Ridge: US shouldn't rule out using torture

I was obviously mislead by your "I think that torture is a useful tool and that its use is justified in a military situation."

Besides that, agree with your last response.

Rereading that, you're right... it really was very bad phrasing on my part. I can see where everyone got the wrong idea from. :S

What I was attempting to convey was the idea that from a practical standpoint it's a good idea and that from a moral standpoint it's a bad idea. In any military situation since the moral standpoint has clearly been set aside (as demonstrated by the fact that people are killing one another) one can only go by the practical viewpoint.

In hindsight my choice of words could have been better at conveying this notion. I understand that also the annoyance conveyed in the 'tone' of the message would have also implied a certain position on the issue that would have suggested a different situation than what actually existed. However my annoyance isn't at the morality demonstrated by despising torture but by the blind eye turned towards the regular suffering of war that is many thousands of times worse (mostly due to larger scale).

I'm incredibly bothered by the geneva convention, hague convention et al. I know how odd that sounds, but I consider it self-delusion that we fool ourselves that war can be done in a moral way. As such people can resist from holding war in the absolute disgust with which it should be regarded.

So apologies if my choice of words lead to people making false assumptions or lead to people with way too much time on their hand searching through the geneva convention to prove a point. Rest assured that I understand the confusion and take sole responsibility for it.

If I get you right, you seem to be suggesting that torture isn't the problem, war is the problem...and our attention should be directed towards war if we are to lessen suffering. But it is a false dilemma to suggest either/or. And though I'm a pacifist (of the non-absolute sort) I see your position as even more delusional that what you point to.

Any moral principle is an ideal. I'm guessing that you wouldn't wish the courts in Australia to be dismantled even though murders and thefts will occur regardless.

No, you don't. Unfortunately it seems like I've failed to explain it again. For some reason I'm making a complete hash of my explanation here. Though the reason may be that it's really early in the morning here.

Almost but not quite. For example... torture occurs seperately to war, whether it be in prisons or by random psychopaths or for religious reasons, whatever. Whether war occurs or not torture will still exist and it will still be really damn evil.

What annoys me is the hypocrisy and double standards of war. The way everyday people in America and other countries at war (note that everyday people probably doesn't include people like you and I debating on online forums) say "La dee dah, we're dropping bombs on people and shooting them that's all good... wait a minute we're torturing them... Now that's just wrong."

Or saying in stupid treaties like the geneva convention. "Sure, you can kill ten thousand people. Just make sure they've got slightly different skin colours because otherwise it's genocide."

Whether they're all the same race or not doesn't make it any different. It's still murder. Likewise whether pain and permanent disability is caused by prisoner abuse or by falling shrapnel doesn't make a difference, it's still pain. Whether humiliation is caused by their country being taken over by foreign military or by prisoners being stripped naked it's still shameful. Whether people are killed by bombs, chemical weapons or biological weapons they're still just as dead.

Why the hell is one thing fine and dandy while the other is evil work of the devil?

That's all I want to know.

lol, well my system of morality is somewhat unconventional, I'll admit that. I tend to ignore context and tradition and simply judge morality based on the ammount of joy and suffering people experience (similar to hegel's system if the reference makes sense to you).

Not really an apt analogy since generally the courts aren't the ones commiting the crimes. A better example would be if all the murderers got together and said "in the interests of racial equality we'll make sure we kill equal numbers of white and black people... we won't decrease our ammount of killing, we'll just make sure we don't do it in a racist way." and THAT I would want disbanded. Not because I like racism, but because I don't like murderers deluding themselves that their acts have been made moral and honourable now.

You'd be left looking at the murderers and thinking "gee thanks". Or like in the bible were god repents and promises next time he destroys the world it won't be with water... another "gee thanks" moment.