Waterboarding

[Mole]

An Occupying Army

Thousands of American soldiers will be flooding into Australia soon and some of them will rape Australian women, but not one American rapist can be brought before an Australian Criminal Court.

This is all apiece with the fact that not one American soldier can be brought before the International Court of Justice for war crimes, genocide or crimes against humanity.

These are the hallmarks of an occupying army.

 

[Rasofy]

 

[freeeekyyy]

It's what's known as psychological torture.

Something doesn't have to cause lasting physical harm to fit the bill.

 

[FemMecha]

Parameter 1 :There is no need to value the life of a person that doesn't value the life of the others.

Why wouldn't devaluing the life of a terrorist fit this category? What if the terrorist sincerely perceives his/her victim as not valuing the life of others and so it is acceptable to kill based on this same reasoning? Does it make a difference what the motivation is in devaluing the human life? Cruelty and killing are most often justified as punishing the guilty and so motivations are typically justified either with accurate perception and distorted logic, or distorted perception and accurate logic or some combination of the two. Edit: Internal motivations for any action cannot be measured and determined definitively and rely on varying degrees of assumptions from an onlooker. To have this be the basis for determining human rights makes for a subjective measurement of a conclusion that has serious consequences.

Parameter 2 :Therefore, if it is possible to save 1 innocent life by torturing one thousand of the above, it is justifiable.''

Same questions as above.

Parameter 3: For terrorists, parameter 1 is assumed, unless special circumstances are present.

What is the importance of motivation vs. action because every conceivable combination of motivations and actions can occur in human beings because of fear and distorted perceptions. Even terrorists are not monolithic.

Parameter 4: For anyone else, it should be verified case-by-case.

What if it cannot be fully verified if someone is a terrorist? If there is any doubt, then is there any change in their human rights or does suspicion alone remove human rights?

 

[Rasofy]

What if the terrorist sincerely perceives his/her victim as not valuing the life of others and so it is acceptable to kill based on this same reasoning?

There's a difference between attacking a soldier and attacking a random person that was at the wrong place at the wrong time.

Does it make a difference what the motivation is in devaluing the human life?

Yes. But terrorism has no good enough justification.

so motivations are typically justified either with accurate perception and distorted logic, or distorted perception and accurate logic or some combination of the two.

I can agree with that. Still, better him than an innocent. If this terrorist believes random people he knows nothing about are personifications of evil, there's no reason for us to treat him well when it's possible to save innocent lives.

What if it cannot be fully verified if someone is a terrorist? If there is any doubt, then is there any change in their human rights or does suspicion alone remove human rights?

Innocents are gonna suffer no matter what. If it's possible for the State to make by its own hands 10 innocents that seem guilty suffer, in order to avoid 100 innocents suffer, it's an acceptable price. Every decision has its own collateral damage. I believe it's better to get hands dirty in order to save 10 times more innocents than to keep hands clean and assume nothing could have been done. This paragraph is my basic mindset. The other points need more polishing time than I'm willing to spend on the matter.

 

[dala]

If there's a ticking time bomb scenario, and you have apprehended an assailant who very likely has knowledge that could be used to prevent the scenario from occurring, if it does not seem like this information will be gathered from him or her by the time that time bomb stops ticking, then torture is justified.

Can you think of a single time outside of a television show where this has ever happened? I can't, and I have never seen anything to indicate that this is what torture is used for. This is a specious argument because it simply has no bearing in reality.

You can come up with an extreme edge case to justify any action, but at then end of the day it's a bad idea to determine day-to-day operations based on such unrealistic premises.

 

[Riva]

There surely must be other forms of torture which are unimaginably crueler, hurtful and inhumane than water boarding. However water boarding won the lime light of torture techniques.

 

[freeeekyyy]

There surely must be other forms of torture which are unimaginably crueler, hurtful and inhumane than water boarding. However water boarding won the lime light of torture techniques.

I don't know how you go from "there's worse" to "this is perfectly acceptable."

 

[Beargryllz]

There surely must be other forms of torture which are unimaginably crueler, hurtful and inhumane than water boarding. However water boarding won the lime light of torture techniques.

Water boarding is one of the few types of torture that is legal in the United States. It is also used regularly.

That is why water boarding is in the lime light

 

[FemMecha]

Innocents are gonna suffer no matter what. If it's possible for the State to make by its own hands 10 innocents that seem guilty suffer, in order to avoid 100 innocents suffer, it's an acceptable price. Every decision has its own collateral damage. I believe it's better to get hands dirty in order to save 10 times more innocents than to keep hands clean and assume nothing could have been done. This paragraph is my basic mindset. The other points need more polishing time than I'm willing to spend on the matter.

This sounds like a utilitarian approach to morality. What strikes me, though, is that the phrase, "innocents are gonna suffer no matter what" could well be used to justify a terrorist act. Kill a few people on a bus to get the attention on a bigger problem that will save more people. I think your reference is to collateral damage and not intentional damage to non-combatants which makes it different from the application I mentioned, but still, the reasoning is troubling for its direct similarity to the justification for a terrorist act.

I'm watching a documentary on tree-hugger eco-terrorists. That term "terrorist" includes people who have plausibly positive motivations to help the world. It includes people who have never killed anyone. And most problematically it includes people only suspected of terrorism who are tortured in order to determine their guilt. There was a quote in the documentary, "One man's terrorist is another man's freedom fighter depending on whether or not you agree with his motives". It was somewhat chilling to hear that. Terrorism is the tactic used by those who don't have the resources to have an armed forces necessary to confront a powerful country head-on. It's called asymmetrical warfare because it grows out of strong power imbalances and so overcompensates for its position of vulnerability with strong violence and fear. I am not convinced of the reasoning to remove human rights from people who happened to end up on that side of a conflict. I don't think it is possible to isolate guilt so clearly to the level of individual - they are operating and reacting within a system. There are comparable instances in which soldiers have been accused of committing violence against innocent civilians and yet they are not labeled "terrorist" for these acts. Why? Perhaps because they are on the correct side of the power imbalance?

 

[Rasofy]

This sounds like a utilitarian approach to morality.

Exactly.

What strikes me, though, is that the phrase, "innocents are gonna suffer no matter what" could well be used to justify a terrorist act. Kill a few people on a bus to get the attention on a bigger problem that will save more people.
I think your reference is to collateral damage and not intentional damage to non-combatants which makes it different from the application I mentioned, but still, the reasoning is troubling for its direct similarity to the justification for a terrorist act.

I'm watching a documentary on tree-hugger eco-terrorists. That term "terrorist" includes people who have plausibly positive motivations to help the world. It includes people who have never killed anyone. And most problematically it includes people only suspected of terrorism who are tortured in order to determine their guilt. There was a quote in the documentary, "One man's terrorist is another man's freedom fighter depending on whether or not you agree with his motives". It was somewhat chilling to hear that. Terrorism is the tactic used by those who don't have the resources to have an armed forces necessary to confront a powerful country head-on. It's called asymmetrical warfare because it grows out of strong power imbalances and so overcompensates for its position of vulnerability with strong violence and fear. I am not convinced of the reasoning to remove human rights from people who happened to end up on that side of a conflict. I don't think it is possible to isolate guilt so clearly to the level of individual - they are operating and reacting within a system. There are comparable instances in which soldiers have been accused of committing violence against innocent civilians and yet they are not labeled "terrorist" for these acts. Why? Perhaps because they are on the correct side of the power imbalance?

You bring some interesting points. Indeed, not all terrorists are intrinsically bad people. But we can't treat them based on their values. We treat them based on ours (backed by law, preferably). Otherwise we would have to grant them virgins and statues with their names. Anyways, despite the fact you seem pretty smart; pragmatically speaking, I think you are inserting as many moral variables as possible to justify inertia. The speech is convincing, but impractical on a pragmatic level.

 

[figsfiggyfigs]

Exactly.

Otherwise we would have to grant them virgins and statues with their names

You relize that not all terrorist are Muslim extremist retards(redundant), right?

 

[Rasofy]

You relize that not all terrorist are Muslim extremist retards(redundant), right?

Yes. I like using extreme yet tangible examples to highlight my points. Saves a lot of time.
I wish I had Ni, so I could keep things short and vague while still managing to sound smart, but that's a skill I lack.

 

[Magic Poriferan]

I subscribe to utilitarian morals, too, and I'm against the government use of torture. I'm not convinced that it has ever achieved the results that a number of these fantastic scenarios claim they would. On the other hand, we're not merely talking about a few people being tortured (which is bad enough), we're talking about leaving the door open for the government to keep using torture, even at a time where laws are being passed allow the government to essentially call anyone a terrorist and lock them up without trial. That could easily get out of hand. Furthermore, it's a very bad image and it hurts abroad to openly advocate torturing prisoners of war.

The statement that innocents are going to suffer no matter what is not really a good utilitarian premise because it has no sense of quantification. One innocent suffering and two innocents suffering does not have the same value, so doing one does not validate the other. But you did go on to say you'd kill 10 to save 100, basically. Okay, that's a typical utilitarian conclusion, it is correct in principle, but I think you should understand that it's the correct answer to a very specific hypothetical scenario. I'd like to emphasize your own choice of words in saying "seem guilty". How much does one have to seem guilty to be fair game for torture? What if the government was wrong about one of them, or all of them? What if they torture 10 innocent people and it does nothing to protect anyone? Should they just keeping going and round up more people that seem guilty and torture them? When accumulated error has run its course, we may find more than 100 people tortured and less than 10 saved.

 

[Riva]

I don't know how you go from "there's worse" to "this is perfectly acceptable."

I never went there.

I was just surprised how water-boarding got so famous knowing there are other forms of torture which are much worse than it.

Beargryllz came to the rescue.

 

[Mole]

A Religion of Peace

You relize that not all terrorist are Muslim extremist retards(redundant), right?

Of course not all terrorists are Muslim. In fact if any Muslim commits an act of terror, they are not true Muslims. Islam, after all, is a religion of peace. And this is true because not one but two Presidents of the United States of America have said Islam is a religion of peace.

 

[Orangey]

I was just surprised how water-boarding got so famous knowing there are other forms of torture which are much worse than it.

Yeah, some of that mind-erasure shit they do in Guantanamo (and countless worse-than-Guantanamos abroad) is probably worse than waterboarding.

That said, I'm against the government use of torture as well, and that includes waterboarding.

To invoke Hitchens on this matter, here's an interesting article he wrote about his experience undergoing waterboarding.