Kantian Imperative's Essay: The Case For Torture

It is my belief that the essay “The Case for Torture” is flawed and that Torture is impermissible whatever the case. This is as torture is fundamentally immoral. The text states that the perpetrator aims to obtain valuable information which could potentially save thousands of lives, and what is the damage or loss of one life compared to this? However, torture achieves this goal through inflicting excruciating pain to the powerless victim, which cannot ever be justified. All religions take this view for life is sacred and we should not knowingly and deliberately damage another person’s body and attempt to break his will through the use of torture. We must always combat terrorism and threats on a moral high ground, in order to ensure that the human race does not degrade and resort to such methods.
Moreover, torture treats the victim as a means to an end and not an end in themselves, which is contrary to the Kantian Imperative, which states that humanity must be treated as an end and never as a means, reflecting the value of human life.
Torture treats the victim as an object, not as a person with all the value that we associate with persons, to achieve the aims of the torturer, be it to extract information or simply to deter others from committing the act. Torturers also often explicitly dehumanize their victims as seen from how an American female soldier straddled on a male prisoner at Abu Ghraib Prison in Iraq. Furthermore, torture could be counterproductive. This is as it may anger the fellows of the victim, instigating them to carry out more acts of terrorism like the ones expressed in the text. For example in Iraq, captured victims who were tortured were seen as heroes or martyrs in the eyes of other Islam extremists, causing them to intensify attacks against US troops. Also, the exposure of the tortures at Abu Ghraib outraged the world and weakened the credibility of the country, for most people found those acts
despicable. In fact, it may be more productive to sit down and negotiate with the terrorist, leading to a win-win solution. This would also win the hearts and minds of the people, which is vital a country’s success in this Internet Age where people all over the world can condemn or embrace an action easily. In conclusion, torture is always morally wrong and should never be permissible on moral, philosophical, and religious grounds. It is also more effective to use other methods, which further weakens the argument for torture.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/religion/ethics/torture/ethics/wrong_1.shtml http://hoosierinva.blogspot.com/2008/02/surrendering-moral-high-ground-on.html http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/torture/
http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/features/2008/0801.clark.html