I don’t know the Nielsen ratings for the Fox drama Lie to Me but I imagine many people watch it. I know many people on Twitter do. Last night’s episode was about a serial rapist who blinded his victims by pouring acid into their eyes after raping them. It totally sickened me to see the women who survived the experience but were blinded and horribly disfigured. If you haven’t seen it the episode will be posted on Hulu in a couple of days.
As I watched the interaction between the main character Dr. Cal Lightman and the rapist I wondered if anyone would condone torture to get the information from Jenkins that might save the current victim of the copy cat rapist who was working in collaboration with Jenkins from his cell.
How many pending deaths does it take to condone torture? 3,000? 5,000? 1 million or 1?
How many people watching the episode felt deep down inside that had they been the FBI agent in charge this could all be resolved by simply waterboarding this guy. Why take the time to patiently try to extract information about who Jenkins was communicating with on the outside? Clearly the FBI Special Agent was itching to get at the truth that Jenkins held inside. Jenkins’ smirk and his taunting of authority must have been enough to push the FBI agent to the point of breaking. He could get the information much more quickly with a special room and some “enhanced interrogation techniques”.
You see where torture leads to? Today its Al Qaeda, tomorrow its a serial rapist, then what? Admit it, you watched the program and hated the Jenkins character. Anything they did to that guy was not bad enough. He deserved anything that he got. I felt myself thinking that way and its only a TV show. I keep telling my kids when they watch a scary program “It’s only TV”. But I wanted to torture that guy so that Carmen’s life could be saved.
Of course in the end Cal Lightman finds the clue, saves Carmen before she can be blinded and helps to capture the copy cat rapist. But that’s TV not real life.
What would you have done?
If you would have tortured Khalid Sheik Mohamed to avert a terrorist act that might save the lives of dozens, hundreds, thousands would you do it? Take that one step further- would you torture one man to save the life of one person? How much “proof” would you need that the person in your custody had valuable information before you resorted to torture? Or is the fact that he was guilty of one crime enough to torture him to potentially avoid a second crime?
Where does it end? Is it only TV?
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{ 2 comments… read them below or add one }
Come on now! The sickening thing is the sickos that dream up these scenarios, make the television program, and the weirdos that watch it for entertainment! The problem is television (which by the way, is, like make-believe).
“Where does it end?”
The slippery slope argument is often abused to exaggerate the effects of policy change, but here you have a good point. Individual incidents of torture may seem justified from the utilitarian perspective, the perspective that seems to dominate the torture debate. But when you translate individual “justified” events of torture into a policy that authorizes torture, then we’re likely to have far-reaching negative consequences. Individual instances of torture do not express those consequences, and these indirect results are very hard to predict and measure.
Ethical rules and maxims go fuzzy when you introduce psychopaths into the equation. Your article highlights how challenging the issue is, and how inadequate the “cost-benefit analysis” approach is. Looking forward to hearing other comments.