The Torture Option

You wrote:

... he found himself dropping his previously high moral stance to save billions of lives.

I won't claim to understand all the angles to the debate, but this debate has been going on since long before 9/11. For example, President Lincoln did things during the American Civil War that were frowned upon as unconstitutional then, and would be well nigh impossible to pull off today. His justification was the saving of the union. To achieve that bigger objective, he sacrificed what he saw as smaller restrictions.

The counter-argument tends to be the "slippery slope" argument -- that is, once we get going down that path there's no stopping how far it will go. There's merit to the argument, but I'm not convinced all slipperly slopes are the same. In other words, I'm not sure it's valid to argue that since one might continue down a slipperly slope, one must never attempt to go down one ever.

No right minded person could rationally argue that if a million people could be saved by torturing a single terrorist to gain information, that we should not torture the terrorist. The unspoken premise of this, however, is that the torture will be effective. Clearly if we know with certainty that torturing a specific terrorist in a specific manner will unfailingly lead to clear information that will spare a million lives, then the case is clear and unambiguous.

Where things get fuzzy is if the efficacy of the action (torture) is not certain. That's where the slipperly slope lies. The real question, it seems to me, is not whether torture is ever warranted, but rather when it's warranted. Clearly it's not warranted in all cases. But where's the line?

That I do not know. But it strikes me that reasonable limits can be placed on it. But I doubt in today's atmosphere that any sensible, reasonable debate can take place. When anything short of full capitulation to the captives' demands is considered horrible torture by many on the left side of the political spectrum, any discussion about limits on what constitutes torture and what the limits are is simply pointless. It's all torture and should all be banned ... except if a Democrat is president. Then the rules change.

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Thanks for the link to the Ender's Game story. IMDB.com shows that as a 2008 movie.