Violence?

[papillon]

But realistically, the choice is never anything like as clear-cut as that...

Which is a very important thing to remember at the moment, with the "war on terror" going on. A lot of people are making loud arguments that ANYTHING we do to ANYONE is okay because it's done in the name of saving lives.

After all, in a situation where you've seen a guy run out of a building right after setting a bomb and only he knows where the bomb is and you have only thirty minutes to defuse it, pretty much nobody is going to complain if you use 'torture' methods to get information out of him. (Of course, even then, it's a stupid idea to rely solely on making him talk, you should also be searching the damn building yourself.)

But the thing is, those situations pretty much don't happen except in fiction, where the writer can manipulate events for tension. And some people have trouble telling the difference between fiction and reality - a supreme court justice was apparently arguing that "You wouldn't want us to arrest JACK BAUER just because he had to torture information out of someone!" Well, yes, but that's 24, a ridiculously convoluted plotline crammed into a ridiculously short time period. It's NOT REAL.

We're all writers, we can all concoct scenarios in which you might 'need' to kill someone to prevent something worse happening. With a bit of thought we could probably come up with scenarios in which the hero thinks he/she needs to rape someone - hey, maybe there's this cult that sacrifices virgins so you have to frantically force sex on all the girls to protect them! (Wasn't there a horror movie with that plot?) But we have to remember that reality is rarely like that.

[PyTom]

Of course, the interesting cases are never black and white. So the question is, how do we deal with gray areas.

How's this for a scenario: Soldiers find cell phones in bomb-factories in Iraq, all with the same number programmed into them. They trace that number, and find it's a number in Pakistan. They further find out that cell phone has been used to call numbers in the US, UK, and Germany.

Now, knowing this, what do we do? Do we ask Pakistan to take the guy into custody? Assuming we do, is it permissible to interrogate him to find out if he's planned any attacks in the west? How about to torture him, or to use methods that may or may not be torture, depending on who you ask.

These are the questions that we face every day, when waging the war on terror. Answer them wrong, and thousands of people could die. (Emphasis on could.) Of course, there's a chance that the guy's innocent, and he just wants to keep up with his baseball, cricket, and soccer scores.

It's a tough call, and I'm glad I'm not the one who has to make it. I will point out to people that the decision-makers often have more information then you or I, making second-guessing them correctly hard.

[papillon]

Oh sure, it's never as simple as 'Everybody's innocent until they've actually committed the crime and should be completely trusted!' either.

Like with the stalker thing... in the news every so often you hear cases about girls and their crazy ex-boyfriends, who are known to be crazy, have made repeated crazy threats, have been served with restraining orders and told never to go near the girl, then show up with a gun and kill the girl before anyone can stop them.

I have no idea how one is supposed to protect stalker victims (and I wouldn't blame them for carrying guns themselves and shooting on sight if restraining-order guy comes around).

That kind of nutjob is LIKE a suicide bomber - they don't care what happens to them, they only care about accomplishing their task. And that sort of thing is tough to stop unless you start shooting at everyone suspicious.


(As for your actual 'case' - on the evidence you present, I'd suggest surveillance on the guy! That's enough evidence to get permission for spying in my book, and you'll probably find more out that way. ISTR reading that certain intelligence operations were disrupted because the US or UK wanted someone in custody ASAP so that politicians could make a big statement about how they'd Arrested Somebody rather than continuing to get useful information out of them, but even if so, that sort of thing is always going to be a judgment call.)

[PyTom]

on the evidence you present, I'd suggest surveillance on the guy! That's enough evidence to get permission for spying in my book, and you'll probably find more out that way.

You don't need permission or evidence to spy on a potential enemy in wartime. (And who would grant the permission, anyway?)

I'm assuming that the well of information coming from this guy has dried up, say because the NY Times published how we were monitoring him, and so we basically won't be getting more information via that route.

I'll also note it's important to distinguish between combatants covered by the Geneva convention, and unlawful combatants. The former wear a uniform or other insignia, and don't melt back into the general populace. The Geneva conventions are rather brilliantly structured, IMO... if you don't abide by the terms of the convention, you don't get its protection.

[papillon]

You don't need permission or evidence to spy on a potential enemy in wartime. (And who would grant the permission, anyway?)

... at this point I'm going to have to call halt because we're getting too close to real-world politics rather than ethics and morals discussions. (For example, I have a STRONG objection to declaring a PERMANENT state of war and suspending all protections within it... I agree about the difference in unlawful combatants if you actually pick someone up non-uniformed in a BATTLE but not if you've simply arrested them...) So I think my discussions at this point are useless to the original thread.

[kara24601]

Since we're talking (or at least it started that way) about ren'ai : I think a certain level of violence is allowable depending on the story even if it's a ren'ai but for the most part I think ren'ai as mostly and should mostly be "fluffy" romances and as such violence doesn't really fit in whereas sex can/does fit in better because sex doesn't have to be "doing it" ..."the horizontal tango" , ect. but "making love"

Hmm...um...in alot of Anime , at least one female character is almost always - if not always - violent towards the lead male ....on the one hand it can be very amusing to watch but on the other hand if we let ourselves think about it too much we realize that it's often inappropiate and overreactionary behavior on the female character's part.

It all depends on the story, characters, setting, the author's intention/reason for adding violence, ect.