Is torture ever morally acceptable? If so, under what circumstances? (Argumentative Essay) Written by mystery1227 under Uncategorized Is torture ever morally acceptable, If so under what circumstances? Firstly, what exactly is torture? It can be defined as the act of inflicting excruciating pain, as a punishment or revenge, to try and acquire some sort of confession about some particular issue or some information; also is could be just pure cruelty or hate for that particular individual. A method of inflicting such pain, often suffering for that particular individual is extreme anguish of the body or the mind and agony.
However, torture can happen in a few different methods Psychological and Physical some examples of psychological would be – blackmailing, shaming, shunning, sleep deprivation or a good common one is pharmacological torture; severe psychological distress is a result of this sort of torture after long periods of time. Some of the Physical torture techniques may be, beating, cutting or drowning. The word torture often conjures up images of medieval torture instruments such a branding irons and head screws.
From the mid fourteenth century to the end of the eighteenth century torture was an accepted practise by armies, judicial systems and even churches. Some of the instruments for torture that were used electroshock weapon, Tasers, iron chair and choke pear just quickly to name a few; torture is now a thing of the past luckily for us living today. Torture is morally wrong for people to even think about legalising this sort of practise; really gets amazement from most of the world’s population because really is pain and suffering of a human being humain at all.
Nevertheless, under any circumstance it should not be allowed, other ways must be found because decisions like legalising torture, and in a civilized society is just unheard of; we do not need to legalise torture to combat terrorism, because terrorism cannot hurt us unless we allow it. We don’t even need to be discussing legalising torture in any country; there is just no need for this kind of behaviour. “Even when the victim has the necessary information, torture frequently fails to extract it. ”
In some cases killing is absolutely right; killing someone to prevent them from killing another. Killing someone to prevent them from going out and committing other crimes, would certainly suggest that killing is an extreme measure, but it serves a purpose. Torture doesn’t do this. Despite what some individuals would have you believe, torture rarely provides good information. And when consider the time spent running down the false information it generates, your time is better spent doing more traditional investigative measures.
However having said that some would say murdering someone we suspect of terrorist acts without giving them a trial and when not under immediate threat from them is wrong, if you want to put things in the same context. Torture is still torture no matter when it is used; it does not matter how advanced the technology is: the same basic methods are used, and all that matters is how much pain is inflicted on that particular human being in acquiring the information, and basically all that matters is how much pain can be inflicted, advances in torture techniques have been created to reduce long-term effects, but even those have been unsuccessful.
Waterboarding, the most modern day form of torture, has failed many times. “CIA interrogators used the controversial waterboarding technique 183 times on Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the mastermind behind the September 11, 2001, attacks and 83 times on another al-Qaeda suspect, according to The New York Times. ” No matter the purpose or intent, it is morally inhuman to so greatly harm another human being; bringing up a theory or an attempt to justify torture by pointing to the benefits, but what are benefits compared to inflicting the greatest suffering on a person and what if the assumptions of the person are wrong?
What then. Even if torture regardless of all evidence turn out to save lives, we are still hurting a human being to acquire information for another; how is this even right? What gives people the right to hurt another in order to help them? Life has infinite value, they attempt to place value on human life, which simply cannot be done, supporting torture, no matter the circumstance, is inhuman and merciless.
