Thank you for your profound and thoughtful treatise on situational ethics. The application is exceptionally broad and meaningful.

As a Soldier, I have always opposed torture. Not only because we lose the moral high ground when we apply it, but because of the lasting effect it has on those who practice it.

You have eloquently presented the undeniable fallacy of the absolute. And you have changed my mind. There are instances (and hopefully they will never occur) when torture should be used.

We must also remember that decisions made by the Bush administration right after 9/11 were made to assuage a nation in shock. This was indeed an instance where extraordinary measures were called for. And at the time, few, if any, questioned them. The mood of the American people was, "ANYTHING GOES". Leave no stone unturned and pursue every lead to catch the culprits.

Now, with the benefit of hindsight, our left leaning friends are quick to condemn.

But when faced with this dilemma, I agree, I would do unspeakable things to protect my loved ones and my country. Many thanks for your insights and courage.

From the other side of the tracks

Hope all is well. What a sweet day of one-armed driving in the sun. Bad day for 100K mile Acura service bill . Honest question with no insults or inuendo.

Would either of you support allowing local, state, and federal law enforcement to use torture-like tactics as well being that you two feel it brings forth credible information (location of body/ kidnap victim/ info to solve crime)?

Cheers

Kevin "Hack" King

Societal mores will have to make that determination, however, since you ask it of me, I'd answer by reminding you of what I mentioned above, "situational ethics" requires, first and foremost a "situation".

I know that sounds peculiar, but its true. Again, my points argued above deal with Jeffc's apparent belief that America should be so good, so pure, and so right, that we consider torture "absolutely" wrong, under any and all conditions. I consider that an absolute.

So, I'd answer your question by suggesting that maybe, I could hypothetically create a hyperbole in which I might envision some scenario where torture might be necessary. It again, would depend on the situation.

The argument that I didn't debate was the comments reqarding the "reliability" of the evidence obtained by torture. I don't know if I'd agree with the assessment that it doesn't work. I, of course, am no expert on that matter, and I've read Jeff's comments that some expert out of some think tank, said it is not. I'd have to demurr to the fact that torture is believed to have been a reliable means to obtain information for as long as man as walked God's green earth. So, I'd suspect that its been proven very effective at obtaining the right information.

Something that hasn't been thoroughly discussed regarding torture, is that Liberals talk about how if we torture these terrorists, that we are giving them the green light to do it to our soldiers. As if they really give a damn, because they are thugs anyway. I'd say that they should mimic us. In fact, I'd invite them to.

I believe if an American is caught in Syria, getting ready to blow up a school full of children, as a means of some religious fanatacism, and he alone holds the information necessary to stop it, then by all means, let them torture him.

The difference is obvious. We don't torture their soldiers, they shouldn't torture ours. We torture their terrorists who have relevant and time sensitive information, so they can torture our Americans who do the same against their innocent people.
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I'm actually wondering what happened to Jeff. I suspect he is drinking a cold one, laughing his ass off that I took the time to respond to his request. Or, maybe, he's googling his ass off, trying to find links to sites which will trounce my arguments.

Either way Jeff, you better start a new blog, because Cal, aka, $age, has been blogging away again, and the best blogs are being lost to the neither world called "more", where no one ever goes.

So, then Hack, you asked me a question, then please address my original argument and tell me what you find that is flawed with its reasoning. Can you not envision your wife, son, or daughter, et.al, being in a precarious place, whereby the information of some thug might save their lives, and in which you wouldn't wait a second before you were beating the snot out of him?

If so, then you've put Michael Dukasis' comments to rest.

Yes I’ve heard of situational ethics. Kind of like having ethics up to a point as long as they are not bothersome.

However, it is not necessary to jettison ethics that don’t really exist when they are no longer convenient. The argument you make rest on two assumptions, that the information obtained using torture is reliable and that the information can not be obtained by other means. Both assumptions are fundamentally inaccurate.

After 9/11, Ibn al-Shaykh al-Libi was tortured by the CIA and claimed that Iraq had trained members of al-Qaeda to use chemical and biological weapons. President Bush sited the claim in his famous speech as did Colin Powell in his speech to the U.N. Security Council justifying the invasion. We now know that the most compelling testimony for invading Iraq was a complete lie extracted from Al-Libi by torture.

The Army Field Manual on Interrogation specifically says that coercive methods are less effective than other techniques in obtaining important information.

Brigadier General Steve Cheney has written many articles describing the honor, courage, and commitment of the Marines and stresses that they are trained not to torture because it is not only immoral and illegal but also unhelpful at producing good intelligence. “Condoning torture or even simply condoning practices that are inconsistent with our values puts our troops at greater risk and diminishes America's moral authority across the globe.”

Besides being unnecessary and producing unreliable results, the use of torture gives the upper hand to terrorists in legal proceedings. Many people here have written long lists of Clinton’s sins including not retaliating against the bombing of the American embassies in Kenya and Tanzania and the first bombing of the WTC. Generally these protestations have been contrasted against the wonderful job the Bush administration has done. Frankly I am bemused and write this rhetoric off to either ignorance of the facts or a willingness to ignore them in the spirit of partisanship.

The al-Qaeda terrorists responsible for the 1998 bombing of the American embassies in Kenya and Tanzania were convicted for their roles in the bombings and were sentenced to life without parole. Likewise the men responsible for the first bombing of the WTC were caught, tried and sentenced to life without parole in maximum security Federal prisons. Entire networks were uncovered and disrupted and all of the information was obtained without using torture.

Contrast that to the Bush administrations handling of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed (KSM), the operational commander of the 9/11 attacks. Six years after the assaults KSM still has not been brought to trial, mainly because the CIA has admitted they engaged in war crimes by waterboarding him and bin al-Shibh. The testimony obtained has poisoned the prosecution totally unnecessarily. The testimony extracted through torture and revealed to the 9/11 Commission was essentially the exact same thing KSM had admitted to in an interview with Al Jazeera.

Incidentally, KSM also claimed while being tortured that he killed the Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl in Pakistan in 2002. No investigator in the Pearl case believes that this confession is true.

Besides being unreliable, producing bad intelligence and allowing terrorists a defense from prosecution, torture demeans the United States’s values and undermines our (non-situational) morals and endangers our troops.

Vice Admiral Lee F. Gunn, condemning the use of torture says, “…our military is forced to operate under conditions in which our men and women in uniform on the front lines around the world are at greatly increased risk of retaliatory torture by our enemies.”

The Army Field Manual on Interrogation, under the, Prohibitions against Use of Force section, warns interrogators that torture (including waterboarding) is a violations of US law, the Geneva Conventions and other statutes and that engaging in torture will result in prosecution. Furthermore, the manual says: “Use of torture by US personnel would bring discredit to the US and its armed forces..” and would, “… place US and allied personnel in enemy hands at a greater risk of abuse by their captors.”

Former judge advocate general of the Navy, Rear Admiral John Hutson says, “Support for the rule of law and human rights is our most effective weapon. Our greatest strength isn't our military might, it is our ideas and our ideals. That's how we won the cold war. We don't have enough bombs or bullets to ensure a military victory over the enemy we now face. Nor can terrorists defeat us militarily. However, we could commit national suicide by relinquishing our greatest weapon—our ideas and ideals. In an asymmetric war, the winning strategy is to match your strength against the enemy's weakness. This enemy's weakness is that he is bereft of ideas; all he has is terror. If we discard 225 years of American history—and the core of our identity—by engaging in enhanced interrogations, we essentially disarm ourselves.”

We cannot torture our way to victory against terrorists. We can discard America’s moral authority and we can debase our values. We can, for the first time in our history and after several wars where our soldiers were treated barbarically, decide that we are barbarians too. Instead of defining ourselves by the fact that no matter what the enemy did, there were some things that we would not do; we can embrace torture and assure the world that we will be as savagely immoral as anyone who opposes us.

This is what the Bush administration has done to us. They have decided that there is nothing really special about us and the “idea” of America; instead, it just depends on the situation.

No torture.

No exceptions.

Sorry dude, I just now found this reply, and sadly, I'm disappointed.

You know as well as I do, that the argument had nothing to do with whether Torture was effective. That is arguably a reason not to do it, merely on academic grounds. No, the argument was whether the self imposed morality against torture was so important such as to make it an absolute.

You never admitted that it wasn't an absolute. In fact, you tried to change the argument but arguing the "value" of torture, which is another debate altogether, not whether it was a moral absolute.

That was not the point, and you know it. You also know that you can't answer my response because you know that torture is not an absolute. That there are possible examples that MAY find its necessity. True, you may argue its absolutely worthless as a tool to extract evidence, but that was another argument.

Hyperboles can prove or disprove absolutes. So allow me to give you one.

A terrorist has been caught by you and your team of law enforcement. You know the classic "24" scenario. The bomb is ticking down and you have no time to escape. In fact, the terrorist is looking forward to dying. He's counting the 72 Virgins already as he laughs at every tick of the clock. Do you try to debate with the man or do you try another tact? True, even torture may fail to get the answer you need to turn off the bomb. But with no other option, do you just kiss your butt goodbye, or do you pull out a knife and make this guy's last seconds on earth the most miserable you can make it, in hope against all hope that you may succeed in getting this coward to make the pain stop.

Oh well. I know what you would do, and you do too. I guess this argument has run to it's inevitable end. Logic be damned.

I'm just extremely busy and didn't want to just give you the two minute treatment after your response. I promise you a thoughtful reply.

most recently when the girl was missing in N. Georgia and authorities had Hilton. The difference is I would never make this part of a subordinate's job description or policy of the nation. And if I did, out of anger or rage or desparation torture, hurt, or kill a thug like Hilton or the criminals that killed the UNC and Auburn students, I would EXPECT TO GO TO JAIL for my actions. I would sit in jail satisfied that my punishment was worth the crime.

Enjoy the weekend Richard (oh, and it was apple and pear cider Woodchuck, not peach).

Kevin "Hack" King

or anyone else, for that matter, nor would I presume to. However, that being said, I believe the argument is about our stance in the world community as a "Christian" nation. While it is easy to see that you believe that the situation determines the use of torture, the other side of the coin is, How can we characterize ourselves as a Christian people if we condone the use of torture? I do not argue what you say about the other side not abiding by such niceties. A further question would be, do the actions of people with different belief systems than ours absolve us of our duties as Christians? Keep the faith.

Democracy is not a spectator sport.

for your willingness to embrace "situational ethics". Does not the same philosophical outlook hold for abortion as for torture? Merely a question. Keep the faith.

Democracy is not a spectator sport.

Yes it does, but I'm having a hard time envisioning an example by which you would see it justifies the abortion.
Can you give me an example, where innocent life is taken because of convenience or choice, --and for which you would call this an example of agape styled love?

I may differ with many on this site, but I have no qualms at all over abortion, should there be a life and death "situation" over the mother. If there is a reasonable basis to believe the mother's life is in danger, and abortion is the only viable answer, then ethically, thats a gimme.

The same applies to torture, its not the first line of defense. But, should the facts and circumstances warrant a truely reasonable belief that the lives of innocent Americans are at stake, well, thats a gimme too.

Some people want what the Jews wanted as they wandered in the desert, and that was to have a set of hard and fast, absolute rules. Reluctantly, the bible says, God finally gave them the 1st 10 Commandments of what developed to be 609. One hard and fast rule over another. All were absolutes and all were supposed to be followed --with some "legalistic" room to wiggly out of many of them. But by living by the standard of love, there is no need of written law. (Not societially, but morally.) I don't need to have a 3000 year old book to tell me that murder is a sin, or molesting a child is one either--which is not part of the 10 commandmants. Because true love would do neither.

Mind you, I've never given anyone my final opinion on abortion or of other matters. It likely may surprise you. For example, the Terri Schavino (sic) matter was very disturbing for me. Not that they stopped the life support, but because the Republicans actually made it an issue. It was embarrassing. I believe situational ethics would have applied there by allowing the woman the dignity of finally dying. Death is not necessarily inhumane, in fact, it can be very humane. After her autopsy, they showed that her brain had melted away over the years with no factual hope for a recovery at all. Life is not necessarily an absolute. Love is. Which is why, the greatest love one man may have for another is that he might lay down his life, (life is not an absolute), for another. The motivation of love, is the absolute.

Death is as much a part of living as life is. Which is why death should be given the same dignity as birth.

Next time well discuss other political processes which can be applied to situtional ethics.

to bring a knife to a gunfight.
You are out of your element with this predictable drive-by attempt. Give it a rest yardman. You can't compete.

From the other side of the tracks

wow.... and we thought this blog was a platform for ALL to share dialogue and opinion, not so much for 'competition', trax.

Detract your claws, pal.

Not reality

Only you would take it literally.

I didn't expext you to "get it", though. Right over your head.

From the other side of the tracks

What I meant by the methaphor was that yardman came unprepared for the battle of wits. And it appears, so did you.

From the other side of the tracks

I've found it to be amazing how the right blend of hopps, barley, and, at times, fruit, aged to perfection, cause us to forget political stipes. It's like a "blame it on Rio" thing, where politics as viewed through huge ocean waves and miles of beaches seems trivial. are you familiar with Woodchuck cider (both peach and apple)? Ohhhh man!

Kevin "Hack" King

But yes, a few brewskies helps lower our guard to find things held in common. Unfortunately, my beer drinking days are limited. I came down with gout 18 months ago and it ruined my last year. If not for drinking my baking soda remedy, that I found on the web, I wouldn't be having a drink tonight.