What If John Podhoretz Has Lost Touch With Reality?
What then?
I am not kidding you when I say that I am sitting here with my mouth open. From astonishment, not from just general slack-jaw-ed-ness.
I...
I don't know what to say to this.
I'm speechless.
What then?
I am not kidding you when I say that I am sitting here with my mouth open. From astonishment, not from just general slack-jaw-ed-ness.
I...
I don't know what to say to this.
I'm speechless.
posted by Winston Smith at
4:29 PM
5 Comments:
Interesting point. In the pursuit of our own moral purity, we're OK if Saddam does it, but not us, because, we are of course "better."
Reminds me a bit of the scene in The Good Earth where the Buddhist has somebody else slaughter the ox for him, so as to dodge the bad karma.
Gotta second that. If it's wrong for me to do it, then it's wrong for me to get you to do it.
That's why extraordinary renditions to places that will torture for us is impermissible.
Remembering here that I don't have the space or inclination to do the tap dance on how terrible torture is and it dehumanizes both torturer and torturee, and a bunch of other righteous stuff, if you found out that, despite the comforting fiction that torture is entirely useless, it saved innocent and quantifiable innocent lives, is your answer the same?
1 or 10 or 100 or 1000 innocent people must die so Khalid or whoever isn't tortured? Khalid's pain versus innocent lives? Doesn't seem as clearcut as it appears.
Well, I've said many times that I think torture is clearly warranted in ticking-time-bomb situations (and similar ones). Problem is, we basically never face such situations.
So: torture is justified under very, very rare conditions. It's unlikely that it justified in the current situation, and, even if it is, it is so only with regard to a very few high-ranking terrorists.
Problem is that--even ignoring the outright evil people like Saddam--many not-very-good people are far, far too eager to use torture. That is, they are apt to use it in situations in which it isn't warranted. That's the situation we find ourselves in with this administration.
But the real point here is none of that. The point is that getting somebody else to do it for you is no better than doing it yourself. If it's not o.k. for you to do it, it's not o.k. for you to give the prisoner to someone else so that they will do it.
In fact, if anything, it's worse, because in addition to being a torturer you are also a coward.
Morally, of course. But to dodge legal responsibility when possible is another matter.
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