The Moral Justification for Legalised and Institutionalised Torture

[HardJedi]

We have seen that there are likely to exist, in the real world, one-off emergency situations in which torture is, all things considered, the morally best action to perform. It may seem to follow that institutional arrangements should be in place to facilitate torture in such situations. However, it is perfectly consistent to oppose any legalization or institutionalization of torture, as Jeremy Waldron and David Luban have argued. They have drawn attention to the moral inconsistency and inherent danger in liberal democratic states legalising and institutionalising torture, a practice that strikes at the very heart of the fundamental liberal value of individual autonomy. They have also detailed the tendency for a torture culture to develop in organisations in which torture is legalised or tolerated , a culture in which the excesses of torturing the innocent and the like take place, as in the US army detention centres in Abu Ghraib in Iraq and Guantanamo Bay in Cuba, and in the Israeli secret service (General Security Service). Nevertheless, it is useful to sketch a general argument against the legalisation and institutionalisation of torture. The argument is consistent with, indeed at some points it is more or less the same as, the arguments of Luban and Waldron. However, the argument has some novel elements, not the least of which is the claim that the view that torture is morally justified in some extreme emergencies is compatible with the view that torture ought not to be legalised and institutionalised.

Most of the theorists who oppose the legalisation and institutionalisation of torture also (at least implicitly) reject the possibility, let alone actuality, of one-off emergencies in which torture is morally justified. The argument has been put that there are, or could well be, such one-off extreme emergencies in which torture is morally justified. So the first task here is to demonstrate that these two claims are not inconsistent. Specifically, it needs to be shown that it does not follow from the fact that torture is in some extreme emergencies morally justified, that torture ought to be legalised, or otherwise institutionalised. So the claim is that it is just a mistake to assume that what morality requires or permits in a given situation must be identical with what the law requires or permits in that situation. This calls for some explanation.

The law in particular, and social institutions more generally, are blunt instruments. They are designed to deal with recurring situations confronted by numerous institutional actors over relatively long periods of time. Laws abstract away from differences between situations across space and time, and differences between institutional actors across space and time. The law, therefore, consists of a set of generalisations to which the particular situation must be made to fit. Hence, if you exceed the speed limit you are liable for a fine, even though you were only 10 kph above the speed limit, you have a superior car, you are a superior driver, there was no other traffic on the road, the road conditions were perfect, and therefore the chances of you having an accident were actually less than would be the case for most other people most of the time driving at or under the speed limit.[16]

By contrast with the law, morality is a sharp instrument. Morality can be, and typically ought to be, made to apply to a given situation in all its particularity. (This is, of course, not to say that there are not recurring moral situations in respect of which the same moral judgment should be made, nor is it to say that morality does not need to help itself to generalisations.) Accordingly, what might be, all things considered, the morally best action for an agent to perform in some one-off, i.e. non-recurring, situation might not be an action that should be made lawful. Consider the real-life example of the five sailors on a raft in the middle of the ocean and without food. Four of them decide to eat the fifth — the cabin boy — in order to survive.[17] This is a case of both murder and cannibalism. Was it morally justifiable to kill and eat the boy, given the alternative was the death of all five sailors? Perhaps not, given the cabin boy was entirely innocent. However, arguably it was morally excusable, and indeed the sailors, although convicted of murder and cannibalism, had their sentence commuted in recognition of this. But there was no suggestion that the laws against murder and cannibalism admit of an exception in such an extreme case; the sailors were convicted and sentenced for murder and cannibalism. Again, consider an exceptionless law against desertion from the battlefield in time of war. Perhaps a soldier is morally justifiable in deserting his fellow soldiers, given that he learns of the more morally pressing need for him to care for his wife who has contracted some life-threatening disease back home. However, the law against desertion will not, and should not, be changed to allow desertion in such cases.

So the law and morality not only can and do come apart; indeed, sometimes they ought to come apart. This is the first point. The second point pertains to the nature of the sub-institution of torture within the larger military, police, and correctional institutions. There is a need to begin with a few preliminary points about social institutions.[18]

Social institutions, including legal institutions and military, police, and correctional organisations, have both a massive collective inertia and a massive collective momentum by virtue of the participation in them of many agents over a long time who: (a) pursue the same goals; (b) occupy the same roles and, therefore, perform the same tasks and follow the same rules and procedures, and; (c) share the same culture. Accordingly, social institutions and their component organisations are like very large ocean liners that cannot slow down, speed up, or change direction very easily. It follows that very careful thought needs to be given to the establishment of any additional structure of roles and associated practices that is to be woven into the fabric of the institution. For such an additional (embodied) role structure, once it becomes, so to speak, an integrated working part of the larger institution, is likely to be extremely difficult to remove; it is now a beneficiary of the inertia of the institution. Moreover such an additional, but now integrated, role structure participates in, and influences the direction of, the institution; it is now a contributing element to the momentum of the institution.

So what can be said of the likely institutional fit between military, police, and correctional institutions on the one hand, and the sub-institution of torture on the other? The role structure of this sub-institution consists of torturers, torturer trainers, medical personnel who assist torturers, and the like. The core practice of torture has been described in an earlier section.

It would be a massive understatement to say that historically the sub-institution of torture — whether in a lawful or unlawful form — has been no stranger to military, police, and correctional institutions. Moreover, the practice of torture is endemic in many, probably most, military, police, and correctional institutions in the world today, including democracies such as India and Israel. It is only in recent times and with great difficulty that torture in Australian prisons and police services, for example, has been largely eliminated, or at least very significantly reduced. The Australian, British, American, and like cases are important not only because they illustrate that torture can be endemic to liberal democratic institutions, but also because they demonstrate that liberal democratic institutions are able — given the political will, suitable re-education and training, stringent accountability mechanisms, etc. — to successfully combat a culture of torture.

Further, there is now a great deal of empirical evidence that in institutional environments in which torture is routinely practised it has a massive impact on other practices and on moral attitudes. For example, in police organisations in which torture is routinely used the quality of investigations tends to be low. Careful marshalling of evidence is replaced by beating up suspects. Again, police in organisations in which offenders are routinely tortured do not, unsurprisingly, tend to develop respect for the moral rights of either offenders, suspects, or even witnesses. This is entirely consistent with the excesses detailed by Luban and Waldron in the US military detention centres in Iraq and elsewhere, e.g., the Abu Ghraib scandal, and in the case of the interrogations of suspected terrorists by the Israeli secret service. Indeed, these excesses are to be expected.

And there is this further point. The prevalence of torture in numerous military, police, and correctional institutions throughout the world has taken place notwithstanding that for the most part it has been both unlawful and opposed by the citizenry.

It is to be concluded from all this that for the most part military, police, and correctional institutions are qua institutions very receptive to the practice of torture — even when it is unlawful — and that these institutions qua institutions would relatively easily incorporate the legalised sub-institution of torture; accordingly, it is very easy to legalise torture and thereby grow and develop a torture culture in military, police and correctional institutions . This does not mean that there are not important differences between, say, police services in authoritarian states and those in contemporary (though not necessarily historical) liberal democratic states; obviously there are and we should want to keep it that way. Nor does it mean that most, or even the majority, of the individuals who occupy roles in these institutions, whether in liberal democracies or elsewhere, are necessarily receptive qua individuals to engaging in the practice of torture; most of them might not be. However, most of them would not be torturing people; that would be done by a distinct minority, as in fact has usually been the case even in institutions in which torture is unlawful and endemic. The question is whether or not as individuals they would initially tolerate, and finally accept, the practice of torture, if it were legally and institutionally established; the suggestion is that the historical and comparative evidence is that they would, including in liberal democracies.

A additional conclusion to be drawn is that should the legalised sub-institution of torture be integrated into any of these institutions it would be very difficult to remove and would, even in liberal democracies, have a major impact on the direction, culture, and practices of these institutions. Again, this is what the historical and comparative empirical evidence tells, notwithstanding the initial and even continuing aversion of many, perhaps most, of the individuals in these institutions to torture as such. Consider the Israeli case. Limited forms of torture were legal in Israel prior to 1999, but illegal post 1999. However, evidently torture has by no means been eradicated post 1999. According to the Public Committee Against Torture, reporting on the period between September 2001 and April 2003: “The affidavits and testimonies taken by attorneys and fieldworkers… support the conclusions …violence, painful tying, humiliations and many other forms of ill-treatment, including detention under inhuman conditions, are a matter of course….The bodies which are supposed to keep the GSS [General Security Service] under scrutiny and ensure that interrogations are conducted lawfully act, instead, as rubberstamps for decisions by the GSS…The State Prosecutor's Office transfers the interrogees' complaints to a GSS agent for investigation and it is little wonder that it has not found in even a single case that GSS agents tortured a Palestinian ‘unnecessarily’” (Public Committee 2003).

The deeper explanation for the prevalence of torture cultures and the difficulty of eradicating institutionalised torture is no doubt very complex, but presumably it consists in part in the following elements: (1) moral docility, as opposed to physical docility, is a feature of individuals housed in, and materially dependent upon, large, hierarchical, bureaucratic organisations with strong, relatively homogenous cultures; (2) the roles of soldier, police officer, and prison warder necessarily involve the routine use of coercive, and even deadly, force against dangerous criminals, enemy soldiers, or terrorists, and therefore undertaking these roles inevitably results in a degree of moral de-sensitisation and a sense of moral ambiguity when it comes to torturing criminals and/or terrorists; (3) torture is an exercise of enormous power, and power is deeply seductive to many people (and much less dangerous than shooting at armed enemy combatants or trying to arrest or subdue violent criminals).

Armed with these observations on the difference between law and morality, and on the nature of the sub-institution of torture in military, police, and correctional institutions, what now can be said on the question as to whether or not to legalise and institutionalise torture in contemporary well-ordered liberal democratic states undergoing a lengthy period of attacks from terrorist organisations?

As we saw above, torture is a terrorist tactic. Indeed, arguably it is the terrorist tactic par excellence. Detonating bombs that kill the innocent has come to be regarded as the quintessential terrorist tactic. But this is presumably because terrorism has implausibly come to be identified only with non-state terrorism. At any rate, the point to be made here is that torture is a terrorist tactic, and for a liberal democracy to legalise and institutionalise it, i.e. weave the practice of torture into the very fabric of liberal democratic institutions, would be both an inherent contradiction — torture being an extreme assault on individual autonomy — and, given what we know about the practice of torture in military, police, and correctional institutions, highly damaging to those liberal democratic institutions. It would be equivalent to a liberal democracy legalising and institutionalising slavery on the grounds, say, of economic necessity. Legalised and institutionalised slavery is inconsistent with liberal democracy, as is legalised and institutionalised torture. So if legalised and institutionalised slavery and/or legalised and institutionalised torture are necessary because morally required, then liberal democracy is not possible in anything other than an attenuated form. But of course neither legalised/institutionalised slavery nor legalised/institutionalised torture is morally required, quite the contrary. At best, torture is morally justified in some one-off emergencies — just as murder and cannibalism might be morally excusable in a one-off emergency on the high seas, or desertion from the field of battle might be morally justifiable given a one-off emergency back home — but absolutely nothing follows as far as the legalisation/institutionalisation of torture is concerned.

A final point here concerns the proposition that, absent legalised/institutional torture, unlawful endemic torture in the security agencies of contemporary liberal democracies confronting terrorism is inevitable. The implication here is that unless legalised, torture will become endemic in these agencies. It has already been argued that legalisation/institutionalisation of torture would be profoundly damaging to liberal democratic institutions. Assume this is correct; it does not follow from this that a torture culture will not come to exist in those agencies in the context of torture being unlawful. Nor does it follow that an unlawful torture culture, indeed an unlawful sub-institution of torture, is inevitable. Here there is a tendency to use the kind of argument that is plausible in relation to, say, the prohibition of alcohol. It is better to legalise alcohol, because then it can be contained and controlled. This form of argument used in relation to torture is spurious. Consuming alcohol to excess is not morally equivalent to torture, and we do not legalise the use of alcohol in emergency situations only. Legalising the use of torture in extreme emergencies would be much more akin to legalising perjury in extreme situations. As with torture — and unlike alcohol — perjury is only morally justified in some extreme one-off situations.[19] However, no-one is seriously considering legalising perjury in one-off extreme situations (at least to my knowledge), and with good reason — to do so would strike at the very heart of the legal system.

The fact is that the recent history of police, military, and other organisations in liberal democracies has demonstrated that torture cultures and sub-institutions of torture can be more or less eliminated, albeit with considerable difficulty. The elimination of torture cultures and sub-institutions can only be achieved if torture is unlawful, the community and the political and organisational leadership are strongly opposed to it, police officers and other relevant institutional actors are appropriately educated and trained, and stringent accountability mechanisms, e.g. video-recording of interviews, close-circuit TV cameras in cells, external oversight bodies, are put in place. It is surely obvious that to re-introduce and indeed protect the practice of torture, by legalising and institutionalising it, would be to catapult the security agencies of liberal democracies back into the dark ages from whence they came.

The discussion has focussed on the legalisation and institutionalisation of torture, where the practice of torture is understood in general terms; it ought to be now obvious why torture should not be legalised. However, some commentators, notably Alan Dershowitz, have argued that legalised torture could be justified, if the torture in question was restricted to extreme emergency situations and subjected to appropriate accountability mechanisms. Specifically, he has argued for torture warrants of the kind introduced for a time in Israel.

The notion of torture warrants is supposedly analogous to surveillance and telephone interception warrants issued to police by a magistrate or other judicial officer. The idea is that privacy is a fundamental right but it can be infringed under certain conditions, such as reasonable suspicion that the person whose privacy right is to be infringed is engaged in serious criminal activity, there is no alternative way to acquire the necessary information to convict him/her, and so on. In this kind of set-up the magistrate, not the police, makes the decision as to whether or not these conditions obtain. Consequently, the infringements of privacy rights are restricted, and subject to stringent accountability mechanisms.

However, morally speaking, torture warrants are entirely different from telephone interception or surveillance warrants. First, torture is a far greater evil than the infringement of privacy. For one thing, having one's phone tapped or movements filmed is inherently much less distressing, harmful and morally repugnant than the physical suffering and loss of autonomy involved in being strapped to a chair and, say, having someone drill into an unanesthetised tooth. On the spectrum of evils, torture is closer to murder/killing than it is to the infringement of privacy. For another thing, torture is a far more dangerous practice than infringing privacy. For the degree of the infringement of privacy can be minimised, e.g. the information gained can relatively easily be kept strictly confidential by the police; moreover, there is no inherent reason for the police to illicitly widen a given infringement of privacy by breaching confidentiality. But in practice torture cannot be restricted likewise. The methods of torture and the process of torture exist on a continuum, and there is often an inherent reason to ‘push the envelope’ and inflict ever more severe forms of physical suffering on victims; so-called ‘torture lite’ becomes full-blooded, no holds-barred torture. One of the consequences of this continuum of torture is the ever-present possibility that the victims of torture will not simply be tortured, but rather be murdered; and in point of fact numerous people have died in the course of being tortured.

Second, as has already been argued, there is an inherent institutional receptivity of military, police, and correctional institutions to the practice of torture; a receptivity which is such that torture cultures will grow and flourish, notwithstanding Dershowitz's proposal that only tightly controlled and highly restricted forms of torture are to be legally admissible. This institutional receptivity has the consequence that inevitably large numbers of innocent people will be tortured — as happened, and continues to happen, in Israel. Indeed, even under tightly controlled and highly restricted forms of torture some innocent persons will inevitably be tortured — just as the privacy of innocent people is infringed under the existing telephone and surveillance warrant systems. Arguably, the infringement of the privacy of some — in fact, many — innocent persons is a price that we ought to be willing to pay for the sake of preventing serious crimes. However, it would be preposterous to argue that (inadvertently?) torturing numerous innocent people is a reasonable price to pay in return for the information provided by those of the tortured who are in fact guilty.

Third, the information gained by wire-tapping or surveillance has in general far greater utility than that gained by means of the practice of torture — certainly by the tightly controlled and highly restricted forms of torture of the kind envisaged by Dershowitz. Indeed, it is by no means clear that the utility — in terms of saving lives (and leaving aside the costs) — of the system of legalised torture warrants will be very high. (In Israel, to repeat the example, it does not appear to have been particularly high.) This is so for two reasons. One reason is that torture victims typically tell the torturer whatever they think he wants to hear, e.g. they are happy to implicate others who are in fact innocent in order to bring an end to their own agony. And even in relation to desired checkable information there is often the problem of knowing whether or not the victim of torture is holding out or does not really know; this is especially the case with hardened terrorists. So by comparison with telephone and surveillance warrants, torture warrants are likely to yield unreliable information; there is a serious question about the quality of much of the information provided under a system of torture warrants. A further reason to disparage the utility of torture warrants is that, again unlike telephone and surveillance warrants, torture warrants are to be issued only in extreme emergencies. By contrast, telephone interception and surveillance warrants are issued as a matter of routine, albeit only under certain (recurring) conditions. Accordingly, the volume of information capable of being provided under a system of torture warrants is extremely limited. In short, over time the torture warrant system is likely only to yield an extremely small quantity of reliable information. This overall likely lack of utility of the torture warrant system qua institution is important to keep in mind in the context of a protracted struggle against terrorism involving ongoing loss of life on both sides. Here the torture warrant system stands in sharp contrast to telephone interception and surveillance warrant systems. Moreover, it is precisely because the set of conditions under which it is reasonable and effective to infringe privacy rights recurs, that infringements of privacy rights by police can reasonably be legalised and institutionalised, e.g. by means of a warrant system. Arguably, the proponents of the torture warrant system have made the mistake of proposing a legal/institutional solution to what ought to be regarded as a one-off moral problem;[20] hence the inadequacy of their proposal.

At any rate, the conclusion must be that any attempt to compare torture warrants to surveillance or interception warrants is entirely spurious. Torture is a very different beast.

In the light of the above three points concerning torture warrants that have just been made in the comparison between these and surveillance and interception warrants, the inevitable conclusion is that the practice of torture could not be contained under a system of legalised torture warrants and the consequences of its not being contained would be horrific. Moreover, as noted above, and argued by Luban, Waldron and others, the damage to liberal institutions would be incalculable. Finally, the benefits of a system of legalised torture warrants over the longer term are likely to be slight; and certainly easily outweighed by the costs. So Dershowitz is entirely misguided in his advocacy of torture warrants. Indeed, as repeatedly mentioned above, we have the example of Israel's use, or rather abuse, of this system to provide specific empirical evidence against the introduction of torture warrants.

So torture warrants are highly undesirable, indeed a threat to liberal democratic institutions. Moreover, torture warrants are unnecessary. As has been argued above, there may well be one-off emergencies in which the use of torture is morally justifiable. In those cases, the relevant public officials must bite the bullet and do what is morally required, e.g. torture the terrorist to save thousands of innocent people. In such an emergency, the military or police officers involved will need to break the law on this one occasion. But in itself this is a small price to pay; and a price the police, the military and the politicians have shown themselves only too willing to pay in situations that are far from emergencies.

One final matter. What should be done to the military officer, police officer, or other public official who tortures the terrorist if — after saving the city — their crime is discovered? Quite clearly he (or she) should resign or be dismissed from their position; public institutions cannot suffer among their ranks those who commit serious crimes. Further, the public official in question must be tried, convicted, and sentenced for committing the crime of torture.[21] Obviously, there are (to say the least) mitigating circumstances, and the sentence should be commuted to, say, one day in prison. Would public officials be prepared to act to save thousands of innocent lives, if they knew they might lose their job and/or suffer some minor punishment? Presumably many would. But if not, is it desirable to set up a legalised torture chamber and put these people in charge of it?

[HardJedi]

lol, i didn't figure anyone would read a post this long, at least not very many, and even fewer would have anythin to say about it. I just thought it needed to be here.

[yellowwing]

Do I need a Masters Degree to read this?

[HardJedi]

LMAO! no, just some patience. heck, a smart winger like you should be able to get through it, if a dumb grunt like me can

[HardJedi]

i'm gonna bump this, cause I know its alot to read, but come on devil dogs, give it a shot and tell me what YOU think of it?

[LeonardLawrence]

HardJedi....

I would say by the length of the post it must be interesting.

I am still using my Rifleman-to-English dictionary to translate words....like theorist. At first I thought I had to make a choice.
THE or IST____then I realized it was a word that meant something.

[yellowwing]

Legalised and Institutionalised Torture would be a dangerous slide towards a police state.

[LeonardLawrence]

Oh...theorist.... I get it! Here goes:

The article doesn't really define torture. What happened at Abu-Ghraib was not torture. If it is, then we torture our American service people on a frequent basis when we send them to Ranger school, BUD-s/Seal Training and to S.E.R.E school. In this case is the training benefit compare to the immoral acts we are committing. Enough said on that. Beat me and hook me up to wires if you must..but I won't yield on it. It isn't torture, it was humiliating and immature and why did you take a picture of it inexcusable, but torture, no.

Torture is having your cranium removed from your neck for fanatical purposes and design in a way that would be deemed cruel by animal rights activists. That is beyond humiliation into a realm of the unthinkable. Torture is suffering from shrapnel wounds because you decided to take your child and go to the market, so the family can eat. Torture is having your life altered by an unseen device in the middle of a road that causes your Humvee to flip end over end. Torture is literally terrorizing your neighbors and countrymen because they have different beliefs.

With that said, and in conjunction with the other thread where I stated I WOULD in fact commit an act if it meant saving lives....I think it is morally reprehensible. The fact that we hold the moral high ground is a driving force why we can condemn acts of terror and torture. Once we go to that level, it in a twisted way, deep down, makes it alright for the other side to go further and in turn for us to go deeper into the darkness.

Some say forget the Geneva convention. I would ask how many Iraqi's would have surrendered during Gulf War 1 if they thought they were going to be treated worse than Saddam was treating them? I am sure it would have been much fewer. Likewise, if we follow a standard "NO TORTURE" policy, we are taking the stand that it is wrong to do, period. Once you justify it once, you will never be able to take it back. Just saying that you believe it can be justified on a nationalistic level gives it a connotation of moral degradation. We follow the rules on how to treat other humans....except when it could save a few hundred folks. It is morally degraded and there would be no recovery from that. Law is based on our sense of morality. If you make it legal in some instances, you make it equally moral.

State sponsored torture is state sponsored terror. Think of the incongruences between our country's stance on:

1. Freedom
2. Human Rights
3. International community building

and the effects it would have in Trade and business

If we send the message that we will do the right thing, except when it is inconvenient, then I think we are hopelessly lost as a nation.

Now, I don't live in a rosy world, where I think Johnny Jihadist is going to see what we are doing and stop using his tactics....because he is humiliated (that would be torture, no?).

I am a realist and scum will continue to be scum until it is wiped up. Period. Let's just not be part of that scum pile by compromising our fundamental belief structure, one ounce, for any situation at any time.

We need to use our resources of superior technology and intelligence systems and dedicated folks to work against these threats while providing support for those in the field to get the information ethically and righteously. Any other way, by torture, is just laziness.

Let's sit down and define torture as a nation. It is not a semi-naked dog pile or a leash on the neck. It is a real issue, but let's define it so that we know when to ignore the public outcry and when to take heed.

As for what should happen if someone (an individual) takes that route, here is my thought. The allegory of the raft, while amusing is not a true example of the question faced. Trust me, you put me on a Disney Cruiseship and lunch is five minutes late....I am thinking cannabilism. Whose kid am I going to eat today, roasted with an apple in their mouth and booties on their little paws....er, I mean hands. Thats just me.

The real issue is that we cannot turn our back on the situation. Torture is morally wrong and unjustifiable. If I committed the act then I, like Socrates, would be ready for my dose of the hemlock. I would do what I felt was right, but I wouldn't expect any reduction or state sponsorship of torture, whatever the outcome, right or incorrect.

[RVHall]

I am very pleased to see some thoughtful posts on the topic of torture, in contrast to the cute one-liners that dominated another thread on the topic. I appreciate the thought provoking commentary, much more eloquent than I can provide.

HardJedi led off with a lengthy post, judging from the footnotes an excerpt from a longer paper that would be interesting to read. Anything that lengthy is bound to contain some points that others might criticize. But I like to have a theoretical rationale for my own actions.

LeonardLawrence lays out his opposition to torture from a pragmatic viewpoint and that's a critical view as well. Yellowwing's simpler statement is to the point.

My opposition to torture stems from experiences in 1968. Here's one:
On July 4, 1968, Cpl. Ray Shawn volunteered to walk point on an operation, when someone else should have done that. They were ambushed, and Ray died both tragically and heroically. I was with another (ROKMC) company but the word spread quickly because Ray was everone's friend. A day or two later, when we all were looking for a fight to get even, my company killed and captured a few VC. Probably knowing my state of mind, I was left alone with a prisoner. He was mine for the taking. Like me, he was spitting mad, and no doubt he was my mortal enemy and might well torture me if the situation were reversed. That's where the rubber hits the road, the moment of truth, etc. When I looked into his eyes, cutting through my intense anger was the realization that this was another human. He may have been a real believer in the principles of Communism, but more likely he was a farm kid like me and he was taken from his village and indoctrinated. I did intimidate him a bit, I admit, but it just wasn't in me to harm a helpless POW.

All this talk is just talk until you are faced with the situation yourself, in the field. If I were a religious person, I would be thanking God that I didn't do anything wrong, because I'd be a basket case now. I would have committed an immoral act and dishonored Ray's memory.

At the time I hadn't even considered the practical or theoretical basis for opposing or condoning torture. That came later. Some call the enemy inhuman to justify what they say they would do. That's a very weak justification. It's all just talk until you see what kind of a human you really are, faced with that decision yourself when you are half crazed with anger, as we all are at times during war.

I hope the young ones reading this will never consider torturing a prisoner and will not thereby tarnish the proud history of the Marine Corps.

[jrhd97]

Torture is not a matter that the ordinary grunt should have to contemplate. They should just stick to the geneva convention and articles of war. Once the pow's are turned over, the intelligence people are the ones who need to decide if a certain prisoner has intel that is vital to saveing lives right now. On the whole torture is a no win, how do you decide if the guy is telling the truth?