So, Just What Is Torture?

POSTED BY: perfessergee
UPDATED: Monday, August 29, 2005 10:55
VIEWED: 11212
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SERGEANTX

Friday, August 19, 2005 2:19 PM

" "

SergeantX

"Dream a little dream or you can live a little dream. I'd rather live it, cause dreamers always chase but never get it." Aesop Rock

FIVVER

Friday, August 19, 2005 2:24 PM

Wow! What a brilliant answer Sarge. I'm not defending anything. I'm asking YOU - what would YOU be willing to do to save the life of your child?

Fivver

SERGEANTX

Friday, August 19, 2005 2:46 PM

You're confused again fivver. You've created a different situation, suggesting it is related to the original question. Either that or you're just intentionally trying to create another issue because you don't want to talk about our policies on torture.

Rather than thinking up diversions, why not focus on the actual question. What should our government advocate as its policy regarding torturing prisoners? If you can stay focused on the actual issue, you might be able to understand that our government, and by extension our society, will have to deal with the repurcussions of that policy.

To answer your unrelated, emotionally loaded question, I'd kill, maim, torture whatever the hell was necessary, to save my own kids. That's why we elect representatives to handle issues of foreign policy and not the parents of soldiers involved. It's why, despite her protests, Cindy Sheehan will not decide our foreign policy.

SergeantX

"Dream a little dream or you can live a little dream. I'd rather live it, cause dreamers always chase but never get it." Aesop Rock

R1Z

Friday, August 19, 2005 2:47 PM

G1223 said:

"Well based on our history of what we allow.

During The Korean War we allowed beatings starvation and psychological torture of our POW's while not doing the same to the North Korean and Chinese POW's."

I've got a fundamental disagreement with what appears to be your definition of "allow".

For the record, I did not ALLOW it to rain last night, nor did I ALLOW the sun to rise this morning.

By definition, what you allow you have control over. If you can allow it, you can disallow it. The term implies a level of control

We have no control over how people treat members of our military who are held against their wills.
We'd BETTER take control of what our representatives do to those we are detaining, or we're gonna lose that fabled "high ground here, sweetcakes."

To enjoy the flavor of life, take big bites. Moderation is for monks. --Robt. Heinlein

SERGEANTX

Friday, August 19, 2005 2:47 PM

*doh* double post.

HERO

Friday, August 19, 2005 3:46 PM

Quote:
Originally posted by Hardware:
I am not willing to sacrifice eveything that made this country identifiably American just to be safe from terrorists. Someone earlier said that brutalizing a foreigner was better than losing 10,000 people in another attack.

Well said, I think you should have stopped there and made your point. I disagree, but it was well said.

Democracy can't be preserved if everyone is dead. So instead of 10,000 perhaps we can start with all Americans. ALL of them, everywhere will die unless we get a piece of information from this well fed, humanely treated guy sitting in a detention cell in Gitmo. He aint talkin. Are the lives of all Americans worth his civil rights? Some people dislike America, so instead make it all people, everywhere. Are 6 billion lives more or less worth a temporay abridgement of this one person's civil rights. If not then celebrate your morals while the world ends, if yes then we've agreed in principal and now were just nailing down the specific number of death it will take to balance this guys rights. I think 10,000 is way too high. I'd start with 1. One inncent life, America or not, is worth more the the temporary abridgement of a terrorists right...and we'll throw in some honost contrition when we're done hurting him. Thats what we do. Bad things when we have to, yes, but we feel bad about it and that seperates us from the likes of terrorists who do bad things all the time and celebrate their doings.

Quote:

I say that person is a fear monger or a coward.

Don't see the connection. I think the real coward is the one so unsure of their values that they refuse to compromise them during an emergency for fear they can never return to them when the crisis has passed. Its like those guys we see on TV braving a brush fire with a garden hose for fear of losing their house.

Quote:

Being willing to sacrifice concepts like justice and mercy is certainly a sign of weakness. And doing so is just as disrespectfull as shitting on the grave of everyone who died on 9/11.

The more I get to know people the more I like my dogs.

I like your dogs too.

I suggest that justice and mercy each have their place in this war. And that the two do not always need to go together.

And don't forget those who have died since 9/11. Seems to me a bit less mercy ten years ago could have prevented all this, but that's Clinton's legacy, aint it just?

H

SERGEANTX

Friday, August 19, 2005 4:21 PM

Quote:
Originally posted by Hero:
Democracy can't be preserved if everyone is dead. So instead of 10,000 perhaps we can start with all Americans. ALL of them, everywhere will die unless we get a piece of information from this well fed, humanely treated guy sitting in a detention cell in Gitmo. He aint talkin. Are the lives of all Americans worth his civil rights? Some people dislike America, so instead make it all people, everywhere. Are 6 billion lives more or less worth a temporay abridgement of this one person's civil rights.

To argue from they hypothetical, it needs to at least be plausible. Otherwise whatever point it supposedly proves is highy questionable. The hypothetical you're proposing never happens.

Quote:
One innocent life, America or not, is worth more the the temporary abridgement of a terrorists right...

You're assuming another outrageous hypothetical. First, you're presuming that you know with absolute certainty the person you're torturing is a terrorist. Second, you're assuming that torturing this person or not, is directly connected to saving an innocent life. Maybe this has happened before, but are you really suggesting that's what was going on in Abu Ghraib? Or that every prisoner in Guantanamo represents a choice between sacrificing innocent life, or committing heinous acts of barbarism?

Quote:
Don't see the connection. I think the real coward is the one so unsure of their values that they refuse to compromise them during an emergency for fear they can never return to them when the crisis has passed. Its like those guys we see on TV braving a brush fire with a garden hose for fear of losing their house.

That's a good point, and I agree we should never give up our responsibility to weigh conflicting moral concerns in a crisis. The thing is, we're not in a crisis now. We were in a crisis for about six hours after 9/11. That's my biggest problem with the so-called GWOT. They want to convince us that we are in a state of perpetual crisis and that all bets are off until its over.

That's been the rallying cry for every fascist regime in history and something that ought to make all of us more than a little leery about using as a justification for torture.

Quote:
I suggest that justice and mercy each have their place in this war. And that the two do not always need to go together.

That, to me, is one of the biggest impediments to having a reasonable debate on this issue. It's not about feeling sorry for terrorists. Deciding that it is in our best interests to avoid the tactics of the brutal despot is not showing mercy for the enemy. It's showing respect for our own soldiers and general decency.

SergeantX

"Dream a little dream or you can live a little dream. I'd rather live it, cause dreamers always chase but never get it." Aesop Rock

CITIZEN

Friday, August 19, 2005 4:38 PM

Quote:
Originally posted by G1223:
I also expressed myself as to how the people holding us back from saving those lives are using everything to defend the guy who could if he was loose would kill them and their familes. Because he will send you to hell and he will get a dozen or so virgins in paradise.

Its not exactly that simple is it...
Where is Ruxton when you need him?

But if you think that the best way to combat terroism is to become a terroist, force others to join your aforementioned Virgin loving firend, then good luck to you, you'll need it.

Q: What do you have when you are holding two little green balls in your hand.
A: Kermit's undivided attention.

HKCAVALIER

Friday, August 19, 2005 5:56 PM

Quote:
Originally posted by G1223:
When it comes to getting answers the question is are you willing to allow 10,000 people to die because you will not ask a question of a person who might just be able to give the answer.

For my money, this here is the core b.s. from which all other b.s. on the subject flows. Your understanding of causality is hopelessly skewed in several ways.

First of all the ticking time bomb scenario is so special a case as to render it irrelevant; that people take it seriously at all is merely the triumph of the possible over the plausible; the more fearful a person is, the less concerned with plausibility they become. It leads to Hero's notion that not torturing one man could lead to the death of every person in the United States. "Well it MIGHT!" shrieks the credulous fear-monger, "Are you willing to take the CHANCE?"

Nonsense. As an investigative tool, torture has only ever been, and will never become anything other than a form of coercion. It can make a person do things. It cannot make a person honest. It cannot reliably ascertain the truth. There is no way to know if it will work until it has "proven" to have worked in hindsight.

One of the greatest tools used by the Right Wing that I have seen on this board is the logical fallacy of post hoc ergo propter hoc; if something happens after something else, then there must be a causal relationship, e.g.: The Berlin Wall came down after Ronald Reagan became president, ergo Reagan brought the wall down; just like the king in The Little Prince cammanded the sun to rise every morning. Even when causality can be established, you cannot argue that it is necessary causality; there may very well have been other means to bring about the same end, e.g.: the war with Japan may have come to an end in the pursuing months without bombing Hiroshima. History's winners always point to circumstances and explain how they came about to suit themselves; I can think of no clearer "winner" and "loser" than a torturer and his victim.

Even when torture "works" its practicality remains dubious. You can desecrate a person's body, get whatever information you wished for, and still not catch any bad guys. From what I've studied of this, torture as a means of gaining information is most effective when you already have the lion's share of the information you're after anyway; torture in these cases only serves to confirm key points. The vast majority of your information in any investigation is going to come without torture. So why torture people if it's so unreliable and tangential to your investigation?

Because the main purpose of torture is, has been, and always will be to inflict pain and humiliation on the victim; usually, but not necessarily, as a means to exact revenge for some perceived wrong. Really, as a form of torture, torture has a 100% success rate.

HKCavalier

Hey, hey, hey, don't be mean. We don't have to be mean, because, remember, no matter where you go, there you are.

SEVENPERCENT

Friday, August 19, 2005 6:12 PM

Quote:
Originally posted by Hero:
Don't see the connection. I think the real coward is the one so unsure of their values that they refuse to compromise them during an emergency for fear they can never return to them when the crisis has passed. Its like those guys we see on TV braving a brush fire with a garden hose for fear of losing their house.

I have to say that this is the one of the most silly things I've ever heard anyone say in my life, and I can't believe, after all I've read him post, that SargeX would agree with it. You're actually saying that someone who stands strong by their values and doesn't compromise them, ever, is a coward? That we should only be honest or caring or merciful when it suits us, because we can, ya'know, always go back? That line of thinking is so amazingly idiotic that it's almost surreal, Hero.

What is torture? Going above and beyond what we consider to be a fair and just treatment of an American prisoner just because someone is "the enemy" is torture. Statistics have shown that violent means of extracting information do not work, because an innocent man will tell you anything to make it stop while a guilty man willing to trade his life for a cause won't tell you a damn thing. We have a moral obligation to treat others fairly and with dignity, and according to our constitutional principles. I see a lot of you saying, "well, we should beat them until they talk, hurt them in any way necessary, kill them if possible," then turning right around and saying that when they do it the same way, it's bad. Then you can't figure out why someone might think you are evil or a moral relativist. You guys are Grade A Class 1 Mental Gymnasts, lemme tell ya.

As far as 1 man vs. 1000, I ask you all this: How many lives is your brother worth? Your parents? Your children? Should one innocent man sacrifice himself so that others may be safe? Perhaps, but should he be forced to be sacrificed against his will? Never. I laugh my ass off every time I hear people say that, "well, you have to break a few eggs to make an omlette." I would LOVE to see what you'd say if I picked up one of your children in a crime sweep, who got caught in the wrong place at the wrong time, and told you I was going to execute him with the rest because, well, in getting criminals off the streets, 1 innocent life is worth x number of safe people. I'd bet the farm you'd have an entirely different take on it then.

7%

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He looked bigger when I couldn't see him.

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So, Just What *Is* Torture?

So, Just What Is Torture?