re: #473 Last Mohican

Is there a definitive definition of “torture”? Is is merely causing unpleasant physical sensations? If so, then certainly waterboarding is torture. But so is sleep deprivation. So is imprisoning someone in any jail cell. Or even just giving them a scratchy blanket to sleep on.

I’m not saying this to try to reduce this issue to absurd simplicity. Quite the contrary. I’ve always felt that making the blanket statement that “torture is wrong and we must not do it” is overly simplistic to the point of being indefensible. Of course it’s acceptable under some circumstances to cause discomfort to someone if it would save innocent lives. I think it would be foolish to argue otherwise. The question is how and when is it acceptable, and that’s not an easy question to answer.

You have to wonder if that isn’t the goal for some people- to define torture down to the point where it’s meaningless. Is punishing a person guilty of a crime “torture”? Perhaps making a child clean their room is torture. Making adults work to provide for themselves is torture. It gets to a point where defining down the concepts (crime/punishment/etc.) leads to anarchy.