In Defence of Torture?

The arguments against torture are futile there is only one way of keeping us safe. Say a terrorist cell is planning an attack and the only way to stop it is to extract information from one of its members, would you want to wait a few days till he cracks? Or a few hours? These people knew what they signed up for when they became terrorists: most of them planned on killing themselves in the process, so torturing one suicidal religious extremist to save thousands of innocent civilians is worth it, don’t you think? They pose a threat to your family and friends – does the thought of losing them not sway your judgement?

As long as their plots are obscured from us we can’t defend ourselves against them. There is no natural look for a terrorist: we can’t tell them apart from the crowd. Terrorism is a crime which can’t be forgiven. These people won’t hesitate to burn a school to the ground. The fact of the matter is people choose to ignore this invisible threat out of fear. It took one strike to make a nation tremble. Even a country as powerful as America was petrified by an attack which still stands to this day as a monument to the power terrorism holds over us. Unless we act with aggression by stopping their plots, our safe comfortable lives are an illusion.

Arguably we are waiting for the terrorists to shoot first in this shadow war waged by a bunch of extremists who use their religion as an excuse to murder the innocent and who don’t believe in the same ideals.In the mean time, we have the political morons who decide to leave our doors open to everybody, as much as this isn’t about immigration, the more cells that get in the harder this cancer will be to cure.

Looking at it from this perspective, it’s spread far too much.

All we can do for now is prolong our countries body from falling ill to this disease that has taken root in our country. The way the media portrays these attacks should take priority over standard celebrity scandals that make up most of our news today. Sure, the news covers it, and shows it a few times bat after a few days it becomes lost I celebrity histeria and it becomes forgotten. The focus shows it few times but after a few days it becomes forgotten. People gossip about them and it comes up in conversation some times but people always expect these attack never to happen to them; this is the illusion that the chances of them being caught in an attack are remote.

Kant does raise valid points about the difference between a tape recorder and human being, meaning that you can kick and hit the the tape recorder. While not very effective it doesn’t hurt anyone, but it is not the same with a human. A human still has feelings: hit the human and it causes pain to this person.People being tortured are usually referred to as torture victims: this is actually quite true – it hurts and no-one wants to see or feel the effects of torture. In films torture doesn’t seem to affect the victim much physiologically, but that is not the case for real life victims and torturers: the one inflicting the torture is also haunted by the screams of his victim. There is also another word argument against torture: “if” it’s all good, “if” there are bombs hidden somewhere, and what “if” there isn’t? This uncertainty does raise a point of only putting someone through this painful method of information extraction if there is hard evidence to support that the person in question is hiding something. A pure utilitarian, however, also brings a good argument about the greater good and that torture may be necessary for the greater good of the people who are in danger and how they would agree that it is necessary if many lives are at stake.

The utilitarian approach to torture encourages us to believe the end will justify the means. But perhaps this leaves us uneasy whether torture is the correct way of stopping these threats. Who will we trust to administer the torture? What would we do if the torture victim was innocent and how would we remedy this? There is huge void of knowledge in terms of torture’s effectiveness and its effect on the victim’s body and mind, making it very hard to justify from a moral point of view and perhaps almost impossible.

Overall when we are faced with the current threats from various different angles, groups such as ISIS and Boko Haram present us with a unique threat to our civilisation which can’t be taken lightly therefore despite the difficulty of it torture can be used but under heavy regulation.