Waterboarding

[nessers]

It should be no secret to any of you, especially those of you I know through the internet, that once upon a time, I was a fairly die-hard Conservative politically. I was very young and my parents were Conservative as best as I knew and my dad works for Big Oil (but he's Little Oil). So out of stubbornness, naivete, and loyalty, I clung to the

Comments

[lakos]

This is one of the better posts I've found deconstructing how torture is always immoral, and I have to say I agree with it

[cheyinka]

I am of the school of thought that says if you had a choice between shooting someone in the back of the head, or letting ten thousand people die slowly, you mustn't choose to pull the trigger.

This is because you can't do something bad to bring about a good end and call it a good thing. Look at what you called it - a "necessary evil". If it's an evil, you mustn't do it, even if by not doing it something else bad happens.

This means that finely defining what is and isn't torture isn't important to me. If what is being done to the person is wrong to do, for whatever reason, that's enough - it's wrong to do it.

So, is it wrong to make someone think they are going to drown, or to make them temporarily unable to breathe? Clearly yes - that's cruel. Might it save ten thousand lives? It might, but that's irrelevant.
Is it wrong to make someone eat the same food every day? It might be boring, but as long as it's not food they can't eat, and is enough food to survive on, there's no evil done, and so that's okay.

[seik]

Let's say the evil deed is already done. Is it morally upstanding to use the information you have obtained by said deeds to go ahead and save those lives, or are you condoning what was done by using that information?

[cheyinka]

I suppose there's a chance the information could be used

[seik]

I was actually going to refer to the Nazis if you didn't. I forget the name of the philosopher, but there's some old/dead guy who thinks that by using information we know was obtained in a wrong manner, we condone the means and are at fault.

[simply_confused]

okay, maybe i need to read your post again, but i'm not quite sure how we went from abortion to waterboarding.

i could go back and forth all day on this issue and i applaud you taking the time to learn the facts and listen to others' feelings instead of just taking one stance because it's how your political party feels.

do i think torture to get people to talk sucks? sure do. do i think sometimes it's necessary? sure do. and honestly, those are just my feelings. i have nothing to back it up. i just know that as much as it sickens me to think about it happening, it sickens me more to think about what the repercussions could be if it didn't happen. i think that in the hands of the government we have right now, it's hurting innocent people more than helping us figure things out.

but, that's just one gal's opinion.

[nessers]

Well, I wrote it under the effects of Hydrocodone, so it may not be perfectly clear. But the point was that I was thinking about how that one discussion about abortion changed so much of how I view the world. And I wanted to get that kind of experience for waterboarding. If that makes sense.

[chaosgoose]

Maybe you can check out this book:

It's not completely about torture, but torture plays a part. A comparison is made between the well-known use and methods of torture on individuals by certain groups, and, similarly the use of shock on a society to effect the changes you desire. I'm only half way through, but it's .. well, I think every person ought to read it.

Naomi Klein - The Shock Doctrine
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Shock_Doctrine

If you are short on time though, you can also check out this video short on Youtube. It's about 7 minutes:

The Shock Doctrine by Alfonso Cuarón and Naomi Klein
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kieyjfZDUIc