PubliusInfinitum
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- Aug 18, 2008
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- #101
Andrew Sullivan lays it out in such a way that (hopefully), even the diehard partisans can get it:
The Daily Dish | By Andrew SullivanManzi asks the question. I approach this from the just war tradition in which war, however vile, is sometimes defensible against a greater evil. Torture, however, is never moral or defensible under any circumstances. Why? It has to do, I believe, with autonomy. An enemy soldier that you are battling in combat remains autonomous (and potentially dangerous) until the moment of capture or surrender. At that point, his autonomy ends, as he is in captivity, unable to cause you further harm. And the infliction of severe pain or violence on someone who is thereby defenseless carries a much deeper moral weight than a fair or even unfair fight.
We all know this intuitively. It is the difference between two boys duking it out on a playground and a gang of boys restraining one while another beats the crap out of him. Torture is a form of cowardice and a form of cruelty, which is inherently different than the sometimes necessary evil of just warfare. My best attempt at expaining the relationship between torture and freedom, and why torture can only endure in unfree societies, is from 2005:
Why is this so difficult to understand that we have a couple of dozen threads attempting to justify this practice?
For the record: I'm not a liberal. I voted for W - TWICE. I'm not a pacifist. I work in a law enforcement field. So, spare me the prejudgements.
Setting the whole liberal denial thing aside...
Would ya point out what "Enemy Soldier" we've tortured? I am not aware of any... Perhaps if you specified the "Enemy Soldier" in question and point to the 'torture' we're said to have implemented, then you will have established valid ground for a reasonable discussion of that issue.
That you've advanced principle which within the scope of the US GWOT is wholly out of context and further thoroughly redefined 'torture' to include non-invasive coersive interrogation of ILLEGAL COMBATANTS WHOSE ONLY TACTIC IS THE MASS MURDER OF INNOCENTS does a disserice to this board, the issues and the very dignity of those men whose duty it is to DEFEND INNOCENT LIFE and the RIGHTS WHICH EACH HUMAN BEING IS ENTITLED, until such time that those rights are FORFEITED through the overt usurpation of the rights of another.
Should you come across valid examples such as those noted above... get right back to us.