the evil of moral relativism

[drewkitty]

I read LJ despite my busy life because it provokes my thoughts. I privately believe that I am overeducated. I have read tens of thousands of books. I have a particular focus in history of warfare. So it caught my attention when a LJ user accused me of knowing nothing of the history of torture in relation to Gitmo.

It is true, and not really debatable, that our treatment of prisoners at Gitmo, Abu Ghraib, and in the CIA's secret prison network is relatively mild compared to that of every dictatorial and totalitarian regime that has ever existed.

Ancient Rome gave you only the choice of deaths: death by impalement for treason, by crucifixion for rebellion, by sword for resistance, and by starvation for compliance. In Hungary, NKVD agents beat prisoners with rubber hoses. In Egypt, electricity applied to nipples and genitals was a favorite. In Vietnam, bamboo shoots under the fingernails. Russian Spetsnaz were fond of filing down teeth. In China's prisons and re-education camps, a richly developed and horrible history of torture dating from the early emperors, taking full advantage of thousands of years of forbidden knowledge, is daily written in living flesh.

NONE OF THIS JUSTIFIES TORTURE COMMITTED BY, OR IN THE NAME OF, THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA.

Note the word in bold, above and here. Relatively.

Of such moral relativism are the worst evils made.

The only justification for the deliberate and willful commission of an evil act is necessity.

Destroying someone's beating heart with pistol rounds. Necessity. Shoving fifty thousand volts through their skin and making them flail like a puppet. Necessity. Spraying what feels like acid in their eyes, or breaking their bones with a heavy club. Necessity. And we authorize our society's agent of force, the police, to do all of this and more. WHEN IT IS NECESSARY, and never otherwise.

Terrorist crimes, such as the bombing of civilians and murder of women and children, have no conceivable necessity behind them. So we have no trouble recognizing them as monstrous.

War is sometimes necessary. That does not make it any less vile. Blowing up buildings from which fire is received; destroying infrastructure; killing not just enemy soldiers, but on occasion neutrals, noncombatants and even your own soldiers. Creating the conditions which allow the Four Horsemen to walk.

"It is well that war is terrible, or else we should be too fond of it." General Lee.

Torture is unnecessary. Simply put, torture is an ineffective and unreliable method of interrogation. You don't get good intel from locking people up in cages 23 hours a day, beating them, depriving them of basic necessities of life, and exposing them to constant sleep deprivation which is neither medically supervised nor tactically necessary.

Therefore, I have no shame in announcing to the world that Torture Is Evil.

The only circumstance in which I would countenance torture is when it is clearly necessary to save lives. Preferably lots of lives. And in NO other way.

I have said repeatedly, and will say it again, that any government agent who resorts to torture under such clearly necessary conditions should carry through their duties and then resign their commission at the first opportunity. As they have, by engaging in what may be necessary but certainly is a morally reprehensible and obscene act, established their unfitness to further serve this country in any capacity of trust or honor.

Give them a pension, yes. They gave their honor for this country, in the same way that they might have preferred to throw themselves on a grenade or taken a blast in the face.

But never, never, NEVER hold up their use of torture as morally right, or correct, or an example to others. Because if one once grasps the nettle of torture, one is tempted to use it again and again, allowing the subtle whisper of "necessity" to corrupt.

That way lies gulags, and concentration camps, and the screams of the helpless inflicted by the powerful.

That Way Is Not America.