Is military torture training (SERE) moral?

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Why on earth would it be wrong to train people, who put themselves in harms way for your (my) protection, to keep themselves safe in case of capture?! 🤷
 
As you know I have never served in the military.

That said, I gather there are different kinds of SERE training. Some are just classroom work. Some focus more on things like polar survival. The most intense, I believe, simulates a week in a POW camp.

Based solely on the article you link…I have no problem with it. Soldiers should be aware of exactly what they will face and who and what their enemy is and does (including as of this week, burning people alive in cages). Soldiers shoud be taught to understand their own limits and to not only recognize what they may encounter in combat but to recognize how they react to certain events they may encounter.

You can find lots of things in the military which some individual will find offensive. Is it immoral when the drill instructor shouts at you? Or makes fun of you? Is it immoral to put recruits in a room of tear gas? The military is not a social service organization; it is designed to fight wars, not sing kumbaya.

But I applaud your thought provoking thread. It’s more than the usual OCD-related silliness this board is seeing a lot of lately.
 
Greetings,

Doing something evil as a means to a “good” end is still evil.

Period.

Cheers,
Curundu
 
Unfortunately, Curundu, your post is not helpful. Why? Because it’s a truism with no applicability to John’s discussion.

All you’re saying “don’t do evil.” OK, fine. But who’s to say what’s happening is evil? Is it evil to lock the recruits in the room of tear gas? Is it evil when one soldier has his feeling hurt because the drill instructor (gasp!) bawled him out? Is something evil if 1 person out of 2 thinks it is? 1 out of 1000? What you may call “evil” I say is “toughening people up.”

I’d add that if we are evaluating whether an action is evil by, for example, whether people don’t like it done to them - which seems to be the idea behind the author of Johnny’s link -my reaction is this: By that standard, compulsory public education of children is evil.

Good thread, John!
 
Now THIS is moral theology - not the “is X a mortal sin?” stuff we usually see.
 
First of all, I am not military, so feel free to ignore, this is just my NAAHO:

There is a difference between doing something to someone for your own reasons, and training them to deal with it.

As a less severe example, it would normally be gravely wrong to throw someone into deep water with his limbs bound; but “drownproofing” training with bound limbs is morally acceptable because they are being trained to survive this situation and would be rescued before they began to drown.

As long as no intent to inflict genuine harm is there and the candidates can “wash out” if they can no longer take it, ISTM that no moral issue applies.

ICXC NIKA.
 
johnnyt3000 said:
If it is wrong to torture someone to obatin information, is it also wrong to simulate torture for military personnel in case they get captured by a real enemy that seeks information from them?

More info in the link below:
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Survival,_Evasion,_Resistance_and_Escape
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I don’t believe it is, for the same reason a doctor cutting open a women to give a C-section isn’t wrong, but what the Nazis did in their experiments was. Even though the individual actions themselves are the same, the intention behind them is completely different. One is respecting the dignity of the person and trying to heal, the other is treating a human being as a means to an end.

Torture is used to tear down a person and destroy their will, either to satisfy hatred or to force them to do something they ordinarily wouldn’t. It treats human beings as a means to an end and has no respect for their dignity. SERE training is used to strengthen the soldiers and build them up. The soldiers aren’t being treated as a means to an end, they are going through this for their own benefit.

Intention makes all the difference in the world here.
 
I know several men who have been through SERE. No, I do not believe it to be immoral. It would be much worse if they never went through SERE–not only for them, but for all of us sitting around asking and answering questions on a computer screen.
 
No it is not immoral.

It is like asking if it is immoral for a woman to take self defense classes which involve physical contact because it’s illegal to assault someone on the street. It just doesn’t correlate.

Thanks for posting.
 
The difference between torture and training is the same difference between murder and killing- intent of the act. Soldiers going through SEREs aren’t being tortured, they’re being trained.
 
GEddie said:
As long as no intent to inflict genuine harm is there and the candidates can “wash out” if they can no longer take it, ISTM that no moral issue applies.

ICXC NIKA.
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I am not disagreeing with you. I’m just observing that this would apply both to those armed forces trainees who undergo, say, waterboarding and those terrorists to whom it was also applied.

Neither inflicts genuine harm, or is intended to do so. Also, the trainee can “wash out” by saying he can’t take it and the terrorist can “wash out” by telling what he knows.
 
No. Training to provide understanding of the influences military members may face and how it applies to living up to the code of conduct is moral. In fact, I think it would be a breach of responsibility and immoral not to provide the training.

Realize, SERE sprang out of the experience of POWs during Vietnam who were ill prepared to deal with being a POW. Particularly the aspect that torture was not utilized to gain militarily relevant information but instead for political gain- forced statements condemning the US, forced apologies, forced confessions of atrocities etc. etc. Much different than what had occurred during previous wars.
 
Ridgerunner said:
I am not disagreeing with you. I’m just observing that this would apply both to those armed forces trainees who undergo, say, waterboarding and those terrorists to whom it was also applied.

Neither inflicts genuine harm, or is intended to do so. Also, the trainee can “wash out” by saying he can’t take it and the terrorist can “wash out” by telling what he knows.
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PoInt taken. I am not sure whether the use of warerboarding is wrong.

After all, it does no genuine harm. It’s not like the physical tortures used in WW2.

The same would apply to “humiliation” techniques, .IMNAAHO, particularly since captivity is already meant to be humiliating.

ICXC NIKA.
 
GEddie said:
PoInt taken. I am not sure whether the use of warerboarding is wrong.

After all, it does no genuine harm. It’s not like the physical tortures used in WW2.

The same would apply to “humiliation” techniques, .IMNAAHO, particularly since captivity is already meant to be humiliating.

ICXC NIKA.
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Captivity is humiliating whether it’s meant to be or not. No way around it.
 
Curundu said:
Greetings,

Doing something evil as a means to a “good” end is still evil.

Period.

Cheers,
Curundu
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Please explain how teaching people how to resist “enchanced interrogation techniques” is evil.
 
GEddie said:
PoInt taken. I am not sure whether the use of warerboarding is wrong.

After all, it does no genuine harm. It’s not like the physical tortures used in WW2.
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I would argue that water boarding does, in fact, do genuine harm. In some cases physical harm, and in most cases long lasting psychological harm. In fact, after WW2, Japanese officers were prosecuted for war crimes because of their use of water boarding on American POWs.
 
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