Open Letter to an Interrogator

You did write a well informed Blog. The one major objection I have to torture is the effect it has on the torturer. The type of hardening of the heart and callous disregard for suffering of a human being, how ever evil that person is, does not make anyone a better person.

I don't believe many people can go to work day after day and pour boiling water on someones feet or hammer their toes and not be effected in a personal way. (Not to mention would God approve of the action). I do believe in killing during war since I have been in the military since 1983. I also believe in Capitol Punishment so I am not a bleeding heart by any stretch. I just don't think it is healthy for the one doing the torture.

I have asked myself, as a Soldier, could I have been a guard at a Nazi Concentration Camp and done nothing. The true answer is that those places did not start out as bad as they ended but even from the start they were horrible. However, once they started down that slippery slope things just get worse and worse and more degraded. That is what standards stop.

Now I believe that Waterboarding as described to me, having never undergone it myself, is right at the grey line of what constitutes torture. From the definitions you used I would say it is right about where we could say it is "Severe". That is why I say the military is right to forbid it but if the National level Civilian agencies with authority from the highest leadership on a case by case basis (no deniability for the people authorizing it)it is ok.
But straight up torture is never ok.

tinsldr2@yahoo.com

The effect of torture on the torturer is well worth considering, and is part of what I refer to as the moral cost of torture. It's hard to imagine someone inflicting pain on another on a routine basis without it corroding his soul. (Indeed, under Jewish law, the man who slaughters animals for meat is required to be an exceptionally pious man, and to study the Torah every day, to counter the effect on his soul of slaughtering animals day in and day out.

The problem is, we could voice this same concern about any number of other occupations, including executioner and soldier. As a soldier, you have trained to kill people. Granted, those people are "the enemy", and would do the same to you if they had the chance. But then we spend all kinds of time, money, and effort trying to give our soldiers the ability to kill other people's soldiers with as little risk of being killed in return as possible. We don't want a fair fight. What does all of this do to the moral health of the soldier?

Or does the soldier's motive count for anything? Perhaps a soldier who aims to fight for the good, and not merely because his CO points winds him up and points him at an enemy is somehow insulated from the corrosive effect of deliberately inflicting death on another.

And likewise, maybe those who use torture to prevent worse events will be insulated from the corrosive effect of deliberately inflicting pain on another.