No Fondness for the Enemy

I do not like this. On NPR, a military psychologist, Bryce Lefever, on the subject of torture says:

"I have no fondness for the enemy, and I don't feel like I need to take care of their mental health needs."

There are many logically valid arguments for torture, even though they rarely hold morally. If someone knows he can extort information from a prisoner, thereby saving the lives of thousands of others, then logically, torture may be an option. It is another story that the techniques used by the US apparently were useless. They could have worked, and that means that the argument theoretically works.

But what is really disturbing with Lefever's statement is not that he approved of some useless painful interrogation techniques. It is that there are people he felt he did not need to take care of. Labelling other human beings as people you do not need to take care of, gives a very bad taste in one's mouth.

There is not any such category of people according to the laws of any Western (or Eastern) democracy. Bank robbers have legal rights. Enemy soldiers have rights described in the Geneva Convention. Murderers cannot legally be lynched by angry mobs. Every human has a value. Every human is worth some care and protection. Every human has rights.

I took Lefever's statement verbatim but out of context. It is possible that he did not mean it quite that bad. Let's give him the benefit of the doubt. He has the right to it. He is human.