Blog 8

After finishing the majority of the articles for tomorrows reading, I was thinking, well yes these views show when torture is good, when the results of said torture are sound, and who should be able to torture under what circumstances, but it wasn’t until I read Arar’s To Torture or Not To Torture did it answer my questions on the morality of torture. Both of Bagaric’s pieces exemplify different mediums in which torture is acceptable in society, however never delves into the moral permissibility of it. Arar on the other hand believes that torture causes moral strife in our societies and that “Torture can never be an instrument to fight terror, for torture is an instrument of terror." Using Arar’s view that torture is an instrument of terror, I began to realize that morally, we cannot permit an adequate circumstance where torture is moral, even if it’s to save innocence. Bagric uses examples of what good comes out of torturing members of Al-Qaeda to get information to find abducted soldiers. However if members from Al-Qaeda then in return torture a member of the U.S. army in order to find where an abducted member of their organization, then it is seen wrong and immoral in the eyes of the U.S. But is in not the same principle? The double edge sword of when society believes torture is acceptable is a strong piece of evidence that morally, torture is impermissible.  Despite the information that torture yields or how many lives it saves, it is still a terrible act performed on another human being, no matter who that human is. The day society believes that the second scenario, when the Al-Qaeda tortures an American to save on of their people, is morally permissible then maybe my response will change. Until then, I agree with Arar, you cannot fight terror with terror and it be morally sound.