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.

Comments

[bradhicks.livejournal.com]

Well, see, that's the funny thing about the Nuremberg Principles. They're not "foreign law." We wrote them. And imposed them on a world that didn't want to give captured German officials a trial, that didn't want to have to legally define what they'd done wrong, that just wanted to administer "victor's justice." America is the nation that taught the rest of the world that a crime against humanity is a crime against humanity no matter who commits it, no matter which side, no matter who wins or loses. Standing up for that idea is standing up for what's write about America. Opposing it is standing up for what's wrong with the Republican Party.

[jordan179.livejournal.com]

America is the nation that taught the rest of the world that a crime against humanity is a crime against humanity no matter who commits it, no matter which side, no matter who wins or loses.

Killing or otherwise harming illegal combatants is not a "crime against humanity." A Power has no obligations to respect the rights of people who are caught fighting out of uniform, not in the service of a recognized state.

Standing up for that idea is standing up for what's write about America. Opposing it is standing up for what's wrong with the Republican Party.

It's not actually a Democratic / Republican thing. Taking only the post World War II American Presidents: Eisenhower, Kennedy, Johnson, Nixon, Reagan, Bush and Bush would be guilty of "war crimes" if the rules as agreed to be the European Union and the International Court were applied to them. So, amusingly enough, would be a number of postwar European leaders, including several British Prime Ministers and French Premiers and Presidents. And, of course, every single Russian head of state from Krushchev down to Putin.

This -- and the fact that it has only been proposed for application to the current Administration -- is what clues me in to the fact that your motives are partisan. But it would boomerang, because you would have no way to ensure that it was only applied to American Republican leaders, especially when the Republicans happened to be in power.

The leadership of the US Democratic Party not being as naive as yourself, they would oppose this because they would not want to, themselves, wind up in the dock.

[drewkitty.livejournal.com]

Quoting myself above, "The only justification for the deliberate and willful commission of an evil act is necessity."

You state, "Killing or otherwise harming illegal combatants is not a "crime against humanity." A Power has no obligations to respect the rights of people who are caught fighting out of uniform, not in the service of a recognized state."

A power does have an affirmative obligation to adjudicate the status of a person, and in the meantime to hold them as if they were a protected person, suspending their right of communication in cases of espionage or sabotage.

By your standard, well below that of the Geneva Conventions to which the United States is a signatory, any captured US Special Operations troops could be shot out of hand by any party who captured them. They often fight out of uniform and bear nothing to show that they are in the service of a particular state.

However, this is not a question of international law. This is a question of whether the evil of murder or torture is justified by necessity, whether operational or strategic.

It may be sometimes that it is better to kill soldiers in combat than to take prisoners who are inconvenient. This is a necessary evil. So is the ruthless measures sometimes necessary in capturing and transporting exceptionally dangerous prisoners.

However, since torture is widely known to be ineffective and furnishes the enemy with considerable propaganda value, there is no "necessity" defense to the use of torture, whether on the battlefield or in later custody.

Interrogation is not torture. Effective interrogation makes more effective use of kindness and human decency, as distinguished by the "good cop, bad cop" routine and/or silent guarding.

I don't expect you to understand any of this, because your frequent use of strawman arguments and the doctrine of relative filth blinds you to the very real consequences of throwing out the laws of war whenever they are politically inconvenient.

[jordan179.livejournal.com]

I don't expect you to understand any of this, because your frequent use of strawman arguments and the doctrine of relative filth blinds you to the very real consequences of throwing out the laws of war whenever they are politically inconvenient.

I believe that if you actually examine my arguments, you will find that I have never argued in favor of torture, either legally or morally. What I have done is argued against the enforcement of very high standards of conduct, higher both than the historical conduct of warfare and than its conduct by our enemies, one-sidedly against America.

Will jordan179 please quit being silly?

[morganhillchris.livejournal.com]

Would you please stop parroting the Party Talking Points of the day? Rush & Bill & all of the other puppet heads don't need your 'help'. They're making enough bombast without you. If I want to hear them, I'll listen to them.
Many people here have attempted to have a reasoned discussion where different views are aired... great! Debate is a healthy way to exchange views. And this is complex, ethical stuff!
It seems to me that whenever you are starting to get stuck on a point or disagree with what's being said, you start to channel one of the above commentators. A bit is fine (again; debate's good), but you're starting to look silly (at least to me). Blindly classing an opposing view as if it's just a partisan thing isn't very thoughtful or creative... and isn't very interesting. And it's no way at all to learn an opposing view.
I'd love to hear your opinions, if you've got an original counter argument of your own. Please come up with something interesting soon?

Oh, and Jordan? don't bother to rant more unoriginal "thought" directed at me. If you have something to talk about, please do. Otherwise; please don't waste my reading time. You bore me.

Re: Will morganhillchris please quit being silly?

[jordan179.livejournal.com]

Why do you deem it "being silly" to point out that the proposed standard of behavior, if applied universally, would render pretty much every leader of a Great Power a "criminal?" Or that its attempted application, in the form of arrest of American ex-officials, would shatter the Western alliance?

I consider these fairly serious flaws in the proposal, and consider you more than a little "silly" for apparently perceiving them as trivial.