>>508782027killing your nations enemies isn't utilitarian. Killing your nation's enemies isn't done to increase the pleasure of living beings, or even humanity. Killing your nations enemies is done to benefit your nation and keep your people safe, even if your nation's enemies belong to a more populous nation , and even if killing your nation's enemies results in more human beings dying than if you just surrendered.
So what we're talking about has nothing to do with utilitarianism.
The reason to commit torture is exactly the same as the reason to kill your nation's enemies : because it will benefit your nation and keep your people safe.
For example if you capture a senior terrorist with his laptop and he refuses to give you the password, so you torture him, or maybe you threaten to torture his wife and he gives you the password, you can verify whether the password is true or not and now you're able to capture or kill the other terrorists much quicker before they can do other attacks that will kill yoour countrymen.
So you've already admitted that it's ok to kill people in order to keep your people safe, so how the fuck is it le bad to hurt people in order to keep your people safe?
Don't you see how retarded that is?
>War is all about optics,same potential concerns go with killing enemies. besides you can just torture people in secret , or you can just use propaganda on your populace to make them more accepting of torture since the current modern aversion to torture is just manufactured , irrational sentimentalism anyway.