[LarryL]

> I don’t believe for a second that someone who would torture or abuse or kill someone on the orders of someone else was ever a ‘good person’

That's easy to say. But context matters a lot!

What about this: your family is held hostage, or you live in a dictature where disobedience means at best prison, and often retaliation against your family. Real example: I've met a guy -a political refugee- at work whose daughter was ABDUCTED by the police of his country to put pressure on him! Can you imagine his anguish? Now, you are ordered to go in this room and "extract a confession" from someone or to kill them. What would you do? (Knowing that there are NO CHANCES that you can escape/run without awful consequences at least on your family, it's not a movie).

Same for going to war. Many times in history have the poorest been forced to go to war under pain of death (and possible retaliation on their family). What would you do in such a situation? Especially when you are poor and without "connections".

Truth is that it's very easy to force people to do awful things by the use of force/coercion. Very few will want to be martyrs or put their family at risk.

[the_af]

Do note that historically, in most cases of torture the torturers weren't themselves under threat, and their families weren't either. This hypothetical doesn't happen in practice.

I tend to support the parent commenter's opinion that torturers were never good people to begin with. I can understand murderers, but not torturers, and especially not torturers of people who haven't directly wronged them (e.g. when it's an "interrogation").

Extreme examples such as "but what if your daughter was raped and murdered by your prisoner" tend NOT to be the case of real life scenarios where torture actually happens.