Det tionde israeliska kriget - 3 - Logisk konsekvens, forts.

I will quote to you (from memory) a talk with a Latin-American revolutionary who told me about torture in Brazil. I asked: "What is wrong with torture?" and he said: "What do you mean? Do you suggest it is all right? Are you justifying torture?" And I said: "On the contrary, I simply ask you if you think that torture is a morally inadmissiable monstrosity." "Of course," he replied. "And so is torture in Cuba?", I asked. "Well, (sic) he answered, this is another thing. Cuba is a small country under the constant threat of American imperialists. They have to use all means of self-defence, however regrettable."

Then I said: "Now, you cannot have it both ways. If you belive, as I do, that torture is abominable and inadmissible on moral grounds, it is such, by definition, in all circumstances. If however there are circumstances where it can be tolerated, you can assume that there is nothing essentially wrong with torture, since you assume that there is nothing essentially wrong with torture itself. Either you condemn torture in Cuba in exactly the same way you do for Brazil, or you prevent yourself from condemning the Brazilian police for the very fact of torturing people. In fact, you cannot condemn torture on political grounds, because in most cases it is perfectly efficient and the torturers get what they want. You can condemn it only on moral grounds and then, necessarily, everywhere in the same way, in Batista's Cuba or in Castro's Cuba, in North Vietnam and in South Vietnam."

Kołakowski, Leszek: My Correct Views on Everything. A Rejoinder to Edward Thompson's "Open Letter to Leszek Kolakowski", s. 5-6