At least the conclusion seemed to be that torture is not effective in soliciting information (though I though this had already been well established, as its pretty obvious really - someone under torture is liable to say anything the inquisitors want just to make it stop).
Yet torture is still going on
Undoubteably evil (and good) exists in individuals of every nation of the World.
No, not only does “evil” not actually exist, the use of metaphysical language excuses what are very human earthbound atrocities. “Evil” is not helpful when discussing political state actions. “Evil” is otherworldly, it comes from notions of heaven and hell. Therefore it enables people to say ‘I am not evil, therefore it doesn’t apply to me’. The lesson from history is that ordinary people do extraordinary things once those extraordinary things are normalised. The Stanford experiments are instructive here, people can be manipulated to do extraordinary things when authority normalises them
But perhaps two factors control the extent to which evil can prosper:
(i)How high the stakes are perceived to be at any moment in time - what can be sold to the population, or what is deemed "acceptable" or "a necessary expedient" to individuals within the security services or armed forces.
Not sure what you mean here
(ii)But more crucially - the political system in place in those countries, which in the case of Russia (& China) permits atrocities to be carried out on a far greater scale with minimal negative impact on the leadership.
No, The US and UK have committed atrocities on a equivalent scale and the leaderships have remained intact, in fact, they have done more than just retain their structural integrity, they have profited enormously.
I guess in the aftermath of 9/11, (i) was very significant in the USA. But in terms of (ii) the constraints on Russia and China are far far fewer than on the USA. (It’s not hard to visualise that Trump is capable of great evil - imagine if he were given similar unconstrained power on a level similar to Putin, and for 20+ years. But fortunately the political system has to a strong degree more checks & balances than in Russia or China - at least for now.)
Not true, to give just one example the war with Iraq was celebrated by checks and balances, not restrained. Enron lobbied for the invasion of Iraq just as ITT lobbied for the invasion of Chile, United Fruit to exploit Costa Rica etc and turn them into ‘Banana Republics’, and the East India Company lobbied for the exploitation of India. There is a long history of extraordinary acts of warfare in the name of capital interests that have been untouched by checks and balances. (The EIC existed before democratic checks and balances, but the fact is that their MO is a pattern repeated since the dawn of modern capitalism)
So on that basis, I still think is it perfectly valid even for the USA to call out Russia and the Putin regime for the wanton carnage and death they have caused to the people of Ukraine.
But no one has said that it is not valid for the USA or anyone else to call out the Russian invasion of Ukraine. The invasion of Ukraine absolutely should be called out, so, for that matter should the Holodomor and other atrocities
Therefore, I think its a great mistake (& common feature of quite a few contributors to this forum) to try to argue there is complete moral equivalence.
There absolutely is a moral equivalence, to suggest otherwise is moral relativism and more important, the sort or moral relativism that undermines the call out. If war, invasion and atrocity is wrong in Ukraine, it is wrong everywhere. And while it is right to call out atrocity in Ukraine, that call out is morally vacuous if equal atrocities elsewhere are considered *not* equivalent.