Moral Justification for Torture

[ShadowMarth]

They are terrorists, but they still have human rights. Even if they don't respect ours, it would be against the founding document of our nation to act against theirs.

Alright Mormon, there's two points here. One is ethical, one is more practical. I'll cover both. Comprehensively.

First, the practical. You say that even bits and pieces derived from soldiers who know nothing but their orders will help resolve a greater strategy. Now, the terrorists that take up arms have no greater strategy. They desire only to sow chaos. Even if you were to torture them, anything you get could not be trusted. If you threaten them with their lives and excruciating pain for information they don't have, they are forced to make something up. If they do know something, they might lie anyway, since they know they're going to end up dead, and as long as it ends the pain they'll say anything regardless of validity.

As for the ethical, you said the following:

Originally Posted by Mormon

The terrorist forces are small and the people who join them know what they're getting into. They hate us with a bloody passion and would do anything to see the U.S. go down. They torture our people/kill them outright while we just ask them nicely what they're doing. That's the stupid way to play war.

Now, what you are clearly saying is that since they do it to us, that justifies us doing it to them. Well, they also attack our urban centers and civilians. I'll quote the following from my early arguments.

Naturally, this is because they have done, and are actively trying to do the same to us. They kill Americans indiscriminately, because they disagree with our government, and some members of our populace's ideals. Not because they believe every last American is purely evil, but because they believe that SOME of us are. So naturally, if human rights don't apply when they break the rules, we should start bombing urban centers in Iraq immediately.

The previous logical argument forces you into one of two remaining admonitions:
1) Torture is wrong, because Human Rights matter
or
2) We should immediately begin killing all peoples who vaguely resemble terrorists by nationality, religion, or race.

Unfortunately issues of Morality cannot often be compromised on.

[Mormon]

First, the practical. You say that even bits and pieces derived from soldiers who know nothing but their orders will help resolve a greater strategy. Now, the terrorists that take up arms have no greater strategy. They desire only to sow chaos. Even if you were to torture them, anything you get could not be trusted. If you threaten them with their lives and excruciating pain for information they don't have, they are forced to make something up. If they do know something, they might lie anyway, since they know they're going to end up dead, and as long as it ends the pain they'll say anything regardless of validity.

You look at 9/11 and can still say the terrorists have no greater strategies? If we caught one terrorist he'd have to know SOMETHING about what he was trying to do. Even if he doesn't know the greater plan, if we can get him to divulge what he was ordered to do we could figure out a general outline and get much closer to prevention.

And they normally don't end up dead, and we can thank the ACLU for that. It's like, it's ok if we kill them on the battlefield, but if we take one and then get information why don't we just give him back? I don't agree with killing the terrorist and I'd rather just have him chill in jail for a long time, but still... ACLU can be ridiculous at times, despite the fact that I agree with them most of the time.

As for your two quotes at the bottom there, you're throwing things into black and white when they're really(at least with me) not. Just because we use an eye for an eye in some places doesn't mean we're required to to it everywhere. Their mission is to sow discord and killing civilians seems to be the best way of doing that. Our mission is to eliminate the terrorists completely. Are unrelated civilians anywhere in our mission? No. So that's unnecessarily cruel, especially since it gets us nowhere anyway because the terrorists use them as human shields at times. They obviously don't care about civilians.

Killing civilians advances their goals, while it would do nothing for us. Torture for the sake of information extraction advances their goals, while it also can advance ours. We give them an advantage by not doing the same in that situation.

[bignds]

[ShadowMarth]

When I said they know no greater strategies, I was speaking specifically of the foot soldiers in the example. The people who know useful things are either far away from the fighting, or deep undercover.

[arthur_is_tight]

Originally Posted by Mormon

[/color]Nonsense. Torture them for the info while making sure they know that if the info is wrong they will be sent through much more pain than what they are currently suffering. Works like a charm.

But Mormon you can just say that if they are wrong then they would go through even more painful torture because if they are wrong innocent people could die it isn't if they are wrong because it can't be if they are wrong because if they are wrong innocent people can die

Originally Posted by Mormon

Well it's not like we question every common soldier what the entire picture is. Bits and pieces of information is all we can hope to get, and then put the big picture together. And most often, when we capture someone, we make it look like they died in whatever battle/shooting it was they were involved in. Half the time the opposition doesn't know we have them.

The terrorist forces are small and the people who join them know what they're getting into. They hate us with a bloody passion and would do anything to see the U.S. go down. They torture our people/kill them outright while we just ask them nicely what they're doing. That's the stupid way to play war.

As far as I'm concerned, their lives were forfeit when they joined the terrorist organizations.

I would agree with Mormon when they get into this organization they know that they will die unless they leave the terrorists but that isn't an option because if they were found leaving they would probably get shot

[bignds]

Originally Posted by arthur_is_tight

But Mormon you can just say that if they are wrong then they would go through even more painful torture because if they are wrong innocent people could die it isn't if they are wrong because it can't be if they are wrong because if they are wrong innocent people can die

Best post in the history of these boards.

[Wraith]

Originally Posted by Mormon

If we caught one terrorist he'd have to know SOMETHING about what he was trying to do. Even if he doesn't know the greater plan, if we can get him to divulge what he was ordered to do we could figure out a general outline and get much closer to prevention.

That isn't true, (well most of the time) most terroists work under a chain of command, they usually dont know anything only that it will secure their safety and have a full stomach by the end of the day.
We can only do so much to a person before they so what they know, but most dont know enough (or at all) to give us a picture.

[Mormon]

Originally Posted by Wraith

That isn't true, (well most of the time) most terroists work under a chain of command, they usually dont know anything only that it will secure their safety and have a full stomach by the end of the day.
We can only do so much to a person before they so what they know, but most dont know enough (or at all) to give us a picture.

As I said, they rarely know a lot. But that doesn't matter. All we really need is what they were ordered to do and whatever else they may have heard.

Some terrorists were ordered to run planes into WTC on 9/11. They knew how they were going to smuggle weapons on, and they knew what their target was. If we caught them beforehand, we could have beefed up airport security to look for such signs and we could have had our air force more prepared for a leak. And considering these people are incredibly religious, it would have taken a lot more than just asking forcefully to get them to spill the beans.

If we had caught one of them beforehand and we could have been able to use torture, that might have saved a lot of lives.

But since we didn't it doesn't really matter, but I'm just saying...

[ShadowMarth]

If we caught them beforehand.

Bloody hell that's a damned big if. If we caught them, torture wouldn't have been necessary, because they'd have been caught. Once you catch one, finding his associates would be rather quick. Probably quicker than torture.

[Mormon]

I meant like a single one.

And since they're pretty small and it looks like they have a tendency to isolate and abandon their people who they don't hear from after a while, there'd have been no way we could have found his associates and stopped it right there. Yeah you could probably find his partner, but past that, I doubt it.