The Importance Of Torture In The Military

Military members are undoubtedly held to a higher standard than the rest of society. Most citizens look to a uniformed military member in times of need. Even though military members are held to a higher standard, there are some circumstances in recent history where uniformed members have not met the standard. Torture in the military is one of these circumstances in which military members are not meeting the standard. Once the definition of torture is recognized, then torture should not be allowed in the military as it can lead to a slippery slope of violence among military personnel, it is not necessarily an effective method to obtain valuable information, it is morally wrong and it is not as successful as some people make it out to be.
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Torturing someone is a clear violation of their basic human rights. Once the torturer is placed position where they torture someone, they are dehumanizing their self because it is “a crime committed against the imagination” and in order to torture someone, the torturer has to place “the victim outside and beyond any form of compassion or empathy” (Dorfman). Not only does torture demand zero empathy from the torturer, “but also demands of everyone else the same distancing [and] the same numbness” (Dorfman). It requires that everyone who is involved and knows about what happened to turn off all emotions toward the victim and accept what they did was morally right. The goal of the torture is to essentially “turn its victim into someone who is isolated, over-whelmed, terrorized, and humiliated” and to “strip away from its victim all the qualities of human dignity” (Luban). Not only does this highlight the fact of the cruelty of torture, but also the fact that torture is cowardice. This is because the torture is done when “the captive not only cannot escape, but cannot fight back or retaliate” (Mayerfeld). The captive is held defenseless against their will which “magnifies the captive’s terror” which is what many torture survivors refer to as a “living death” (Mayerfeld). No human should be subject to dehumanization as a trade-off of the number of people at stake “between the certainty of anguish and the mere possibility of learning something vital” (Luban). The problem with only considering numbers when weighing the cost and benefits is that once it is accepted “that only the numbers count, then anything, no matter how gruesome, becomes possible” (Luban). This leads to the conclusion that “if torture is not wrong, nothing is wrong” (Mayerfeld) because if torture is not wrong then it would be morally permissible to do any action to