Okay, torture sucks. So, too, does the idea of people being detained without right to counsel, without the freedom to protest their status, etc.
Now let’s move on to a hypothetical.
Picture yourself in a situation in which you have excellent reason to believe that your family has been targeted by some fanatical, religious nutcase and the nutcase’s buddies. You have irrefutable information that their plan is to execute you, your wife, kids, grandkids, friends, neighbors, everyone you know, and they’ve already shown their expertise at such executions by killing thousands of others. Their Nutcase Army is on record as despising you and everyone you know and love—as well as everyone you may not know and love—and is pledged to make all of you dead and their modus operandi shows they won’t conduct the slaughter mercifully.
Now, remembering that this is all hypothetical, let’s say you capture a few of them and are able to detain and chain them in your basement. Also, you reasonably suspect some of them have information that could save the lives of your loved ones, neighbors, of everyone you know. Assume too that there are no available law enforcement agencies to deal with these suspects. It’s all up to you.
You have a major decision to make: Do you accord them all the sacred rights and privileges of prisoners in American jails, including hotshot lawyers and extensive law libraries so they can appeal their detention, daily exercise and gyms so they can work out and three squares a day of their preferred comestibles to make them more fit to kill you, and literature so they can read how much their god hates you and prayer mats 5 times daily so they can pray that they figure a way to murder you?
Or, always being humane as you would be with dogs, do you attempt to extract the information that could lead to saving many thousands of lives? Torture is out of the question–no maiming or mutilation permitted, no racks, no But are you morally entitled to, say, deprive them of sleep, bombard them with loud, offensive noise such as rap music, intimidate them with your basset hound, make them stand naked in the downtown square, even pretend to drown them?
Keep in mind now, you do not ever endanger their health. Granted, the above won’t exactly leave them in the same state of mind which they exhibited when you caught them; it could render them less murderous—or more. Then again, neither are you the same tranquil person you were before discovering their nefarious scheme to destroy everyone you know. You provide adequate food to sustain them, you allow them to rest after stints of sleep deprivation and to clothe themselves after their excursions downtown and, of course, adequate toilet and showering facilities. You allow them to read and meditate and pray.
All of this within reasonable limits, however: no gourmet meals, no sleeping in til noon, no fancy duds, no Charmin, and no daily showers with Irish Spring and Paul Labrecque shampoo.
At the end of all this, after virtually draining your 401k and your bank account to pay for the upkeep of people sworn to kill you, they surrender the information needed to eradicate the Nutcase Army and their ilk and end their threat to the well-being of you and yours. You proceed to dispatch that danger and, the threat removed, you drain the remainder of your funds to pay their freight home to the squalid life they had been accustomed to.
Okay. So, have you acted morally and righteously in employing your tactics to save many thousands? I say, Yes. Have you violated the God-given rights of your prisoners, United Nations and Geneva Convention protocols, and perturbed the Brits? Probably.(http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2008/jun/02/terrorism.terrorism) Have you done the right thing? I think so, even if all those whose lives you preserved don’t agree. Only survivors determine right and wrong.
As Stormin’ Norman Schwarzkopf said of bin Laden when asked if he should be forgiven, “Forgiveness is up to God. I just hope we hurry up the meeting.” Whether that Hypothetical You—or our country–will be forgiven for our tactics–or for GITMO, Abu Ghraeb, and purported terrorist prison ships– will also be up to God. Personally, I think He will understand and cut us some slack on that meeting.
Tags: GOD, TERRORISM, TORTURE, VICTORY