Not more than about five minutes after the assassination of Osama bin Laden, a debate broke out between those who believe in torture and those who don't. The whole debate is based on doctrines, ideology, and belief systems. The believers avow that torture provided the Obama Administration with "key" clues that led to finding and "taking out" bin Laden. Their evidential base is slim, but they are sure they are right. The anti-torture folks, working from the same slim evidentiary base are equally adamant that torture did not provide any clues at all. It couldn't have. Torture never results in trustworthy information. You see, it's a matter of faith between those who believe in torture and those who don't. The actual truth of the matter hardly seems to matter.Both sides of the debate have missed the point. Torture is a form of violence, whether it "works" or not. Violence has ugly, hurtful, and unintended immoral consequences. Always. Unavoidable. Violence spawns violence. It is the breeding ground of hatred and revenge. For those naive souls who believe that in this case "the ends justify the means," it seems not to sink in that the ends and the means are the same thing. When we practice the violence of torture, we become the violence we practice. In some rare instances, perhaps, we do have to "fight fire with fire," but the usual way of putting out fire is with its opposite, a fire retardant. In 999+ out of a thousand cases, the only antidote for violence is its opposite, peace.
No sane, moral person tortures another person. The consequences to the human spirit are beyond bearing for the both the person being tortured and the one doing the torture. It requires insanity and a lack of morality to torture—the kind of insanity and immorality spawned by violence.
