Polling Torture

Posted on 12/31/2009 at 2:33 pm by Bob Cesca

Ben Smith reports:

Polling torture depends, like so many policy polls, on how the question is asked, and it’s an area where both sides claim majority support.

Rasmussen’s latest finds 58% saying “yes,” after a bit of context, to: “Should waterboarding and other aggressive interrogation techniques be used to gain information from the suspected bomber?”

So what.

Polling torture is not unlike asking the ridiculous question, “If your daughter was kidnapped and raped, you’d want to torture and kill the bastard who did it, right?” Well of course I would! And that’s exactly why we have laws and law enforcement tasked with objectively delivering justice — and not justice by mob rule, posses and blind rage.

If we were each tasked with delivering our own brand of justice, America would be a very different and very ugly place.

So when it comes to torture, we have to rely upon objective lawmakers who understand all of the nuances and moral dark allies involved in such a thing. Fortunately for the world, cooler heads have often prevailed.

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  • ec

    I am reading “Justice” by Michael Sandel. He has a really nice discussion about the assumptions that people make when they say that they support torture.Basically, people need to think that the person that they want to torture is bad. Otherwise, the cost benefit analysis doesn’t work.His example is that few, if any, people would argue to torture the daughter of someone with knowledge of a terror threat even if the torture would work.

  • http://nanotyrnns.blogspot.com/ Nanotyrannus

    John Yoo, at a debate in Chicago with University of Notre Dame law professor Doug Cassel, seemed to have no problem with torturing a child to extract information from the parent and stated that there was no treaty or law that prevented the president from doing so.What those that support such tactics fail to realize is that such power in the hands of the government can be turned against citizens with remarkable ease. They think it’s just to punish the bad guys, but don’t realize how easy it is to label anyone “the bad guy.” I mean these people think the Fourth Amendment doesn’t apply, that we shouldn’t have Miranda rights and that torture is just fine. It’s scary that they still have so much influence in the 2000′s.

  • ec

    Nano,Hopefully, the majority of Americans would not agree with Yoo. You never know, though.

  • veralynn

    I think people say they agree that torture is a worthy investigative tool is because it is an abstract. If they were there in a cell while someone was being tortured, I would say no one would think that. Also, what about the torturer? What do you have to do to make it okay for YOU to torture someone else? Unless you are a sociopath, I can’t imagine how one would rationalize that.

  • Jim in Michigan

    Just asking that question is problematic. It has implications towards ones patriotism or toughness. Just like asking if you support the president right after 9-11, that’s how you get numbers like 90%. I’m worried that polls have become too important to the media and thus politicians. Watch Morning Joe for a week and pay attention to how many segments are based on the latest cherry picked poll question. The media seems to think that politicians have to bend to the latest will of the people, as represented in the latest FOX News poll or Quinnipiac or Rasmussen or CNN or Wall Street Journal or whatever poll. Press conferences with the president are filled with poll driven questions, which makes everything about process not policy. I’m afraid journalism is at it’s lowest point since the yellow journalism of the late 1800′s.

  • Jim in Michigan

    Experts say that torturing doesn’t get you good intelligence. It’s nearly unanimous in the intelligence and psychological fields that torture isn’t the way to get good intelligence. What would you do or say to stop someone from nearly killing you, or sleep depriving you or whatever? I’d tell them what they want to hear to stop the torture, I think most people would too.