Share
Imagine yourself the commander of a military force at war.
You face an implacable enemy who does not respect civilized war conventions. They hide among civilians; they explode bombs amid noncombatants; they employ child soldiers; they torture, rape and murder prisoners.
You have reliable intelligence that says the leaders of this group are meeting, and you have the relevant information that will allow you to strike, killing the leadership and cutting short the war by months.
However ... they're meeting in the basement of an elementary school.
What do you do? Do you launch the F-16s, knowing that the innocent will die along with the guilty? Do you allow your enemy to escape, hoping that another opportunity will arise but almost certainly condemning more of your own, the enemy along with untold innocents caught in the middle to suffering, lifelong, debilitating injury and death?
The answer is far from simple, and will depend heavily on circumstances not listed here. But, excepting a pacifist, nearly anyone would have a set of circumstances where they would strike, even if the innocent die.
That's war ... it's expensive, it's brutal, it's ugly and the innocent die no matter what precautions are taken.
Anyone who under even the most stringent circumstances would commit a nation to war allows for the possibility that the suffering and death of the innocent is acceptable given sufficient political ends.
This is the simple, brutal and unavoidable calculus of war ... and it is a fact. This fact unfortunately gives the lie to objections to the torture of terrorists.
Infliction of suffering and harm on the innocent is unfortunate and undesirable, but may be occasionally necessary.
Certainly this kind of treatment is not for commonplace criminal investigations, but for the extreme cases that present no other avenue by which to gain information and save lives, it may be a regrettable necessity.
Most object to torture because it is wrong in that we may accidentally torture the innocent.
This is a faulty premise, though, given that we may likewise bomb the wrong building and orphan, maim or kill the innocent in that case ... but this gives few pause when faced with a just cause ... most especially when viewed from 30,000 feet on CNN.
As Sam Harris says in his essay " A Loophole for Torquemada," "if we are willing to act in a way that guarantees the misery and death of some considerable number of innocent children, why spare the rod with suspected terrorists?"
It has likewise been argued that torture may elicit false confession or intentional misdirection from suspects under duress.
This proposition runs out of steam up against reality as well. How many suspects give false confessions now? How often do the police waste valuable time running down bogus leads on the bad information given by recalcitrant criminals?
No single bomb wins a war, and no single confession is going to end terrorism.
To go back to Harris, "If there is even one chance in a million that he (the suspect) will tell us something under torture that will lead to the further dismantling of al Qaeda, it seems that we should use every means at our disposal to get him talking."
Finally, there is the argument that torturing the worst of the worst will lead our enemies to torture our service members should they fall into their hands. This is specious at best and falls on its face.
First of all, Qaedist thugs already routinely murder and torture their prisoners, regardless of how well or badly we treat them at Gitmo.
Secondly, another analogy - when soldiers in Afghanistan kill Taliban militants, or when police shoot a suspect, we don't morally equate that to a thug gunning down a cop or a clerk at 7-Eleven, and we shouldn't equate torture as terrorism to torture as interrogation.
This may seem like an option at worst impossible and at best unappealing, but it is at least worth considering. When the stubbornness and faith in the wrongness of torture give way to a considered approach to suffering and happiness, the issue becomes unclear.
I certainly don't like the idea, but it's time to consider the right and wrong of torture in the clear light of reason.
I think that the issue simply needs to be dragged out, dusted off and examined before we draw simplistic conclusions.
Leave a comment 10 Comments Write a letter to the editor
All letters to the editor must include a name, e-mail, daytime phone number and affiliation to Virginia Tech. Affiliation includes: year and major for students; position and department for faculty and staff; current city for alumni and parents.
Before this gets overheated I want to restate that this is about an ARGUMENT against torture. I abhor torture at a visceral level, but I find the standard, pat objections lesss than compelling.
Reply to this Top
There is no such thing as a "ticking time bomb" scenario in regards to doing intelligence work. To understand more about the history of our country engaging in torture and why it's ineffective, please read "Truth, Torture, and the American Way" by Jennifer Harbury. We were lucky enough to have her speak on our campus several years ago.
Reply to this Top
Kyle, I hate to disagree with you but there are "ticking time bomb" scenarios, but they are almost always on the tactical level. I'm not using this as an argument for torture, just pointing out that there are occasions where the timeliness of a particular piece of intelligence is real.
Reply to this Top
I think it important, at this point, to emphasize that the user posting under the handle 'Minor Kyle' is NOT the same person as myself.
Reply to this Top
A thousand pardons. I skimmed it and didn't even catch it. My bad.
Reply to this Top
Gabe, if I understand you correctly, you're saying that false confessions don't occur from torture because we don't see them happen under non-torturous conditions. If that is your statement, I believe you've taken quite a leap to your conclusion. If you make a false claim while in jail, it will be investigated, most likely discredited, and you will stay in jail. If you say nothing, you will likewise stay in jail. The situations are identical, so there is no motive to lie. With torture, if you know nothing, you will likely be continually tortured, whereas if you lie, it may stop. There's the incentive that I believe you're overlooking.
Reply to this Top
Jason, I'm saying that false confessions could occur either way, and if you have a recalcitrant suspect, perhaps pourng water down his nose might get him to talk...that's all. Like I said, it's ugly and I don't like it...it's just that these are the standard arguments you hear on Bill Maher, John Stewart or Keith Olbermann...and they're just jnot satisfying. Is torture wrong? You bet...but for reasons we need to explore in "the clear light of reason.
Reply to this Top
I appreciate the honesty of this column. To a large extent, torture is generally regarded as something that is simply an 'unspeakable horror' and so people who are proponents of torture are, of necessity, evil in their own right. So often the debate is clouded by emotion that we never really get to look at the facts. Are there circumstances where torture has led to the prevention of an attack or the apprehension of a criminal? I bet there are. Are there instances where innocent people have been mistakenly tortured for information they simply didn't have? I bet that happens too. As Gabe points out, it seems reasonable to say that torture in and of itself is bad - humans just simply shouldn't treat other humans that way. Given that, it seems reasonable to say that torture is never justified. But I think it merits a look into the nature of what we call 'basic human rights,' and whether or not those rights can ever be rescinded by a particular action you undertake. For instance, it is clearly heinous to simply grab a guy off the street and waterboard him for your amusement. But what if you witness that guy attempt to kidnap a child, and when you detain him he tells you there are other children that you'll never find. Is torture ok then to discover where he's hidden them? Interesting topic.
Reply to this Top
I was taught that a person isn't evil, their actions are evil. And in general it is a good philosophy, but it is obviously too simple: giving someone a fine for a crime isn't the same as stealing their money, and the death penalty isn't the same as murder, in my opinion. Justice makes those actions OK. But if a person is executed because they can't afford a good enough lawyer, then that isn't justice. Likewise, the problem isn't with torture, the problem is with the lies that are told to cover up torture. If torture really is justified in some cases, then it should be obvious. But it isn't, we haven't been given a straight answer.
Reply to this Top
Gabe, thanks for the clarification. I appreciate your willingness to respond to the message board. In light of your comments, though, I still believe the distinction I make is valid. In the case of a prisoner, there is less, if any, incentive to lie. Imprisonment is a much more passive punishment than torture, and upon revelation that the confession is false, imprisonment will continue. In the case of torture, the incentive to lie is the possibility of stopping the torture. At some point, self-preservation trumps loyalty to one's cause or country. So if people break under torture to save themselves when they have information, it seems that if you know nothing and believe you have to lie to stop the pain, what have you got to lose? Again, I'm not disagreeing with your overall article, just pointing out that I think the argument about potential false information has a bit more potential for validity than the other "don't do it because it's not nice" type arguments.
Reply to this Top