Torture Ethical Dilemmas

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There has been an ongoing moral dilemma in our society as to whether the United States government should use torture for counter terrorism efforts and if the use of torture is ethically permissible. I believe that torture can be justified using the utilitarian, common good and virtue approaches under the following circumstances; a planned attack is on the horizon, a planned attack will kill large number of citizens and we are almost certain that the terrorist/s in custody is/are a culprit of the attack.
According to the ethical framework of the utilitarian approach, actions that produce the least harm or the greatest amount of good for the greatest amount of people can justify the moral use of torture. Using torture to extract vital information …show more content…
Counter arguments to this claim bring up the rights based approach stating “every human life is unique and should be rewarded with respect” (idea ?) and that torturing a suspected terrorist violates their basic human rights. My question is how do you reward someone with basic human rights who is underserving of those rights? For example imagine a group of students working on a project together and one of the group members decide they aren’t going to participate in the collaborative efforts of the project and the teacher gives them the same passing grade as the students who worked hard creating the project, is it right for the teacher to reward the student who did not contribute to the project? Just as, is it right to provide basic human rights to a terrorist whose end goal would be killing mass American lives thus taking away their right to life? I feel terrorist who lack concern about the many lives they plan on ending in order to achieve a desired goal shouldn’t be afforded with any basic human right because they do not respect the rights of

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