It's starting to look like most Americans are OK with the CIA's interrogation techniques under certain circumstances. But that red line of when to do it hasn't yet been adequately defined. And maybe it shouldn't. We know it when we see it.
Jonah Goldberg has an excellent piece at Nationalreview.com titled The Torture Taboo. Excerpt:
One of the great problems with the word “torture” is that it tolerates no ambiguity. It is a taboo word, like racism or incest. Once you call something torture, the conversation is supposed to end. It’s a line no one may cross. As a result, if you think the enhanced interrogation techniques are necessary, or simply justified, you have to call them something else. Similarly, many sincere opponents of these techniques think that if they can simply call them “torture,” their work is done.
But our vocabulary is limited to "torture" or "not torture." Not so with killing. More from Goldberg:
It’s odd: Even though killing is a graver moral act, there’s more flexibility to it. ... [W]e have the moral vocabulary to talk about kinds of killing — from euthanasia and abortion to capital punishment, involuntary manslaughter and, of course, murder — but we don’t have a similar lexicon when it comes to kinds of torture.
He's not just saying we need more words. He's saying we need to acknowledge that different levels of treatment might be appropriate, depending on the circumstance. All in all, it's a good article. Check it out.
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