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Originally Posted by Wisha Haddan H3
Let's start with this, "If not, you probably don't care enough about them." You're saying that I'm not willing to torture someone for information. I don't really love my girlfriend/wife/family member. And conversely, if really do love them, I will torture anyone in my way for information.
That's a logical fallacy. There is no relationship between my love for my kidnapped wife, sister or girlfriend and my willingness to torture someone. I can truly, deeply and in all other ways love my family, AND be smart enough to realize that torturing someone won't help them. And please, dragging the red herring of "the greater good" across the trail isn't helping your argument any. Here's why.
Torture is inherently unreliable. First you have to assume you caught one of the actual kidnappers ... not a bystander. Then you have to assume he knows something (who, what, when, where, etc). Then you have to assume the other kidnappers won't change their plans, knowing their accomplice is in custody.
And finally, for torture to be any benefit, you have to assume it produces reliable results. It doesn't. Torture someone long enough and they will tell you anything. They will make up intel, confess to whatever you're asking, and sign anything you want. And even if they tell the truth, it is nearly impossible to determine the truth from what they lied about to stop the pain.
And there are even deeper consequences for a society to resort to torture. When we assume that our loss and pain gives us extra rights, we become what we hate. Why can we do what we want and get immunity from the consequences (when we hurt "the wrong people" by mistake), while we hold a suspect's feet to the fire? Oops, sorry I tortured your son for information. He lived next door to the guy we thought was involved, and we had to be sure he wasn't holding back, just in case he overheard something through the wall. Please understand ... I just wanted my girlfriend back.
No, hang on ... there IS a worse assumption. It's the leap from justifying torture in the defense of someone you KNOW has been hurt, to torture in case someone MIGHT POSSIBLY get hurt. In the first case, you might actually have leads, witnesses and evidence. But in the second, you have little more than your fear, desperation, conjecture and prejudice to go on.
So ... yeah, you can love your family, and still not believe that torture will bring them safely back to you, leaving you free from the consequences of caring so little about other people.
Oh, and about the Geneva Convention ... just because one side doesn't sign, or breaks their part of the agreement, we still don't have the right to break our part. The Convention puts the onus on the SIGNER to comply, not on the ones who don't. Adherence to the Convention is a mark of civilization and decency. If we throw that to the wind, we risk becoming self-justifying terrorists ourselves.
We talk about setting up democracy and making allies in Iraq and Afghanistan. Kidnapping and torturing their sons and daughters for information that won't be reliable anyway, isn't helping.
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