Human Rights First: Primetime Torture

I ran across this video and found it to be very well-done and thought provoking. I am an ardent 24 fan and wish I could be Jack Bauer, but it's difficult to say that my views on torture and what is morally allowable, practical and condonable have not been affected (consciously or otherwise) by the numerous torture scenes found in every season.

For those unfamiliar with 24, Jack Bauer is essentially a good man who feels the ends justify the means. He has really bad luck as he seems to always be involved in some situation where terrorirsts are in process of doing something amazingly awful so it does simplify the argument for torture in those few scenes where a nuclear bomb is about to detonate and he is forced to choose torture, as the lesser of two evils.

But as this video explains and those who oppose some of the style of the series agree, Jack Bauer's methods are far from an accurate depiction of effective interrogation techniques. Not only are these techniques infreqntly used, some argue that their use and depiction in mainstream media may enforce negative and incorrect ideas about the US' view on terrorism and interrogation techniques.

After thinking about the video, I realized that it's not a dissimilar argument put forth by those opposing movies such as "Passion of the Christ" (which I saw and enjoyed as a movie). The argument essentially revolves around the idea that there are a lot of close-minded and less educated people out there that see the same thing that I can, and will come away with very different ideas than I did, hence the need to boycott such material etc. So even though I didn't walk away from 24 or Passion of the Christ thinking that it's ok to torture people or that Jews killed Christ and are bad, does NOT mean that plenty of people do come away with those ideas.

What do you think?

Click here for the second part of the film.