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I’ll you in on a little secret: there is no right and wrong.
Why would it be un-American to use legal* coërcive interrogation techniques?
- Let’s just assume they are legal for the sake of argument.
I disagree.
OK. Demonstrate that right and wrong actually exist independent of individuals’ views and systems they create.
There are two kinds of consequences:
(1) legal consequences, resulting from a finding of a court of law, and from an order made by that court.
(2) social and political consequences, resulting from people (allies, neutral and enemies) hearing about the action of the US government and its agents.
Consequences of the first kind don’t really matter all that much, except in so far as they affect the really serious consequences of the second kind.
Really? We tried Japanese prison camp guards for war crimes. At least two were convicted of waterboarding. Ya get that? They were convicted of war crimes for waterboarding Americans.
Oh, and did I mention they were fucking executed for their crimes?
So tell me again how waterboarding has not been legally established as torture?
The Japanese version was quite different and involved forced consumption of the water with beatings of the distended stomach of the persons being waterboarded.
Edit: I believe the term for what the Japanese did was the water cure.
Dude, you’re the one who made the original assertion. Prove yours.
Or don’t bother; works either way. The question of whether right or wrong exist is not in fact the subject of this thread, your repeated attempts to derail it notwithstanding.
You want me to prove something does not exist? Would you also like me to prove Russell’s teapot is not floating between the Earth and Mars?
Then what is the subject of the thread? Whether committing possibly legal acts is un-American?
Extraordinary claims require extraordinary proof. You asserted “there is no right and wrong,” which goes clean against the consensus of practically every human culture in history; the burden is on you to make the argument.
While we’re answering everything with hypothetical questions, you did read the second sentence of my last post, right?
ETA: looks like you did after all. OK, the subject of the thread appears to be: “How to torture like a commie”. Perhpas I’m in error there.
Well, I guess the supernatural must exist. After all, the consensus of practically every human culture is that the supernatural exists.
That may be the title, but what everyone seems to be talking about is how these actions are un-American and wrong.
Some of them appear to be stating that they are wrong, others appear to be discussing whether they are wrong. You seem to be the only one who is arguing that they are always perfectly OK as long they are not currently illegal and there are no investigations into their legality under way.
I really am baffled as to why you object so strongly to the mere discussion of these points, and why you feel compelled to demand that we not consider any of the techniques under discussion as torture unless or until a US court rules they are so. Perhaps you would upset yourself less if you avoided this thread.
That is as fundamentally different as “is” is different from “ought.” Cultures as cultures are not competent to make scientific judgments; ethical judgments are another matter. As it stands, the content of ethical standards vary widely from culture to culture, but all agree that there are some – as do most philosophers – and the burden is on anyone who negates that.
There seems to a general view of these boards that the actions of the US officials in the use of coërcive interrogation techniques is definitely torture, but it is actually a very open question. We have a legal system in this country to determine whether actions are in fact illegal. We should allow this system to adjudicate these matters before we start declaring that our fellow citizens have committed crimes especially on an issue where there is so much doubt.
I am not doubting that cultures have ethical standards. I am aying that there is no way for the content to be judged right or wrong. It is the content of the ethical standards that makes up right and wrong. All of this content is subjective to the individuals that make up these cultures. There is no objective and absolute right and wrong just subjective opinions.
Regarding the philosophers, see The WHYs of a Philosophical Scrivener, by Martin Gardner, Chapter 5: “GOODNESS: Why I Am Not an Ethical Relativist.”
You raise this point in various guises often and you clearly think it highly meaningful. It’s not.
“Right and wrong” are concepts borne of social consensus. Whether they have objective foundation is irrelevant. People act upon them and thereby make them real.
Perhaps it will help you if I take it out of the political and into the realm of art: if I write and perform and record and sell a song and everyone thinks it good and consequently buys it, I will become rich.
If someone whines: “There is no such thing as good. Whether the song is good is just subjective opinions”, they and their opinion will be irrelevant to whether I get rich. Indeed, they and their opinion will be very largely irrelevant, period.
You are that someone.