Debating Torture
TORTURE
Using Torture to Gather Intelligence About Terrorism
Tim Sonnreich, February 2005.
Once upon a time (as in about 4 years ago) the issue of 'torture' (i.e. whether it is ever acceptable to use it) was very rarely debated - and when it was debated, defending torture was considered an extremely hardline to defend. That reality existed for a good reason - namely that torture is almost unimaginably terrible, and should never be something that people speak of lightly. In fact the few times I remember torture being raised in debates at IV's was, like slavery, as an almost perfect example of a natural human right - the sort of thing that was an incontrovertibly good principle (the prohibition on its use that is) regardless of culture, religion, ethnicity, etc.
However, thanks to the Bush Administration's War on Terror, the legitimacy of torture as a mechanism for combating terrorism has leaped to front and centre of many topic selectors' minds. In the current climate it's good that we're debating torture, since it's definitely going on, in US bases in Cuba (Guantanamo Bay), Iraq, Diego Garcia and in the secret places of US allies like Egypt, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia and elsewhere. Torture of 'terror suspects' is occurring on a daily basis and so we should most definitely be discussing it.
My problem is that like many ultra-hardlines (eg. pro-hard-core drug legalisation and pro-child labour) in the rarified world of debating these highly counter-intuitive positions have become far too easy to defend. Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying that you can't successfully defend torture in a debate (in fact I think it's a great topic when done well), I just think the debate has become too narrow - too devoid of some basic understanding of what torture is, and how it's used - which makes the debate far too slanted to the side defending the nearly indefensible.
The purpose of this article is to remind some people of why there was, until very recently, a nearly
Using Torture to Gather Intelligence About Terrorism
Tim Sonnreich, February 2005.
Once upon a time (as in about 4 years ago) the issue of 'torture' (i.e. whether it is ever acceptable to use it) was very rarely debated - and when it was debated, defending torture was considered an extremely hardline to defend. That reality existed for a good reason - namely that torture is almost unimaginably terrible, and should never be something that people speak of lightly. In fact the few times I remember torture being raised in debates at IV's was, like slavery, as an almost perfect example of a natural human right - the sort of thing that was an incontrovertibly good principle (the prohibition on its use that is) regardless of culture, religion, ethnicity, etc.
However, thanks to the Bush Administration's War on Terror, the legitimacy of torture as a mechanism for combating terrorism has leaped to front and centre of many topic selectors' minds. In the current climate it's good that we're debating torture, since it's definitely going on, in US bases in Cuba (Guantanamo Bay), Iraq, Diego Garcia and in the secret places of US allies like Egypt, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia and elsewhere. Torture of 'terror suspects' is occurring on a daily basis and so we should most definitely be discussing it.
My problem is that like many ultra-hardlines (eg. pro-hard-core drug legalisation and pro-child labour) in the rarified world of debating these highly counter-intuitive positions have become far too easy to defend. Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying that you can't successfully defend torture in a debate (in fact I think it's a great topic when done well), I just think the debate has become too narrow - too devoid of some basic understanding of what torture is, and how it's used - which makes the debate far too slanted to the side defending the nearly indefensible.
The purpose of this article is to remind some people of why there was, until very recently, a nearly