Torture
“The use of torture is necessary to protect lives.”
Torture has been about for hundreds of thousands of years as a form of punishment for those who defied orders or broke the law. Modern forms of torture are used for extracting information. Early forms of torture used by the Romans was crucifiction, yes the same way that Jesus “Died”, the jews had stoning, no, not the hippy type of stoning, and the Egyptians had Desert sun death. These were deemed necessary (to deter people) or good (to punish the immoral).
There are people who agree with torture because it is a way to put off evil doers and its also necessary to extract vital information, for example, Sam Harris from the Huffington Post said and I’m paraphrasing “Imagine you have a terrorist in your custody and he gloats about having planted an explosive in the heart of a nearby city and all forms of negotiation have failed, there is still time to stop this unfortunate event from unfolding”. In this situation it seems that subjecting this unpleasant fellow to torture is justifiable. Obviously there are people who disagree with the use of torture because it is unethical or it’s morally wrong to harm someone to prevent harm to others, Reverend Nicholas Mercer for example, he says that the Christians oppose the use of torture because “Our lord was tortured.” Suffering is an inevitability. Someone hurts you or someone you care about, you hurt them back. There is no way you are going to let them harm you or others, that is why torture is necessary… to punish the immoral.
As a christian it may be morally wrong to bring suffering to others but then does the bible not say “treat others like you expect to be treated”. Does this not mean that if a terrorist, for example, caused harm to others, would he not be treated the same. If not then these so called “Christians” are defying the commands of the Lord. Every person on this planet has human rights and the right to remain silent when questioned but when tortured it dehumanizes people to make them easier to manipulate, like a pawn.
Torture is sometimes used to destroy the autonomy of the victim some societies have used torture to suppress independent thought and convert people to ‘right-thinking’. The individual is tortured until they abandon their own views and beliefs and adopt those of the torturers. The victim ceases to be an ‘end in themselves’ but becomes just another means to support the regime of the torturer.
This is an example, from a BBC report on Ethics, as to what torture could do to a person. An extremist may decide to enforce torture because the person being tortured may have different religious beliefs or may not want to be an extremist. Hence, the reason the extremist will do all he can to convert this person into an extremist by breaking down the person until they are ‘Reborn’. This is the reason why I disagree that torture is necessary to protect the lives of others as torture can be used to destroy someone’s life.
Esteban Velasquez
January 29, 2015 at 12:00 pm
Esteban, this is a very good piece of argumentative writing. Here are some things to consider:
Targets:
1) Check your use of ‘was’ and ‘were’. Occasionally, you use the wrong form of the word depending on the singular or plural pronoun.
2) There are occasions when you splice sentences (using commas when you should really start another sentence). For example:
‘Early forms of torture used by the Romans was crucifiction, yes the same way that Jesus “Died”, the jews had stoning, no, not the hippy type of stoning, and the Egyptians had Desert sun death.’
3) Remove your reference to Sam Harris. It is too long.
4) Try to include some language features typical of argumentative writing (rhetorical questions, emotive language, anecdotes, triplets, exclamatory phrases, imperatives).
This would currently receive: 31/40 (B)