Debating torture apologists: it's pretty frickin' simple.

(Yes I know, this post is late. It happens)

Recently, in America, President Obama and former Vice-President Cheney had a debate on American national security. Obama defended the changes made to security, such as attempting to close Guantanamo Bay and banning the American use of torture. Cheney, in contrast, defended the Bush Administration's previous policies, saying that they were in the national interest of security.

The pro-Cheney arguments are as such: terrorists are coming to kill us, and the conventional methods of stopping them are insufficient. Thus, to protect our citizens, we must take harsher methods, such as wire-tapping to intercept such terrorists, enhanced interrogation to extract other information and places like Guantanamo to keep then from getting out and trying to kill us.

The above argument does seem quite convincing to the undecided, but it cracks easily. And what surprised me was during the debate was how Obama didn't tackle the obvious flaws in the Right's argument: that such anti-terrorism methods are inherently undemocratic in every possible way. That these methods are the anti-thesis of a liberal, free democracy.

This is my vebalised response to Cheney.

What would happen if we wiretapped not only suspected terrorists, but also suspected murderers and rapists and placed these suspected criminals in high-security jails without trial, and tortured them into submission? There is a very high chance that we would slash crime rates. The worst people would be locked up, streets would be safer, Western countries would be safer. But there is a very good reason why we don't enact such pro-law and order policies: they are the antithesis of what our civilisation stands for.

In a morally right society, if you are suspected of a crime, and there is sufficiant evidence to say that you have committed the crime, then you are taken to court. Only then and there, if you are guilty beyond all reasonable doubt to have performed the crime, then you are sentenced.

This process undoubtedly results in guilty people being let free due to too little evidence. These unconvicted will often go back out into the public and often reoffend. So why don't we legislate policies to lock them away, in the same manner as suspected terrorists?

Being suspected of a crime does not mean that either you will commit one, or will do so. EVERYBODY (including myself) is capable of committing crimes. Being short tempered does not make you domestic abuser, an occasionally risky driver is not preemptively guilty of manslaughter, and a Muslim who is outspoken in their criticism of the US's history of meddling in Arabian politics is not a supporter of Islamic terrorism, and should not be judged as one until there is evidence beyond all reasonable doubt that they are.

If we begin assuming that suspects are guilty simply for being suspects, then innocent people WILL be jailed in process. That is not the path to tyranny. That is tyranny.

Oh, and torture isn't just inhumane-it doesn't fucking work, either.

Topic cross-posted here, here, here, here and here. And from TIME: here, here and here.