first off: Abu-Ghraib was in my opinion torture out of sadism, disrespecting peoples believes in the most denigrating way they could think of. Not really hard to figure out the ethics there.
Quote:
|
But your own answers are very subjective, indicating to me that this is a very grey area. Can laws be constructed to operate in such a grey area? Should we allow laws like that?
|
Isn't it true that any law operates in a grey area. That's partially why we have courts, because no law is without ambiguities.
A few points:
If someone knows something that can save many lives, he does not share the information and the people die, isn't he accessory to murder and punishable by law (in principle)? That's something to hold over his head (not that this will always work).
If we cannot punish someone without a trial, can we torture him without one? Who decides if torture should be used in a given situation?
If we cannot use physical punishment by law, can we torture anyone?
If we cannot throw someone in jail until after the crime, can we torture him before the crime?
Still in some cases (99%, millions of lives) it might be condonable/inevitable to use torture, so either we need laws to regulate the use of torture, (video) document each torture and always bring it to trial or we let some people play their own judge with the excesses that we see today. This is assuming that torture is the best way to get the information needed to resolve the situation.
Question: What would a law that regulates torture look like?