English Torture Coursework

English Torture Coursework 

Is torture the right thing to do if to do if your saving hundreds of peoples life’s? Torture is a way of inflicting pain on someone in order to get key information out of them. Torture could be considered a good thing but it could also be considered a bad thing because you would be inflicting pain on someone mentally or physically. Some people may disagree with torture because of their religion believing that it is not right to harm other people in any circumstance. I believe that torture is a good thing but only in certain circumstances, for example; you should not torture if someone has committed a crime like robbery, but torture should be allowed to find out information about certain subjects such as; trying to find out about a terrorist attack and using torture to find out where the information behind the attack. I believe that torture should not be used as a punishment for a crime just a way of finding out information about a possible threat which could in the long run harm people. In this piece of writing I will address the idea of utilitarianism and whether or not it can be used to justify torture.

Torture could be considered being a good thing when you link it with utilitarianism. Utilitarianism means trying to get the greatest good for the greatest number of people. This means is torture could be considered a good thing when thinking about harming one person instead of allowing them to harm a larger amount of people. I believe that torture is a good thing when the outcome will save more people than your torturing.

How many people agree with torture? When looking at some facts and statistics about torture you can see that there are many people who agree with torture and that it should be used for a way of getting information. Here are two facts about using torture as a way of getting information out of people.

• A majority of people (61%) surveyed by Amnesty International disagree that torture is sometimes necessary and acceptable to gain information that may protect that public.

• Over a third (36%) believe that torture can be justified in some cases to protect the public. After reading this point it links with trying to get the greatest good for the greatest amount of people “utilitarianism”.

Recently the use of torture has been used in America. The CIA have released information about their use of “enhanced interrogation” techniques. These techniques were being used on the Al-Qaeda terrorists because of the the 9/11 attacks on the World trade centre in the US. Some of the methods of torture which were used were confinement in small spaces., and water boarding. After reading this from the CIA I believe this is the right thing to do. I believe this is right thing to do because they are using these methods to get information out of the people of Al-Qaeda, they use these methods to save the public from potentially more terrorist attacks in the near future. The CIA will use these techniques to save lives and I think that the people who disagree with torture do not no how it is being used, and how they are saving their lives and how effective these techniques are, also how much information can be gathered from this.

Many people disagree with torture because they may believe that it is not right to harm people, there are ways of torture used by government’s which do not hurt the person you are the people. Some of these techniques are called water boarding which is simulated drowning, and there is another method called sleep deprivation which is when you are depriving someone of sleep. If you are a person who disagrees with inflicting pain on someone there are many different ways the government can go around that.

Many people believe torture is inhumane but i disagree with this because what torture can accomplish. how it can save many peoples lives at the end of it. Overall, I believe that torture is the right thing to do to get information out of the people you are torturing, but it should not be used as a punishment for crimes such as; murder, and rape. I conclude that I believe that torture should be carried on as a method of gathering information and it should not be stopped in any country because of how effective it is and what i can do in the long run.