Requiescat in Pace: Unforgivables

[Dennis Grant]

No: HPFGUIDX 174738

--- In HPforGrownups at yahoogroups.com, "justcarol67" <justcarol67 at ...>
wrote:

> Dennis: 
> > But in both cases, you're being racked as a form of coersion. The
> purpose behind it COUNTS. <snip>
> 
> Carol:
> The purpose behind it makes it torture or not? I don't think so. If
> I were torturing a child to make him or her behave would I be any 
> better than Osama bin Laden and his henchmen employing the same
> means of torture for revenge or information? Torture is torture.

In this example, yes. Both your child example and your Osama example
are forms of coercion. To inflict pain in order to coerce or extract
information *IS* a form of torture.
 
> And we cannot discount the etymology of "Crucio," which JKR applied
> when she named that curse and invented the incantation:

Sure we can. She could have called it the "fluffy snugglebunny curse"
 and that doesn't change what it does - inflict pain.

Her etymology may reflect intent, but not function.
 
> Carol:
> He incapacitates him by inflicting *excruciating* pain on him. 

It's still incapacitating - which is the intent of the caster. And
once his target IS fully incapacitated, he stops.

The degree doesn't matter, save that there exists some reduced level
of pain at which the curse fails as a incapacitator. A curse that
caused mild discomfort wouldn't do the trick.

> Carol:
> We have a perfect example of a curse that would work equally well. 

No, we don't - and this gets back to second-guessing battlefield
decisions.

One could trot out a whole laundry list of *potential* alternates to
the one actually used, both canon and speculative. Some *might* have
worked, others *might* not have. There are too many variables and too
much left unsaid to be able to determine with any sort of finality if
such-and-such would ave worked or not.

Crucio DID work, and Carrow (eventually) walked away with his life (if
not his freedom) And while you may not be comfortable with the effects
 Crucio has, Harry did not prolong its use beyond what was required,
and it was non-lethal. That fails the definition of torture, and in
fact would qualify the use of Crucio as a legitimate weapon of war in
any modern international court.

To be perfectly honest, when you see the kind of power magic holds in
JKR's world, there are far, far more horrible things that magic
*could* be doing, and when compared to the effects of poor mundane
Muggle weapons, the worst the Wizarding World does would be a mercy
amongst Muggles - I'll point out, yet again, that there is a real
world version of Crucio extant as a weapon, and it is used as a
nonlethal mob control weapon *specifically* to be merciful.

So I'm sorry, I just can't work up the outrage here. 

> One last request before I drop this frustrating tennis-ball thread 
> in which no one seems to be convincing anyone else: Can we please 
> examine the curse within the context of the books using canon 
> support for our respective positions? I thought that was what this
> list was all about.

As far as I can see, that is exactly what we are doing. What you
appear to be having difficulty with is that just because JKR calls a
dog a fish, it don't make it so.

DG