there is no good torture. torture is torture. people who did something bad to society are prosecuted and sentenced to what the society agreed upon as appropriate punishment. and if a society allows torture of enemies it loses the very thing it tries to protect. you find cutting of a hand cruel for thiefs? well you are just allowing physical harm without even a sentence like the thief in teheran was given. you do not seem to understand what this whole discussion is about. in the very moment when you allow whatever kind of torture, the twin towers collapse a second time. in this very moment, when you allow, america is defeated. completely. then where is the boderline if it is not longer: no torture at all. who has the power to decide how when and who is tortured? every police officer picking you up in the street? how about torturing women by raping them a little? that is off-topic here? so, where is the line then if it is not: no torture at all. punishment by process and sentence by an independent trial. with the accused having the right to defend himself. when will "the war" will be over, did you ask yourself about that? why should it be over? why should the current government give back power it obtained by declaring there is war? you do not seem to understand what is on stake here. you do not seem to understand that by throwing away its very values america loses very very much. you lose your credibility. what is the democracy and the spirit of the US constitution worth if you withdraw them at will? nothing. no thing. then you lost. then you become, what your enemies declare you already are: a powerful giant with no values who bends his convictions whenever it is in line with his own interest. but that is not convictions, that is hypocricy. and this is a horrible weakness. american way of life? american dream? excuse me. that is history.
So what if society agrees that cutting off of a thief's hand or castrating a raper is a better punishment than putting them into prison for years? (by the way, ask any raped woman on the subject of rape, specially gangraped women) By the way I am sure you don't look at imprisoning someone for years or the rest of his life as torture, right? I bet if convicts could choose between normal time or hardlabor but half time, quite a big % would go for the less but harder time. I would... Let's say you are a silly 20 years old and somehow you and up in a bankrobbery, where people got killed. You didn't kill anybody, but it doesn't matter according to current US law. So you could choose between 30 years in prison, or getting your left hand cut off. What would you choose? I sure wouldn't want to spend my youth in prison. I would miss my hand less then my 30 best years... You are too much on rethoric and too little on arguments... Your preaching belongs to the church... P.S.: You can look at education as torture, just ask any kid... That is good torture....
not easy to answer this because your arguments jump back and forth on different levels. i personally do see it as an act of social evolution that we decided that physical harm is not the way we want to punish people. i am not sure if i want to go the route here to what is the appropriate sentence for which crime. - actually i am sure that i do not want to talk about that. if you feel that talking about principles and convictions belongs to the church and can only refer to it as preaching than i am afraid you will really be bored with whatever i feel i have to say ... in my eyes the followers of the US falcons and the followers of the islamic jihad thing are becoming frightening similar in their actual principle convictions. final note: please stop replying to me if you want to put in little nonsense like that with the kids when a debate is on a subject as serious as this here.
You probably haven't noticed, but we are talking about torture generally, not in specially the US bad torture that went on in Abu G. So here is a ponderable for you, just to put things in perspective: Let's say your daughter was the one who got killed in the Co. schooldrama. She was also sexually molested before she got fatally shot. Let's suppose the bastard survived and he is in prison right now. Does it sound like real life? You bet it is... Now I am sure you don't want him to be tortured, because there is no such a thing as good torture. Not even as part of a punishment.
there is a very simple answer to this. if my daughter, and i have a daughter, was molested and murdered, i'd rather not be in charge of anything regarding the matter. for my own sake. and this is the principle of modern law, at least in those parts of the world who do not adore the old testament: the one affected should not be in charge of judging. for the simple reason that (s)he is emotionally completely unable to do the job. you see my point? i know i would not be fair. that is why i trust in a system taking care that i am not in charge then. consider my objectivity towards what was done and who did it. probably i would do tons of mistakes. it is the same as in trading. you have a stop loss in advance and you do not wave that once the market gets near. you set it at times when you are able to do so.
and i have a question for you. consider your boy was at a party and a girl got raped by a gang, and this gang consisted only of the best friends of your boy. would you think it was appropriate that the girl's father, let's say an ex-sergeant, was in charge of judging the case and executing his own verdict? if you think this is stretched, no it is not. it is the very bottomline of this whole discussion. it is the root of civilised action against crime, WHATEVER crime.
As long as the punishment is in the range of the "eye for an eye", I have no problem with it. Hell, I am the hardest on my own boy...
What does that have to do about debating whether or not to use torture? Are you implying that only those who have been tortured should decide whether or not to implement torture? Just wondering.
No one is advocating torture as punishment. That is restricted to muslim countries. Of course civilized societies reject it out of hand. The debate is over coercive questioning of terrorists who have information that will allow us to uncover terrorist plots. There are obviously many pitfalls to going down that road, but I regard it as moral posturing to reject it out of hand. The term "torture" is being thrown around pretty loosely as well. The Geneva Conventions on POW's treatment consider anything remotely coercive as torture. Is it torture to have a dog barking at a terrorist? To force him to listen to loud music? To keep a light on in his room? To slap him around a little? To stage mock executions? All are currently out of bounds. If we used such techniques to uncover a plot to blow up airliners have we really lowered ourselves morally to where we are no better than terroirsts? Or have we demonstrated that we are able to make moral distinctions and that we value innocent life above all else?