Torture the Argument Against Torture Essay

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Even for the crime of murder (without torture), the infliction of many tortures are worse than the crime. The moral justification for executing a murderer is much more obvious than the infliction of any punishment that is even worse from the perspective of the murder. Torture may be appropriate with regard to specific crimes of torture, but that requires civil society to stoop to the level of barbarity of criminals.

Investigative: On its face, torture would seem to have a valid tactical use in criminal investigations. In the U.S. It is strictly prohibited under constitutional principals, but purely practical issues also suggest that even aside from any moral basis of objection, torture may not be as useful in practice. Specifically, innocent individuals under torture (or even the threat of torture) often provide false information to spare themselves. Recent experiences with individuals questioned under questionable conditions approaching torture in connection with the Global War on Terror corroborate this particular concern and valuable resources have been allocated (and wasted) acting on such false information elicited under torture by proxy in Saudi Arabia, for just one contemporary example (Scheuer 2004). Ironically, torture is least likely to be effective when the suspect is motivated by fanatical religious beliefs (Scheuer 2004), such as that which characterizes those accounting for the primary contemporary terrorist threat to the American Homeland and foreign interests (Dyer, et al. 2007).

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The only conceivable objectively moral use of torture might be in the case of the so-called "ticking time bomb" scenario involving a massive attack, such as a biological or nuclear weapons attack on civilians described by Harvard Law School professor Alan Dershowitz (2002). In principle, the basis of the justification would be that (1) a "torture warrant" would be required based on probable cause to believe the suspect is in possession of the information sought; (2) the comparative harm of failing to prevent the attack dramatically outweigh the objections to using torture to prevent it; and (3) that the suspect could terminate (or prevent) the use of torture by complying by providing the information.

In principle, this may sound plausible, but the history of abuses of governmental authority in general and the many instances of wrongfully executed search and arrest warrants and wrongful convictions and executions in the U.S. suggest that the same risk exists, even with respect to the ticking time bomb situation. Ultimately, torture is therefore likely to remain fundamentally incompatible with Western moral values......

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