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Originally Posted by Osem
Anyway, most of us agree torture's wrong but I'd still like to know why killing's deemed legal and justifiable in certain circumstances and yet torture apparently isn't.  |
Because killing is par for the course for war, and civilian casualties can't (always) be avoided. Torture is completely avoidable, and we signed up to treaties banning it.
It's a bit like it's OK to eat animals but not to impart unnecessary cruelty on them. You could argue that an animal is better of being subjected to cruelty than being slaughtered, yet the cruelty against animals is illegal and slaughtering/eating them isn't.