What's getting to me about the Foley thing

[nancylebov]

As bad things go, what Foley did was only fair-to-middling bad. As a result of it, political careers will be ended and elections will probably be affected. There might be criminal charges.

At the same time, the US government has been torturing people, sometimes to death. It's quite plausible that this is still going on, what with all those prisoners being held in secret. A law has been passed making it legal to hold prisoners indefinitely in secret. This has not had nearly as much political effect as the Foley scandal, and the legitimizing of torture doesn't seem to be a big issue in the upcoming election.

I begin to suspect that I am surrounded by crazy people.

Comments

[nancylebov.livejournal.com]

I have a lot of sympathy with the "torture is wrong, it's just plain wrong, I tell you, AND it's evil" position, but the problem is that it's unconvincing to people who don't already believe it.

Utilitarianism isn't just doing the most expedient thing--you can take the long range into account, and torture has all sorts of nasty side effects in addition to not reliably accomplishing its stated purpose of getting information.