Waterboarding Terrorists- Justified to Save Lives?

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JustaServant said:
That’s called situational ethics.
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Yeah, that’s what I’m trying to get at with Chesterton, but he won’t answer questions directly. It seems that he might consider some situations of torture evil and some not, depending on the outcome of the torture, but again, his answers remain elusive…
 
Newbie2 said:
Yeah, that’s what I’m trying to get at with Chesterton, but he won’t answer questions directly. It seems that he might consider some situations of torture evil and some not, depending on the outcome of the torture, but again, his answers remain elusive…
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I was the same way after 911 (of course I was still Baptist at the time.:D). Many Americans in a partiotic fervor listened to polititians we trusted, news pundits we trusted, and IMO got sucked right in.

Chesterton, please document the “lives waterboarding has saved”.
Also, why was it during WW2 the US considered it to be torture, but now now?
 
JustaServant said:
I was the same way after 911 (of course I was still Baptist at the time.:D). Many Americans in a partiotic fervor listened to polititians we trusted, news pundits we trusted, and IMO got sucked right in.

Chesterton, please document the “lives waterboarding has saved”.
Also, why was it during WW2 the US considered it to be torture, but now now?
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It’s not a difficult idea to buy into. The problem we know, of course, is that when one OKs torture under some circumstances (even though those circumstances ***seem ***proportionally reasonable), one dismisses the objective sin that is torture.

Then it becomes, as you most correctly said, a matter of morality being dependant on the situation i.e. situational ethics. This is something that the Church warns us to be vigilant against.

Where then would the line be drawn and by whom? The Church recognizes that she cannot clearly define specific guidelines for any and all situations, rather recognizing that there are moral absolutes that cannot be ignored, in this case torture.

Now again, Chesterton seems to be retreating to the discussion of waterboarding in specific, which is fine. There are those who would think waterboarding is clearly not torture, some thinking that is clearly is, and those like me who simply aren’t sure either way. But he’s also stated that things that we’d all consider clearly torture are morally acceptable, which isn’t in agreement with Church teaching.

Ignoring the moral prohibition on torture is a very dangerous thing. If we OK torture for a terror suspect, why not for the criminal who has kidnapped and buried alive his victim? Does not his victim deserve the same efforts to save him or her as efforts to save thousands?

As well, it would be easy to slip down the slope from “this is just a bit uncomfortable” to “well, this will only hurt the suspect for a while, it won’t cause any permanent injury” to “let’s start cutting off fingers until we get an answer because time is a factor and so much is at stake” if we have no moral absolutes to guide us.
 
Now there is the legitimate question as to just what constitutes torture, which we’ve discussed here and there in this thread. Arriving at an answer is not always clearcut. We can surely identify some things that fall either into torture or not, such as cutting off fingers and yelling at a suspect respectively.

But there are grey areas. Personally, I think waterboarding is a grey area. There are other areas involving psycological interrogation techniques that fall into this grey area. Heck, there are techniques that we cannot imagine, unless we have experience in interrogation, that fall into this grey area as well.

I guess it will always be a challenge to attempt to discern where these grey area techniques fall; such is the challenge with moral and social theology. But we need to be perfectly clear, Chesterton is wrong in saying that torture, i.e. techniques we’ve defined as clear torture such as burning or cutting off fingers, is not forbidden as a moral absolute by the CC.
 
JustaServant said:
I was the same way after 911 (of course I was still Baptist at the time.:D). Many Americans in a partiotic fervor listened to polititians we trusted, news pundits we trusted, and IMO got sucked right in.

Chesterton, please document the “lives waterboarding has saved”.
Also, why was it during WW2 the US considered it to be torture, but now now?
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Read the OP. Waterboarding saved lives.

Is it you position that waterboarding is more evil than the deaths of innocent people?
 
Newbie2 said:
It’s not a difficult idea to buy into. The problem we know, of course, is that when one OKs torture under some circumstances (even though those circumstances ***seem ***proportionally reasonable), one dismisses the objective sin that is torture.

Then it becomes, as you most correctly said, a matter of morality being dependant on the situation i.e. situational ethics. This is something that the Church warns us to be vigilant against.

Where then would the line be drawn and by whom? The Church recognizes that she cannot clearly define specific guidelines for any and all situations, rather recognizing that there are moral absolutes that cannot be ignored, in this case torture.

Now again, Chesterton seems to be retreating to the discussion of waterboarding in specific, which is fine. There are those who would think waterboarding is clearly not torture, some thinking that is clearly is, and those like me who simply aren’t sure either way. But he’s also stated that things that we’d all consider clearly torture are morally acceptable, which isn’t in agreement with Church teaching.

Ignoring the moral prohibition on torture is a very dangerous thing. If we OK torture for a terror suspect, why not for the criminal who has kidnapped and buried alive his victim? Does not his victim deserve the same efforts to save him or her as efforts to save thousands?

As well, it would be easy to slip down the slope from “this is just a bit uncomfortable” to “well, this will only hurt the suspect for a while, it won’t cause any permanent injury” to “let’s start cutting off fingers until we get an answer because time is a factor and so much is at stake” if we have no moral absolutes to guide us.
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The subject of this thread, which I started, is waterboarding. You have attempted to expand the scope of the thread, which is fine, but don’t accuse me of backtracking just because I’m not ready to discuss everything you have presented.

Since you brought it up, please explain why the death and suffering of millions of people is morally preferable to torturing Hitler.(allowing the admittedly unlikely assumption that this would have prevented the Holocaust)
 
CHESTERTONRULES said:
The subject of this thread, which I started, is waterboarding. You have attempted to expand the scope of the thread, which is fine, but don’t accuse me of backtracking just because I’m not ready to discuss everything you have presented.

Since you brought it up, please explain why the death and suffering of millions of people is morally preferable to torturing Hitler.(allowing the admittedly unlikely assumption that this would have prevented the Holocaust)
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Sorry, can’t allow that assumption, it’s too far fetched. 🤷 Besides, I didn’t bring it up.

Sorry again, but you do seem to be backtracking. You’re the one who said (clear) torture was morally acceptable; nobody else brought it up, but now you want simply to discuss waterboarding, which is under some degree of uncertainty in this discussion whether it rises to the level of torture. Whatever you feel comfortable discussing is fine, but if you didn’t want to paint a “moral target” on your back, i.e. get into areas that you don’t want to discuss, you shouldn’t make claims that are clearly contrary to Catholic moral teaching on the CAF.

I’ve gone over this time and time again…the magnitude of the (good) outcome does not negate an evil. That is THE basic principle of moral theology; you cannot do evil in order that good should come of it. There is the exception of a just war, but torture has no part in the just war theory.
 
Newbie2 said:
Sorry, can’t allow that assumption, it’s too far fetched. 🤷 Besides, I didn’t bring it up.

Sorry again, but you do seem to be backtracking. You’re the one who said (clear) torture was morally acceptable; nobody else brought it up, but now you want simply to discuss waterboarding, which is under some degree of uncertainty in this discussion whether it rises to the level of torture. Whatever you feel comfortable discussing is fine, but if you didn’t want to paint a “moral target” on your back, i.e. get into areas that you don’t want to discuss, you shouldn’t make claims that are clearly contrary to Catholic moral teaching on the CAF.

I’ve gone over this time and time again…the magnitude of the (good) outcome does not negate an evil. That is THE basic principle of moral theology; you cannot do evil in order that good should come of it. There is the exception of a just war, but torture has no part in the just war theory.
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Is it morally acceptable to knock over a table in anger and call people names, for example?

Is it morally acceptable to lie?

Is it morally acceptable to kill?

Clearly, the answer is that it depends on the circumstances.
 
CHESTERTONRULES said:
Is it morally acceptable to knock over a table in anger and call people names, for example?

Is it morally acceptable to lie?

Is it morally acceptable to kill?

Clearly, the answer is that it depends on the circumstances.
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Is it morally acceptable to purposefully and willfully kill an innocent person or a group of innocent people?

Or does the answer depend on the circumstances?
 
CHESTERTONRULES:
I’m sorry to see you are suspended, but I did want to respond. I didn’t have time the other day, and I hope you can rejoin after you get back.
Your last post was deleted I see, suffice to say you seemed rather angry. That wasn’t the intention.
This is a subject that has evolved for me over time. I was very much of the opinion you express after 911. But time, hopefully maturity, and observation have turned me around. This isn’t even a Catholic issue. Human beings through history have learned these hard lessons. It’s more about separating our emotional and intellectual response to injustice.
We can justify a lot of things emotionally. Certain crimes do that. Drug dealers, child molestors, serial killers, ect. It is very easy in fact to dive into that mindset.
But we are not animals. We are not barbarians. We are not wild dogs. We are Christians with souls, and are called to something higher than what our immediate emotional response creates. If we allow that side of us to control us, then there is no depth to which we will sink. The biggest examples of that were the Nazis.
And they were firm believers in torture.
Christ did not redeem us to act like animals.
 
JustaServant said:
CHESTERTONRULES:

Your last post was deleted I see, suffice to say you seemed rather angry. That wasn’t the intention.
This is a subject that has evolved for me over time. I was very much of the opinion you express after 911. But time, hopefully maturity, and observation have turned me around. This isn’t even a Catholic issue. Human beings through history have learned these hard lessons. It’s more about separating our emotional and intellectual response to injustice.
We can justify a lot of things emotionally. Certain crimes do that. Drug dealers, child molestors, serial killers, ect. It is very easy in fact to dive into that mindset.
But we are not animals. We are not barbarians. We are not wild dogs. We are Christians with souls, and are called to something higher than what our immediate emotional response creates. If we allow that side of us to control us, then there is no depth to which we will sink. The biggest examples of that were the Nazis.
And they were firm believers in torture.
Christ did not redeem us to act like animals.
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I don’t remember the post or that I was angry. Reading the posts that are here I can’t imagine that I was.

Regardless, my position hasn’t changed.

I believe that if you are pro life then you should support steps taken to save innocent lives.

Do you think the pain of childbirth is sufficient to make abortion legal?
 
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