#but american bloodlust means that even if doctors won't help

[tanadrin]

Honestly what you said about corporal punishment made me wonder about amputation in, say, Saudi Arabia. Like, do they put comparable amounts of administrative thought into what ultimately resembles, in effect, Michael Madsen sawing a captive's ear off with a razor?

I don't know about Saudi Arabia, but I do seem to recall that if a victim or a victim's family chooses the lex talionis option in Iran, medical professionals get dragged into amputating the limb (or even in one case, extracting the eye). It's merciful in a way--obviously if you're going to cut off someone's limb, doing it in sterile conditions under anaesthetic is better than not--but it also feels like a parody of medicine, dragooning doctors into explicitly causing someone distress that is supposed to last for the rest of their lives.

The psychology of executioners and torturers is complex--people will, at the end of the day, find a rationale that lets them exist within the system they work in and also sleep at night, if they can--but needless to say, I think it is very rarely good for someone or their worldview to have to normalize inflicting a high degree of suffering for its own sake as acceptable in any context.