Politics
Out of context: Reply #6905
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- TheBlueOne0
"Scenario:
Detainee has information about an attack on Americans. What is an okay method to get the information out of him? Lives of innocent people are on the line.Assumptions:
- The guy has information and you know it.
- He's a known terrorist."I'll try to address this like an adult, before GetRefresh starts screaming that I'm some pussy lefty or whatever gets his dick hard, but here goes:
Look, I know calling the guy a "terrorist" somehow adds a seemingly easy value judgment to the equation, like "terrorist=bad guy", so therefore that seems to pre-empt any ethical judgement for treatment, but the reality is that this is not a new question in the sphere of human conflict. Over the course of a few hundred years, humans have in fact come up with rules of conduct for exactly these situations. I can very easily change a few words here:
"Captured enemy soldier has information about an attack on Your Army. What is an okay method to get the information out of him? Lives of innocent people are on the line. Assumptions: 1) The guy has information and you know it. 2) He's a known soldier."
This scenario has been played out thousands of times over the last couple of centuries, and after much experience and deliberation and the use torture has been mainly officially frowned upon, primarily because of three reasons: 1) You want your own captured soldiers treated with respect, 2) torture generally has proven to not provide consistently true or useful answers 3) the timeliness of the information is usually not worth effort. (The guys buddies know he was captured, know he has information, and adjust their plans accordingly in case he reveals any information)
Now, note I said "officially frowned upon". It's damn certain that torture has been used in every major conflict in the last 100 years at least, but every side. Part of it is human nature (revenge impulse) or as legitimate attempt to get useful information. The fact that it's use to gain information has never seemed important enough to seek to overturn the rules about treatment of prisoners of war should tell you it's true, considered value as a tactic of information gathering. Meaning, in the conduct of war, if information extraction via torture were truly that useful and valuable, no one would place a higher value on ensuring the proper treatment of captured prisoners. But the value and actions of proper treatment is placed higher in nearly all militaries across the world and across time.
The point here really, is that, as I said shit happens in war - even torture - but no one ever laid out a legal case and official policy to make the use of torture legally justifiable - against the laws of war, against signed and binding treaties (Geneva Conventions), and SOP in military prisoners of war - until it was done under Bush.
I for one am appalled that the legal case for the use of torture in an official capacity by our government was the law of the land, against the laws, conventions and principles we hold sacred.
If you want to base your ideas on ethical treatment of people based on a TV show scenario, go ahead. I have a few centuries of war, military history and legal doctrine on my side.