The Case For Torture, by Michael Levin

In “The Case For Torture” an article written by Michael Levin, he attempts to justify the use of torture as a means of saving lives. Throughout the article, Levin gives the reader many hypothetical examples in which he believes torture is the only method of resolution. Though I agree with Levin, to some degree, his essay relies heavily on the fears of people and exploits them to convince people into thinking pain is the only way. In certain aspects, I could agree entirely with Levin, but when one reads deeper into the article, many fallacies become apparent. These fallacies detract from the articles academic standing and arguably renders the entire case futile. Levin’s strategy of playing with the fears of people is genius, but, with more creditable details of the issue the article would have sustained the scrutiny of more educated individuals. The addition of more concrete information, would have given people something to cling to, inherently improving the articles creditability.

In Levin’s first instance, he depicts a scenario where a terrorist, who has placed an atomic bomb in the city, was captured. This atomic bomb is to explode in 2 hours if his demands are not met. Levin believes this is a situation in which torture is the only way of extracting the location of the bomb before it explodes. The idea of this statement is to cause the reader to challenge the constitutionality of disregarding the civil rights of one person to protect the lives of millions. With such an extreme example, the line of right and wrong can easily be blurred to the average citizen. Is the choice of when to torture someone or not so easy? Yes, Lucas Stanley says, “If I knew my friends were in trouble, and some guy knew were or how to help them, Dam...

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...ction of information will have to face if the subject ever arose.

Finally, Levin concludes his article with a premonition that one day someone will threaten thousands of lives and torture will be the only way to save them. I say this is a grim but possibly realistic future. If one is willing to harm thousands of people without the thought of repercussions of his or her actions they have extraordinarily little care for their own lives and in turn would die before retracting their beliefs. So yes the threat of someone harming thousands of people will always remain but torture may not be the answer to that predicament.

Works Cited

Levin, Michael. “The Case for Torture.” Newsweek 7 June, 1982: n.pag. Rpt. in Elements

of Argument: A Text and Reader. 9th ed. Annette T. Rottenberg and Donna Haisty

Winchell. Boston: Bedford / St. Martins, 2009. 283 – 87. Print.