Torture

 

Many people consider the use of  torture to be immoral and illogical, but I am here to put my opinion forward on why I believe the use of torture is necessary. There is a statement that is ‘The use of torture is necessary to protect lives’, and I think this statement is true. The cliché of a terrorist planting a bomb in the heart of a city is the perfect example why an alternative method of obtaining information is needed. If there are thousands of lives at risk and the only way to prevent pointless deaths is to torture the person responsible, then it is for benefit of the city that this person is tortured. What if one of the people in danger is your mother? What if one is your one and only child, the thing you love most in the world? Are you really going to let them die needlessly when you know you have the power to prevent it? Thousands of lives lost and it’s all your fault.

 

You could argue that it is immoral to torture someone but surely it is worse to let thousands die because you did not want to torture someone as diabolical as to attempt to brutally murder thousands of innocent people. It is clear that torture is the lesser of two evils, when compared to mass genocide, therefore is the moral and ethical decision to make. I am almost certain if your family were held captive somewhere, with their demise imminent,  you would do everything in your power to get the information you need to save them.

 

You could try to reason with the terrorist or interrogate them. But what do you do if when your attempts of verbal communication prove futile? Surely to save the lives of many,  physical persuasion is is in order. Are you going to wait for lives to be taken for action to be taken? How many lives? 1000? 2000? 3000? Why wait for innocent people to die before a change is made? The idea of torture strikes fear into the brains of criminals and makes them think twice before doing something like planting a bomb. Torture could also be used as a punishment for certain crimes considered malicious, for example rape and paedophilia, both of which leave people emotionally scarred. If their punishment was extreme pain as oppose to a few years in a cell with 3 meals a day, I am sure this would deter many people from committing crimes with such a punishment.

 

You could say that hurting people is not right under any circumstances. But torture does not always include hurting people. There is a torture technique called water boarding, that simulates drowning, or sleep deprivation that is depriving someone of sleep. Both techniques torture, without hurting the person it is being done to. So if you disagree with torture because if physically inflicts pain on people,  then there are ways around that.

 

There are many reasons for and against the use of torture, even if it will only be used under extreme circumstances, and it is always going to be an ethical issue in a modern society. Having said this, it being an issue means there is more than one opinion on it and it has not yet had a unanimous solution.  My solution would  be to try the use of torture in specific situations and if it works it is kept and if not remove it. There’s a solution for everything the only reason there’s an issue is when people are not willing to find a solution.