Torture Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1500 words

Torture - Essay ExampleThis melodic theme examines the pivotal differences between Alan Dershowitz and Elaine Scarry on the question of physical pang in order to determine whether the arguments of the precedent are adequately tackled by the last mentioned as well as the actual possibility of mental home of public accountability standards for extraordinary measures such as the use of physical torture to prevent terrorism. The ticking Bomb Argument The controversy surrounding the use of torture to prevent terrorism is explicitly demo via the ticking joker scenario, where a captured terrorist refuses to divulge information concerning the imminent use of weapon whether nuclear, biological or chemical device capable of killing and injuring a huge number of civilians (Dershowitz 259). The grave moral predicament here is whether the captured terrorist should be subjected to torture in order to disclose the location of the device or the give out to be allowed to explode and kill p erhaps thousands of people because of legal and moral considerations. In other words, the synthetic rubber and security of a nations citizens must be weighed against the preservation of human rights, which engenders a pick between one evil or another (Dershowitz 266, 272). While both Dershowitz and Scarry agree that the ticking bomb scenario is a rather hypothetical situation, they consider its implications for the individuals and institutions involved, as well as for the society as a whole, from vastly different points of view. According to Dershowitz, in nations such as Israel, for example, where both terrorism and the use of torture to prevent terrorism are anything but hypothetical, the ticking bomb case in fact provides a moral, legal and intellectual justification for applying the system of coercive interrogation (258-9). On the other hand, although being in the main deemed unproductive, those methods euphemistically called by the Israeli Security Services (GSS or Shin Bet ) themselves moderate physical military press sometimes proved successful and led to prevention of terrorist acts that otherwise might have killed many civilians (Dershowitz 258). The latter observation, however, implies that the possibility of an actual ticking bomb case shouldnt be readily ruled out. Similarly, pursual September 11, 2001, it has become not so rare practice in the US security and cognition services to employ rough interrogation technique