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On Torture

Anyone who chooses to support torture is on the horns of Plato’s dilemma: to paraphrase,

Are we good people because we do good things? Or do we do good things because we are good people?

If we choose the latter, I’m afraid it’s all too easy to justify actions because of our “goodness”. When it’s pointed out that waterboarding is a technique used by the Spanish Inquisition and the Khmer Rouge (and a technique used primarily to elicit false confessions) torture supporters, like Mark Thiessen, become enraged: when they did it it was bad; When we do it, it’s good, or at least morally neutral, because our motives are pure, and our enemies are so evil. Or they try to point out trivial differences: we didn’t tie our victims down with wire, but used less “painful” restraints. I find it difficult to conceive of a more morally incoherent position. Their arguments reduce to “We’re Americans. We’re special.”

One could be tempted to use the principle of double effect to justify torture, as Aquinas did in justifying murder in self defense. Motives are important, and it’s tempting to justify torture in terms of protecting us and our loved ones, our country. But the action of torture cannot be morally neutral. The intent of torture is to inflict pain and suffering on someone totally under out control. It cannot be merely a by-product or side effect of actions taken for honorable purposes; and the Catholic Church, I think, has it right: torture is morally abhorrent in all circumstances. One does wish, though, that the church was a bit more forthright about their actions in the past, some of which involved the torture and murder of some of my wife’s ancestors in the Albigensian Crusades.

I think Thiessen is a tribalist; which is to say that he is a type of relativist who believes that moral law allows us to treat those not of our tribe differently. He is not alone. I have heard a particular priest creep very close to that position in a number of sermons not long after 9/11 (but not recently; I fancy he feels differently now…).

There’s also the problem of the innocent. Torture supporters seem unable to admit that many of those we tortured were not terrorists at all, but people who ended up in our custody for any number of reasons, from tribal rivalries and treachery to the payment of bounties, always a source of corruption. How does one possibly justify the torture of innocents?

Nietsche was right: “Avoid people who have a strong impulse to punish.”

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The Ticking Time Bomb again…

We have in comments to this post,

In the case of Corporal Nachshon
Wachsman (not Waxman), there was in fact extreme time pressure,
although not a time bomb.  Hamas forced Wachsman to make tape in which
he said that if 200 Palestinian prisoners were not released by a
certain date and time (8 pm Friday Oct 14, 1994), he would be killed. 
Hamas released the tape on Tuesday, Oct 11, which was the first
indication that Wachsman had been kidnapped.  The Israeli security
forces located and captured an accomplice to the kidnap, who revealed
the location of the house in which Wachsman was being held.  They then
mounted a rescue efffort, which failed, and Wachsman was killed.  So,
whatever interrogation method they used on the accomplice, it did work
in that it quickly produced accurate information.
 
 
 
The Wachsman matter is the very unusual case in which:
(1) the information sought is discrete and particular; (2) the prisoner
does have the information, the interrogator knows it, and the prisoner
knows that the interrogator knows; (3) the accuracy of the information
can be confirmed very quickly, and the prisoner knows that the
consequence of lying is likely to be very severe.  It is very different
from the open-ended interrogation that was conducted at Guantanamo.
 
 
 
The Wachsman case is the sort of situation that,
according to the Israeli Supreme Court’s very interesting opinion on
the use of torture, could potentially be justified by the defense of
necessity.  In the Court’s analysis, torture is a crime.  Like other
crimes involving intentional infliction of injury (e.g., assault), a
person charged the crime can defend himself on the grounds of necessity
(e.g., yes I hit that man in the bank but only to prevent him from
shooting the teller).  The Supreme Court concluded that in any given
case, if the police or army chose to commit torture they would be
permitted to defend on the narrow ground of necessity – but that there
could be no blanket a priori permission to torture and that the defense
of necessity was one for the courts to evaluate, case by case, and
could never by a grant of permission to torture at the discretion of
the security services. 

Exactly. One should also note that if this is the perfect example of justification for torture, the ultimate end, the successful rescue of an individual, was a failure.