victim some societies have used torture to suppress independent thought and convert people to 'right-thinking'. Logically, once anti-absolutism is rejected, torture must be prohibited absolutely, as it contains the worst acts one person can possibly inflict on another. The logic of every justification of torture is that it offers a foolproof solution to an impossible problem: lack of knowledge. Ethical arguments regarding torture is similar to these topics: Ticking time bomb scenario, Torture museum, Torture and the Ticking Bomb and more. We could easily devise methods of torture that would render a torturer as blind to the plight of his victims as a bomber pilot is at thirty thousand feet. We made it easy for you to exercise your right to vote! The ticking-bomb argument, where a terrorist is tortured in order to extract information of a primed bomb located in a civilian area, is often invoked as one of those extreme circumstances where torture becomes justified. Finally, I test the argument against a real case. Arguments for Torture. In supplement to the already great argument, he provides potential counter-arguments and proves why they are invalid. And what counts as torture? Though there are many proponents, claiming that torture is acceptable in a number of certain cases—such as against terrorists or maniacs—I believe they should not be tolerated due to several reasons. A signatory to the UN Convention Against Torture, the United States "does not torture." Oct. 14, 2020. There is no escaping the fact that whenever we drop bombs, we drop them with the knowledge that some number of children will be blinded, disemboweled, paralyzed, orphaned, and killed by them. An Argument on Torture. torture as a means to obtain information deemed necessary to prevent terrorism, I have decided to write any essay about the tortured reasoning and arguments that tend to typify much of the debate about this emotionally laden issue. While pacifism in this form can constitute a direct confrontation with injustice (and requires considerable bravery), it is only applicable to a limited range of human conflicts. If you think that the equivalence between torture and collateral damage does not hold, because torture is up close and personal while stray bombs aren't, you stand convicted of a failure of imagination on at least two counts: first, a moment's reflection on the horrors that must have been visited upon innocent Afghanis and Iraqis by our bombs will reveal that they are on par with those of any dungeon. Given the foregoing, however, this objection seems to lack its usual force. Clearly, the consequences of one person's uncooperativeness can be made so grave, and his malevolence and culpability so transparent, as to stir even a self-hating moral relativist from his dogmatic slumbers. I consider several arguments for a Kantian absolutist position concerning torture and explain why none are sound. The purpose of torture is either to impart revenge or to obtain information or both. our expert writers, Please indicate where to send you the sample, Hi, my name is Jenn Retrieved from https://graduateway.com/an-argument-on-torture/, This is just a sample. As a foreign policy, this would leave us with something like the absolute pacifism of Gandhi. Articulation seven then presents the detention and interrogation program as an ongoing inevitability. Don't use plagiarized sources. The philosopher Jonathan Glover points out that "in modern war, what is most shocking is a poor guide to what is most harmful." If you need this or any other sample, we can send it to you via email. “Torture.”