How can someone be against torture in extreme situations?

Question

If a man is on the street with a gun and is threatening a woman with it, a police officer will shoot him dead if he has the chance to save the life of that one woman.

Yet our government can't cause pain - without killing, to one terrorist to save the lives of 500,000 Americans in a nuclear attack??? Somebody has to explain this to me.

And before you libs start, I am talking about EXTREME SITUATIONS ONLY. Such as we capture a terror suspect involved in a huge plot against us that's going to occur within hours. This scenerio hasn't even happened yet in America in real life - but it could.

How can you liberals honestly remind us of the death toll to American troops or to Iraqis over there in Iraq every single day, but at the same time you would choose to let 500,000 Americans die in one attack in order to spare one terrorist scumbag some pain. I don't get it.

DARTH, I am not talking about all that!!! Stick to the scenerio I gave. We nab one of the terrorists in on the plot and need information that would save 500,000 people.

Answer 1

WCHWarrior wins the thread.

I think "shooting at American Soldiers" is an "extreme situation", and if beating the crap out of some asshat terrorist is going to save American lives, get your brass knuckles on and bring your friends.

Answer 2

Seriously?

Though the when and who can be debated, we knew there was going to be some sort of attack on us. We didn't need to torture anyone to find this out. Do you honestly think they would have given that info up??

The problem with your scenerio? If our intel can't pick up on a plan like that, then we are just screwed big time. Can you honestly believe that this could happen?

That still may not answer your question though. Let's see.

You can torture these terrorist all you want. They won't give a crap about it. Why? Because they are all set to die for their cause. Do you really believe if they have a chance to kill that many that you can do anything to them that would give up that information?

You can look at it from this way too. there was a $25,000,000 reward for capturing Saddam, there's a $50,000,000 for bin Laden. If money won't work, pain is sure not going to.

So why lower yourself to their level??

And the cop scenario doesn't even come close to a comparison.

Answer 3

I think the point is that there is a general worldwide reprehension of torture - its not just American liberals.

You can make a fine point about Extreme Situations but who decides. Most of the world knows and accepts that torture is a poor way to elicit RELIABLE information. Torture someone long enough, they will tell you absolutely anything.

But the real issue most people are against it is, how do you know the person you are torturing is actually a criminal, or a terrorist, or actually has any knowledge you want. The simple answer - you don't.

What if your government snatches you off the street because they think you are involved in a plot to blow up a building somewhere and they decide to torture you because they think it is an Extreme Situation. Are you still all for torture in that situation. Sometimes (often) the information the government has is wrong (WMDs in Iraq!!) and they torture innocent people. (and don't say it doesn't happen because it does)

Answer 4

The situation of a hostage is not analogous to a prisoner in a cell who allegedly has information.

These extreme situations that you talk about only happen on 24. In real life torture yields very poor, unreliable information. The so called "ticking-time-bomb" scenario just doesn't play out. Why don't you examine the thwarted attacks in recent past? Most of those attacks were thwarted because of good old fashioned detective work and ties between Muslim populations and law enforcement. Such attacks were not thwarted using torture, illegal wire tapping or alienation of Muslim populations.

Also there is the slippery slope argument. I think too many millions of Americans have already died in this and past wars for the idea of limited government. In the name of protecting a populous from the government why would one want to give said government the right to torture?

Also it would behoove you to examine John McCain someone who has been tortured yet opposes it as a tactic. And he's not exactly a liberal.

Answer 5

The police officer who shoots the gunman will be investigated for shooting her. Once the right circumstances come forward, he won't be punished. But shooting people is still strongly discouraged among police officers, because if the officer shoots someone who WASN'T actually threatening the woman--for example, if he was holding a phone to her head so she could share a conversation--he's in deep trouble.

The problem with torture is that it's impossible to know if the person you're torturing actually has the information you want. The US forces can capture a suspect whom they *think* is involved in a huge plot that *might* occur within hours and *could* result in the deaths of 500,000 Americans but--considering that this has never happened--is highly unlikely. If the people who torture someone who DIDN'T have that information could be held as accountable as the cop who shoots an innocent person, then we're moving toward fairness.

In any case, studies have shown that torture is rarely as effective as a well-conducted interrogation by smart agents. And then there's the Geneva Convention. We aren't allowed to torture people so that other countries aren't allowed to torture US.

Answer 6

I would just point out that shooting someone because they have a hostage is probably not going to be construed as torture, like waterboarding is. Their pain ends the second they die after being shot, whereas in torture that pain is still present.

As has been said before, you don't get much good information from torturing someone. Torture someone enough and you can get a signed confession that they are Santa Claus. The Soviets did it all the time, as did Henry VIII of England (against Anne Boleyn's supposed lover, Mark Smeaton).

But that is besides the point. Torture is just wrong because you are deliberately causing someone pain. I believe when you are not in war that is called sadism.

Cheers!!

Answer 7

Again, this is simple hysteria masquerading as logic. Information gotten through torture is not likely to be reliable--someone who is being tortured will eventually say anything to end the torture. It puts America on the moral low ground. It's unlikely that there will ever be a situation in which torture saves half a million lives, and implying that a situation like that could exist is to legitimize a policy that is simply bad intelligence-gathering practice and bad foreign policy. The real world is not an episode of "24."

Answer 8

Do not doubt your government will (rightly) get the necessary information to save ONE life when it has to and on those necessary occasions can we borrow your government please.
The scenario has been planned for, to kill 375 people on a flight that seems to be heading into a building is torture as the pilots will have several warnings and all on the plane will know they are going to die as the fighter will be alongside for visual conformation

Answer 9

What if we torture the terrorist and he caves in, claiming that the nuke is inside a little white child somewhere in the country, yet he doesn't know who the child is or his location since the implanting was done by a different secret cell.
Shall we then kill all white children? Dissect them to find the nuke? Round them all up and send them to a deserted island? What if one of the children was the baby Jesus? In the end, what if the terrorist proved to be lying?
Why do you play out "what if" scenarios like this? Do you love scaring the crap out of yourself? Grow a pair and get on with your life...

Answer 10

Because a lot of the time the people we torture are innocent. You cannot harm innocent people just to catch a terrorist or other criminal. You don't nuke an entire just to take out a few bad people. That's not how civilized governments work. That's how people like Stalin, Hitler, and Darth Vader do things.

Answer 11

like numerous of humanity, a number of those families could be against torture and a few does not. i'm form of the fence. in many respects it grew to become into mandatory as a manner to earnings considered necessary innovations yet in different respects, we won countless ineffective and untrue innovations because of the fact those being tortured stated despite they theory could supply up the torture.