Is torture okay?
Dick Cheney apparently claims it is. We discussed it a little in class, but I doubt many people actually understand what it entails. Not many people understand "torture." Oh, sure, they understand it intellectually, but emotionally? I sincerely doubt it.
I don't understand torture emotionally.
A lot of people say, it's not ethical. One commenter on that article wrote:
Waterboarding is not okay, it is not acceptable, it is torture, flat out. All of you people who endorse this, think about this. Would you want your children, fathers, mothers, brothers and sisters subjected to this kind of treatment if they were ever taken prisoner? I seriously doubt that most of our government or our citizens would endorse this if they ever had to endure it themselves. Previous folks have stated that it isn't dangerous, just scarey, that's not entirely true either, if not done correctly, you can easily kill the subject. Additionally, just because it is psychological torture and not physical does not change the fact that is torture and that it severely traumatizes and damages people. If someone did this to me 183 times as they did to one of those prisoners I probably would have told them anything they wanted to hear. It will be a cold day in hell before anyone who endorses this or the people who did it ever get any respect from me, much less a vote. The more the US does this sort of thing, the less the rest of the world respects us. It's no wonder that more and more countries, even our allies, despise us and see us as one of the bad guys.
To play the Devil's Advocate, the question of "would you want your [relative] subjected to this kind of treatment" is irrelevant. "All's fair in love and war." To deny this would be naive - war is war, and a country's government is usually more concerned about its own citizen's safety than the injuries of a prisoner of war. Imagine this scenario: you must torture up to ten people to the point of mental breakdown. If you don't, a disaster similar to 9/11 will occur. What would you do? And then this: what would you do if your action and result were publicized? People would start blaming you; they would say: "You could have prevented this."
On the other hand, this scenario is based on the assumption that the information received from torture is correct and accurate, not merely ramblings meant to appease the torturer. There has been plenty literature demonstrating that torture doesn't necessarily produce fruitful and accurate results. I've also once read an article that shows that kindness breaks down mental barriers better than torture does.
Therefore, what is the question?
Does torture actually provide accurate information? People who believe torture is the wrong thing to do no matter what the situation are naive; just because torture in of itself is an 'unethical' act doesn't mean sometimes it's not necessary.
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