Tortured Trilogies
complicatedshoes, who is glad we tortured people (or perhaps doesn’t consider waterboarding somebody 180 times in a month torture), writes,
When Han Solo was frozen in carbonite, did Luke say, “Oh well. Jabba the Hutt is a bad guy but it would be wrong to use deadly force to get my friend back. I’d rather be known as the kindler, gentler Jedi”?
No. Because Luke Skywalker was not a pansy.
Who exactly did Luke Skywalker torture? Nobody. He didn’t panic and start lashing out desperately. Because he wasn’t a pansy. He came in cool and collected and cleaned up. He doesn’t provoke. And he understands power. He doesn’t go in and preemptively strike Jabba the Hutt. He even offers to negotiate first. Jabba never stands a chance.
Contrast that with his father. When his father has some family troubles, he goes ballistic and starts killing people. He decides it’s a dark, terrible world. He becomes so afraid of the death of his loved ones that he ends up sacrificing everything. Including his loved ones. He gets angsty and hurts a lot of people. He ends up encased in a cold dark cell where nobody can see his vulnerable, pansy self. He’s the guy who would do anything in the name of security. He was the embodiment of insecurity.
The torture discussion isn’t about deadly force. It isn’t about whether we take a particular threat seriously or not. It’s about refusing to become the evil that we abhor. It’s about having the humility to recognize our own capacity for evil. And it’s about having the confidence to reject it.
Seriously, if you’re forming a pro-torture argument, Luke Skywalker is probably the worst example you could pick.
3 years ago