Torture

I am undecided about torture. I am attune to both its benefits and its negatives. If a group of terrorists in custody should be suspected of a plot to kill thousands of innocents, by all means, go after their nails and teeth. Before calling in Jack Bauer, though, there should be extreme amounts of evidence that incriminate these terrorists. Also, it should be known that many terrorists, especially terrorists heavily into their cause, will not divulge their secrets truthfully and willfully. People will say anything to get the pain to stop, and terrorists have been known to consciously give false information to mislead investigators. Moreover, some terrorists do not even respond to torture. A terrorist will sit there, electrodes pumping into his brain, and shake his head when asked a question. Furthermore, if the United States were to begin torturing prisoners of war, that would give the Middle Eastern countries permission to torture their POWs, American soldiers.
As Michael Levin writes, “How can we tell 300, 100, or just 10 people who never asked to be put in danger, ‘I’m sorry you’ll have to die in agony, we just couldn’t bring ourselves to…’ … I am advocating torture as an acceptable measure for preventing future evils.” I agree with him in this regard. It would be wrong to have innocents die because the government had refused to extract necessary information from prisoners who had known the information that would have prevented these deaths. Torture should only be used in extreme cases, like preventative actions against terrorist plots.