Religion & Law

This from Chris Eberle:

Rob expresses the concern that the argument I articulated in favor of waterboarding KSM blurs the line -- unacceptably -- between interrogation and punishment.  But I'm not sure about that.  I don't think that waterboarding KSM is permissible because he 'deserves' to be punished.  Retribution plays no role in the argument I articulated.  Rather, I think that KSM's culpability helps us to determine how to distribute inevitable harms.  That is, given the plan KSM culpably set in motion, some innocents are going to die.  But we have available to us an unexpected means of redirecting the harm -- not to its intended, innocent targets, but to KSM.  Given either that innocents in LA will die or that KSM will be waterboarded, KSM's having culpably initiated a plan that will otherwise result in the death of those innocents permits us to take the second option.  His culpability determines who will be harmed, given that *someone* will be harmed. 



Just to make clear that this argument presupposes no claim about KSM deserving to be punished, note that the argument I articulated permits KSM's waterboarding only if that would actually help to thwart his plan to kill innocents, and would be impermissible if waterboarding him had no such consequence. (I assume that, were he to 'deserve' to be waterboarded, we would be obliged, or at least permitted, to waterboard him even if doing so prevented no plan of his.  He would be getting what he deserved.)