Despite the unconstitutionality of the practice, torture has had a presence throughout our nation’s history. From the Salem witch trials of 1692, in which Giles Corey was pressed to death, to the twenty-first century waterboarding of terrorist suspects, the United States has not always lived up to the ideal that torture should never be used for any purpose. The popular culture image of a man being beaten by police officers in a locked room away from public view is not just fiction but a semi-officially accepted means of ‘getting the job done.’ Alan Dershowitz refers to the specific example of “… a case decided in 1984, [in which] the Court of Appeals for the 11th circuit commended police officers who tortured a kidnapper into disclosing the location of his victim (554).” While I agree that torture was not an acceptable method for extracting a confession from Mr. Corey, or discovering terrorist information from the detainees at Guantanamo, I believe that legitimizing the use of torture in certain circumstances would lead to an improvement of our current state of affairs.
Accepting torture as a tool to save lives is not the same as accepting torture as a good thing. Instead, accepting torture is a last resort to prevent the loss of innocent life when no other options remain. Barbaric and cruel as it may be to intentionally cause pain to another human being, how much more barbaric and cruel would it be to sacrifice the lives of a city’s population? I cannot imagine that even the most outspoken critic of torture would allow their family to burn for the sake of preventing a temporary amount of pain to the person threatening to trigger the explosion. Fortunately, these scenarios largely remain the province of Hollywood...
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...ing to prevent their death because you do not wish to hurt the person about to kill them. The acceptance of torture is not an easy pill to swallow. Intentionally causing pain to others runs counter to how we define ourselves as a nation and as human beings. But allowing innocents to come to harm is as much a part of that same definition.
Works Cited
Dershowitz, Alan M. “Yes, It Should Be ‘On The Books.’” The Little, Brown Reader.
Ed. Marcia Stubbs, Sylvan Barnet, and William E. Cain. Boston: Longman,
2009. 554.
Heymann, Philip B. “Torture Should Not Be Authorized.” The Little, Brown Reader.
Ed. Marcia Stubbs, Sylvan Barnet, and William E. Cain. Boston: Longman,
2009. 552.
Levin, Michael. “The Case for Torture.” The Little, Brown Reader.
Ed. Marcia Stubbs, Sylvan Barnet, and William E. Cain. Boston: Longman,
2009. 549.
Who wouldn’t have agreed? Yes, torture is cruel but it is less cruel than the substitute in many positions. Killing Hitler wouldn’t have revived his millions of victims nor would it have ended war. But torture in this predicament is planned to bring no one back but to keep faultless people from being sent off. Of course mass murdering is far more barbaric than torture. The most influential argument against using torture as a penalty or to get an acknowledgment is that such practices ignore the rights of the particulars. Michael Levin’s “The Case for Torture” discusses both sides of being with and being against torture. This essay gets readers thinking a lot about the scenarios Levin mentioned that torture is justified. Though using pathos, he doesn’t achieve the argument as well as he should because of the absence of good judgment and reasoning. In addition to emotional appeal, the author tries to make you think twice about your take on
Once torture is accepted, it has a high chance of going down a “slippery slope” as Dershowitz puts it. He introduces case utilitarian justification, which deems torture appropriate as long as the benefits outweigh the cost. He uses a hypothetical question posed by Ivan Karamazov that creates a scenario that exhibits the absence of limitations in case utilitarian justification. As one could imagine, during torture, an absence of limitations is not ideal. Karamazov questions whether a person would be willing to sacrifice an innocent child’s life to give eternal happiness and peace to all of man. This demonstrates the concern of a person doing anything to achieve a certain objective, as long as the cost falls below the benefit. However, Dershowitz claims that the worry of a slippery slope is simply an “argument of caution” being that all settlements with a single source of absolute control could fall into a slippery
The Line Between Right and Wrong Draws Thin; Torture in Modern America and how it is reflected in The Crucible
In his essay “The Case for Torture,” printed in The Norton Reader 13th Edition, Michael Levin argues that torture is justified and necessary under extreme circumstance. He believes that if a person accepts torture to be justified under extreme cases, then the person automatically accepts torture. Levin presents weak argument and he mostly relies on hypothetical scenarios. There is not concrete evidence that torture solves problems and stop crime but rather the contrary. Under international law, torture is illegal and all the United Nation members have to abide by those rules. The use of torture does not keep people safe, but rather the opposite. Torture has a profound effect on democracy. As the use of torture becomes normal in society, the right of the citizen will suffer greatly.
willingness to harm the lives of millions of people, why is it not justified, to inflict pain on
If one is willing to harm thousands of people without the thought of repercussions of his or her actions, they have extraordinarily little care for their own lives and in turn would die before retracting their beliefs. So yes, the threat of someone harming thousands of people will always remain, but torture may not be the answer to that predicament. Works Cited Levin, Michael. A. “The Case for Torture.” Newsweek 7 June, 1982: n.pag.
...enefits to many outweigh the cost to one man, some may argue that torture in this scenario is justified. But ultimately this is going against the values of the sanctity of life and therefore even in these circumstances it is difficult to justify torture.
But if we parse the definition of torture that Gonzales offers, it is clear that it does not conform to international standards of definition. The Convention Against Torture (CAT) says that “torture” “means any act by which severe pain or suffering, whether physical or mental, is intentionally inflicted on a person” for a variety of purposes. (DRW, p. 413) While this definition is in fact vague, on its face, Gonzales’ definition of torture requires far more severity to reach the level of “torture” than what is intended in the
In times of war, when American lives are at risk, the use of torture should be legal. It has been proven to be a valuable tool and it should not be withheld from those risking their lives to protect us. To do so would be wrong. Many people argue otherwise, but fail to realize the ful...
Until there is a credible way to determine whether or not torture is in fact effective, I pass judgment that the practice should be discontinued. The question as to if the torture policy is a human rights violation or if it holds crucial necessity, is not answered in the essay. Applebaum explores the reality that torture possesses negative implications on the inflictor. After presented with the compelling stance and evidence, Applebaum raises the interesting question as to why so much of society believes that torture is successful. I agree that the torture policy is wrong, a point emphasized by Applebaum, contrary to the popular attitude surrounding the topic.
Consider the following situation: You are an army officer who has just captured an enemy soldier who knows where a secret time bomb has been planted. Unless defused, the bomb will explode, killing thousands of people. Would it be morally permissible to torture them to get him to reveal the bomb’s location? Discuss this problem in light of both Utilitarian and Kantian moral theories and present arguments from both moral perspectives for why torture is morally wrong.
Capital punishment is not a morally acceptable practice because the process has come to represent a form of torture in our modern society and therefore, should not be seen as an acceptable form of punishment for any criminal act. The goal of a punishment is to properly reprimand the criminal so justice is served in regard to the victim. This can be achieved without violating our moral standards through the use of punishments which sufficiently punish the offender while still doing right by the victim. Capital punishment may be the most just option of retribution when punishing a murderer, but it serves as an injustice to the persons who must carry out the duty and has also become a torturous experience for the offender.
Some people argue that the goal of saving innocent lives must overrule a person's right not to be tortured. This argument is presented in its simplest form in the "ticking bomb" situation: an explosive has been set to detonate that will kill thousands of people and a detained person is known to have information on where the bomb is and how to defuse it. Is torture acceptable in such a case to force the convict to talk? Those who say that it is, reason that governments should be permitted to choose torture as the lesser of two evils in such a situation. The global community, however, has forbidden the use of torture even in the "ticking bomb" case. Universal human rights laws, as well as U.S. law, do not have any exceptions to the barring against torture.
Around the world and around the clock, human rights violations seem to never cease. In particular, torture violations are still rampant all over the world. One regime, the Convention against Torture and other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment, establishes a strong elaboration of norms against torture. Despite its efforts, many countries still outright reject its policies against torture while other countries openly accept them, but surreptitiously still violate them. The US, Israel, and Saudi Arabia all have failed to end torture despite accepting the provisions of the Convention.
On the opposite side, there are people very much in favor of the use of torture. To them, torture is a “morally defensible” interrogation method (8). The most widely used reason for torture is when many lives are in imminent danger. This means that any forms of causing harm are acceptable. This may seem reasonable, as you sacrifice one life to save way more, but it’s demoralizing. The arguments that justify torture usually are way too extreme to happen in the real world. The golden rule also plays a big rol...