Should torture be allowed in the war on terror?
Definition of War: A state of open, armed, often prolonged conflict carried on between nations, states, or parties.
One dictionary’s definition of torture: Infliction of severe physical pain as a means of punishment or coercion. An instrument or a method for inflicting such pain.
I believe the dictionary’s definition of torture is too vague and should be defined more precisely if we are going to ban the military from using it. In the definition of torture the word severe is arbitrary and up to individual interpretation.
I would like to see torture defined as the infliction of permanent physical or mental damage through means that the interrogators themselves have never or would not subject themselves to.
There are basically two scenario’s possible:
The troops pick up a relative of a low level terrorist for questioning to see if he is also a terrorist or can tell them where his relative is located.
They capture a known high level terrorist that has just planted a weapon of mass destruction in a highly populated civilian city.
Common sense tells us we are not going to treat these two different situations the same. In the first scenario you do not know for sure if the person even has any information that would be helpful and in the second scenario you know for a fact that he has knowledge that would save thousands of lives.
How can anyone write a law that is going to protect the occasional innocent person who might get picked up and questioned without jeopardizing the thousands of innocent civilians that might be killed by a real terrorist?
The military should stipulate in their field manual the different degrees of stress to be imposed during the interrogation of different suspects under different circumstances. But in the end you will have to give a lot of discretion to the commanders in the field because they are much closer to the situation than the politicians are. I used the term commanders plural the more people with the knowledge of the situation the less chance of abuse of power.
One dictionary’s definition of torture: Infliction of severe physical pain as a means of punishment or coercion. An instrument or a method for inflicting such pain.
I believe the dictionary’s definition of torture is too vague and should be defined more precisely if we are going to ban the military from using it. In the definition of torture the word severe is arbitrary and up to individual interpretation.
I would like to see torture defined as the infliction of permanent physical or mental damage through means that the interrogators themselves have never or would not subject themselves to.
There are basically two scenario’s possible:
The troops pick up a relative of a low level terrorist for questioning to see if he is also a terrorist or can tell them where his relative is located.
They capture a known high level terrorist that has just planted a weapon of mass destruction in a highly populated civilian city.
Common sense tells us we are not going to treat these two different situations the same. In the first scenario you do not know for sure if the person even has any information that would be helpful and in the second scenario you know for a fact that he has knowledge that would save thousands of lives.
How can anyone write a law that is going to protect the occasional innocent person who might get picked up and questioned without jeopardizing the thousands of innocent civilians that might be killed by a real terrorist?
The military should stipulate in their field manual the different degrees of stress to be imposed during the interrogation of different suspects under different circumstances. But in the end you will have to give a lot of discretion to the commanders in the field because they are much closer to the situation than the politicians are. I used the term commanders plural the more people with the knowledge of the situation the less chance of abuse of power.
posted by Tom49 at 7:53 AM
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