Torture: A Matter of Opinion or a Question of Legality?
@98 Don
Murder is the unlawful killing of a human being in a peaceful civil society rule of law context; war is the absence of law. In war taking prisoners is always optional, and regardless of the Constitution or the Geneva Conventions, which are merely gentlemen’s agreements. If being humane to prisoners of war is cost effective, fine, if not, liquidate them. On this matter I’m a pragmatist; what ever works. However, I do not see any correlation between treating prisoners of war well and their reciprocal kindness in the history of American warfare. Indeed, one could conclude from the facts that being kind actually causes more brutality on the part of the enemy. Lastly, war is about doing evil, not being kind, and the failure to do evil to prevent more evil is also immoral, which is probably more of a danger to modern republics and their squeamish stomachs.
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If taking prisoners is always optional, what is the purpose of the Geneva Convention? If you are a pragmatist, how is it helpful to set a precedent of murdering our captives? Would this not invite our enemies to do the same? And who decides what is ‘evil’? You?
You have expressed, in brief, what is wrong with this picture. The USA is engaged in what you call “doing evil”, and by our actions, we have invited the world to do the same to us. Bad idea.
DS
