Funmurphys: the Blog

Torture

What is torture? Is it simply inflicting pain? What about discomfort? Is torture, like one judge's definition of obscenity something you recognize when you see it? If we want to discuss torture, don't we have to agree what it is before we can make any sense of the subject? We could take the approach for discussion to describe it as extreme pain inflicted either as punishment , a means of political control, or to elict information, frequently causing injury and possibly death.

If you wanted to write guidelines about what is acceptable and what isn't, you would have to be far more detailed. And as soon as you start the sorting process, you'll be forced to conclude that a particular method isn't quite torture, and then the carping begins that you're in favor of torture or a big meenie who likes inflicting pain etc. Heather McDonald has a pretty complete report on the interrogation of prisoners, which is what most of the current controversy is about, and the effect or our inability to have an honest debate on the uncomfortable subject has. Certainly the official sanction of anything resembling torture comes from the desire for information; there is no doubt an element of punishment (or revenge) in the actual conduct.

Is it always wrong? That's certainly what my heart tells me. But can I leave it to my heart? I suppose you can even define torture as the amount of pain that is wrong to inflict. There are plenty of people who take an absolute stand that it is always wrong, and there are those who think that it isn't. Is there any basis for thinking there might be a time a place for torture?

One of the objections is that it is ineffective - it plain doesn't work. For punishment, for terror, for keeping a tyrant in power, clearly torture works. The historical record clearly shows that repressive regimes fall not when the it performs too much torture, but when it doesn't. Saddam stayed firmly in power, "winning" 100% of the "vote", because he was always willing to do whatever it took to stay in power. Pol Pot wasn't toppled because of Cambodian revulsion at his killing fields, but because Vietnam invaded.

But clearly anyone with a shred of conscience condemns torture as a means of punishment and/or political control. Although a California attorney general didn't seem to mind rape as a punishment, and the American public seems unconcerned over prison rape, with it's probability that more men than women are raped in America. I suppose that indifference goes hand in hand with the policy of having another country do our torture for us - if it's not done by someone actually on the US government payroll, we have no guilt.

But what about interrogation? Is torture better at getting the truth than less painful methods? I doubt there are any scientific studies on the subject, so what we are left with is reasoning and anecdote. The reasoning is that under torture, people will say anything to make it stop, and so will tell the torturer what they think he wants to hear, not the truth. Realistically, I don't think that means that it doesn't work, I think it means that the torturer has to excercise care not to lead the torturee -- a position analagous to how investigators question children these days after it was discovered they too were quite malleable at the expense of numerous daycare workers. On the other hand, it's always easier to tell the truth than to lie, and if the torturee believes the torture will stop if they tell the truth, the torturer may be more likely to get the truth using torture than other methods. Clearly there are some people who won't tell the truth no matter what, but the question is if you get more truth, not if you always get the truth.

Ace of Spades provides an anecdote that torture works: an Sri Lankan intellegence officer loosend the tongues of his remaining two captives but shooting the third dead in front of them and threatening them with the same. Quite frankly, if torture was truly ineffective, we wouldn't even be having this discussion as the practice would have died out long ago.

So we are left with the question: should we forgo a method of some effectiveness because of our moral concerns? I for one have no trouble answering that question Yes in general and in several specific cases - embryonic stem cell research for one. But we need to understand and agree that we are making a tradeoff.

Let's look at some similar tradeoffs. Pat Buchannen of all people put his finger on the main one as recounted by Radley Balko:

How is it, Buchanan asked, that a smart person could support a war that will certainly kill hundreds, probably thousands of innocent Iraqis -- and a good number of Americans -- in the name of preventing another 9/11, but not support torturing a man who has made no bones about his desire to murder as many Americans as possible, if doing so might prevent another 9/11?

In other words, the means of war are morally wrong, we know innocents will die, yet there are times when the purposes of war are right and just. So then, there are times when the purposes of torture for information are right and just. If your choice is between torturing the few and many others living, or not torturing and many others dying, then you torture the few. Of course, you are not the one responsible for killing the many, the terrorists are, while you are responsible for torturing the few.

Consider vaccination. We have mandatory vaccination programs in this country even though we know any given vaccine will cause serious adverse reactions, including death, in those vaccinated. We again substitute the suffering death of the few for the suffering of the many. So to answer Calpundit's question via Eve Tushnet:Is it OK for a doctor to torture prisoners if the end result is a medical therapy that could save thousands? No, because we don't know in advance tha the therapy will save millions, but we do vaccinate kids knowing that some will suffer horribly because it will save thousands of others from suffering.

In reality it's a moral calculus problem to which we already know the answer - if we know that suffering we cause clearly outweighs the suffering we prevent and if we minimize the suffering of the innocent. So now torture for information becomes not so much a moral question as a process question -- how can we minimize the suffering of the innocent, and how we make sure the the suffering we cause outweighs the suffering we prevent?

There are other concerns - the "slippery slope" -- will torture become the new ritalin? In other words, if seen as effective, it's use will continue far beyond the bounds of efficacy, and now the the suffering we cause will not be outweighed by the suffering we save. I do think this is a very real danger because we've seen it so many times before in so many ways. And sure, we'll come to realize the problem, but what about all those people who were unneccesarily tortured?

How do you know the person you're torturing has information that can prevent the suffering of others? I think only rarely will you know this -- only in special circumstances. What about the people who conduct the torture? What happens to them?

Clearly, there is a lot to think about. Not that I've got my head completely wrapped around it, but I think in order to make the process right, the use of torture cannot be a policy of the US government, but given the right circumstances an individual or group could use torture to get information and I would agree that they did the right thing. Ultimately, my read on the moral calculus is that only rarely will it work out as a good thing (while acknowledging that clearly it can), and the only way to keep it rare is to make it against policy. Yes, I'm running the risk that many innocents will suffer, but I'm forgoing the risk that many innocents will suffer.

Sadly, that doensn't help the poor person who has to draw the line between torture and non-torture.