Reopening the Torture Debate
 

The situation in Iraq with missing soldiers and captured prisoners who admit they were part of taking those prisoners, reminds me of a question I think I asked a while back. But I don't remember the answers. So I am going to repeat it.

A serial killer who buries his victims alive in a coffin is captured shortly after his latest victim goes missing. He ADMITS he took her and buried her. She is still certainly alive and will be for a few more hours. He REFUSES to divulge her whereabouts. There is a horrible torture technique that ALMOST ALWAYS gets the information required. Using that technique, or torture in general, is against the law. Should it be used anyway?

For those who say no, I ask if they can produce a reason other than something vague like, "if we torture we are no better than he is."

For those who say yes, I ask whether you would be in favor of changing the law for cases like these. Or would it be better to keep the laws as they are and simply look away in these very rare cases.

Finally is there anyone out there who would be opposed to the torture for the sole reason that it is illegal? And would thus change his position if it wasn't?

Re: Reopening the Torture Debate
 

Yes to the torture. Yes to the law change, but only with restrictions such as requiring the governor's explicit consent and subject to post judicial/public review with years of jail time for erring. The justification is that life vs life situations, where one person was the direct cause of the threat of another, allows very wide moral boundaries. It's similar in self defence - if 4 guys attack me with knives when I'm unarmed, I can pretty much [censored] them up however I please in the course of the fighting.

I realize this opens up a whole can of worms as I'm generally opposed to torture. I'd also say no to the torture in Iraq.

Re: Reopening the Torture Debate
 

If that bitch can't keep her wits about her enough to stay clear of a serial killer, then we can delight in social darwinism removing her from the gene pool.

Re: Reopening the Torture Debate
 

Only the US should be allowed to use torture amongst civilized nations. In that case it is known as "humane" torture.

Re: Reopening the Torture Debate
 

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Yes to the torture. Yes to the law change, but only with restrictions such as requiring the governor's explicit consent and subject to post judicial/public review with years of jail time for erring. The justification is that life vs life situations, where one person was the direct cause of the threat of another, allows very wide moral boundaries. It's similar in self defence - if 4 guys attack me with knives when I'm unarmed, I can pretty much [censored] them up however I please in the course of the fighting.

I realize this opens up a whole can of worms as I'm generally opposed to torture. I'd also say no to the torture in Iraq.

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The problem with judicial review and jail time for the prosecutors is that the people making the decisions will never be jailed. This leads leaders to become very ideological because there are no consequences.

It's exactly what's happening in the Alberto Gonzalez case. He's the scapegoat. Everyone knows that the orders came from higher up and he is just flatly refusing to speak. So higher government officials can accuse away will-nilly because there is virtually no chance that they will be jailed. Then we end up having way too many people tortured because the 'government' believes that it is in our best interests. It's too much of a slippery slope.

So basically I say no and no. How would we feel if a foreign government came in, captured a U.S. citizen and brutally tortured him to find out some nebulous 'information' that he might know? We would probably declare war on that country.

Re: Reopening the Torture Debate
 

Here I say yes to torture.
In Iraq I say no for four reasons.

1. It makes torture more acceptable in the rest of the world, and further reduces the ability of the US to argue from a position of moral authority
2. the captured soldiers aren't innocent. They volunteered to fight.
3. There should be a way to get the soldiers back that doesn't involve torture (like negotiating).
4. It encourages insurgents to use the same tactics.

Usually in wartime, #3 is the main reason. Even in the case of "just wars", where one should in theory do everything necessary to win them, torturing enemy soldiers will encourage the other side to torture your POWs, which will lower morale amongst your own troops.

#4 isn't as big of a reason in Iraq, because the other side doesn't run POW camps that can be inspected by the red cross.

Re: Reopening the Torture Debate
 

The circumstances are too ideal to be useful, I think. I don't think this case is much different (in its nature, not its ethics) than the 'if you could harvest organs' type questions. So I guess my answer is 'yes, the torture is ok, but no changing the law'. Basically, I think torture is too extreme, too unreliable, and too subject to abuse to condone it under any circumstance. But then, that's why we have jury nullification.

Re: Reopening the Torture Debate
 

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I realize this opens up a whole can of worms

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I'd be in favor of keeping the can of worms closed.

PairTheBoard

Re: Reopening the Torture Debate
 

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I'd be in favor of keeping the can of worms closed.

PairTheBoard

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What if you were the one about to be worm food?

How about your daughter? Your wife? The guy doing it is sitting right there and laughing in your face. Do you let her die?

Re: Reopening the Torture Debate
 

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I'd be in favor of keeping the can of worms closed.

PairTheBoard

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What if you were the one about to be worm food?

How about your daughter? Your wife? The guy doing it is sitting right there and laughing in your face. Do you let her die?

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I guess I don't accept the premise. There's got to be another way to get the information.

The thing is, I have the sense that there is something fundamentally destructive about even considering these types of hypotheticals. Our efforts should be focused on perfecting acceptable methods to achieve our goals rather than looking for excuses to violate our principles.

PairTheBoard

Re: Reopening the Torture Debate
 

I think what's best given our current morality is to ask the suspect if he's still willing to mantain the claim that he did it if that leads to him being tortured to obtain the information. If he is, then you can torture him.

But all this is too much trouble. I'd say stick with the law the way it currently is, which is murky enough already.

By the way, I see where you're going with this.

Re: Reopening the Torture Debate
 

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For those who say yes, I ask whether you would be in favor of changing the law for cases like these. Or would it be better to keep the laws as they are and simply look away in these very rare cases.

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It should not be codified into law EXCEPT that jury nullification needs to be a widely understood and accepted concept. Creating a situation where the actions of the torturers expect to be tried and can only be acquitted by disinterested parties will do a much better job of keeping abuses in check and continue to represent changing social norms better than laws which must be either rigidly written leaving deserving but technically incorrect cases out, or broadly written, leaving loopholes and expectations to win.

Re: Reopening the Torture Debate
 

Does the torture cause irreparable physical damage or temporary pain?

Re: Reopening the Torture Debate
 

I think the only answer is that if it is your call (you're vic macky or whatever, the cop in charge)

a) you will have to do whatever you have to including torture to save the girl
b) you will have to turn yourself in for breaking the law and throw yourself on the mercy of the court and explain the mitigating circumstances, but accept your punishment.
b1) it would be acceptable to wait and see if the authorities look the other way and give you a pass becauses they understand the dilemma you were in.


In my opinion the real question is, if it is within your power to avert something like this, to save a human life, and you do not do it because you are afraid of the consequences, that act of omission may be totally immoral. A lot of it depends on the details. But the point is that sometimes in order to do the right thing you must be willing to suffer the consequences.

I guess another point is that rules or bureaucracy will never be sufficient without morally courageous men, although this example may not be the best to illustrate it.

Re: Reopening the Torture Debate
 

There's pretty obviously cases where torture is okay, just extrapolate to it being a nuclear bomb his hidden.

but as a tactic in war its a really bad plan unless legitimising torture is one of the aims.

chez

Re: Reopening the Torture Debate
 

David,

This was a great movie.

http://i27.photobucket.com/albums/c1...og/scorpio.jpg

Re: Reopening the Torture Debate
 

The fact that this country is having this discussion is an indication of how far we have sunk.

During the Cold War, when the battle of ideas was so important, the US was very careful about its image and tried hard to distinguish itself from the Soviet block. Twenty years ago, it was unthinkable for mainstream politicos to sanction torture. America did not do that sort of thing (openly).

We should take a page from the gun rights folks. They go postal over any small change in gun laws, arguing it's one small step closer to confiscation. Accepting torture whittles down our humanity. Next it will be: "this torture is so labor intensive and it gives our troops nightmares. Let's just send those terrorists to the showers. And the village that produces them, so their families don't have to suffer torture, because a quick death is so much more humane."

Torture destroys democracy, which is far worse than whatever we might find out.

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would it be better to keep the laws as they are and simply look away in these very rare cases.

[/ QUOTE ] Yea. As long as they are truly rare.

Re: Reopening the Torture Debate
 

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Here I say yes to torture.
2. the captured soldiers aren't innocent. They volunteered to fight.


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Okay, consider the same question as the serial killer case, but make one change: the buried person is a cop who was trying to apprehend the killer. Would you then also say torture shouldn't be used, because the cop isn't innocent since he volunteered to perform police duty?

Re: Reopening the Torture Debate
 

I don't see what's wrong with it in Iraq. We are fighting a dirty war against cowards who hide among the civilian populace. If they see us coming, they drop their weapons and act like innocents and they have no qualms with murder.

The Russians have been fighting terrorism a hell of a lot longer than we have, and Bush was pretty much negligent to reject Russian help. Chechnya is the Russian Iraq.

Re: Reopening the Torture Debate
 

As chezlaw points out, you can always up the ante such that it becomes easier to justify torture. The nuclear bomb is a good one. Maybe in the future there might be a weapon capable of destroying the whole planet. Still no torture?

I don't like the idea of "looking the other way." Change the law for extreme cases. Make the process as non political as possible.

Torturing people might change the situation in the future. Would the confessed serial killer be so willing to admit what he has done if torture was on the menu? Lawyers would have an easy job raising some doubt in all but the most extreme cases.

The civilized world has shed much blood attaining fundamental protections. They should not be removed lightly.


DY

Re: Reopening the Torture Debate
 

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For those who say yes, I ask whether you would be in favor of changing the law for cases like these. Or would it be better to keep the laws as they are and simply look away in these very rare cases.

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The main problem is that I don't see how you can accurately codify "cases like these" well enough to make these laws anything other than "well, when we think it's important, we're going to torture people," which just means "we're going to torture people." What sets the threshold for where you decide immediate action is important enough that torture is indicated? Or how effective your torture method must be?

Re: Reopening the Torture Debate
 

In a case such as this, the interrogator should use the torture and be willing to accept the legal consequences.

Re: Reopening the Torture Debate
 

So it's a game....

Player 1 (serial killer) has repeatedly violated the rules and has a hidden BIG prize.

Now, I can get this BIG prize, by violating the rules, just this once.

Will it be a slippery slope?

Re: Reopening the Torture Debate
 

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David,

This was a great movie.

http://i27.photobucket.com/albums/c1...og/scorpio.jpg

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Is that 'scorpio'? I'm just guessing from the link.
IMDB wasn't so hot on it...should I really see it? I don't want to waste bandwidth...

Re: Reopening the Torture Debate
 

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During the Cold War, when the battle of ideas was so important, the US was very careful about its image and tried hard to distinguish itself from the Soviet block. Twenty years ago, it was unthinkable for mainstream politicos to sanction torture. America did not do that sort of thing (openly).


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Bill,
So you believe that the US didn't use torture during those years, or you just wish that we would continue to keep it hush hush like we used to? Having the discussion out in the open is far far better than not having it.

Re: Reopening the Torture Debate
 

While part of the problems America faces today stem from not being open about going against them in the past, I think we as a country should strive to uphold the principles upon which it was founded. I makes me ill that there is any question whether or not our constitution should be applied to by us to people who are not citizens. During the Cold War America attempted to be a shining example of the way things should be done. We should be doing that again instead of letting fear erode our principles.

Re: Reopening the Torture Debate
 

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I don't see what's wrong with it in Iraq. We are fighting a dirty war against cowards who hide among the civilian populace. If they see us coming, they drop their weapons and act like innocents and they have no qualms with murder.


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1. We make mistakes. All the people we have captured aren't really terrorists.
2. We signed the Geneva Conventions.
3. It makes us look awful to the world at large and quite probably inspires more terrorism. We won't win the war on "terrorism" unless we convince everyone that our way of life is better than that.
4. Our captured troops get treated worse
5. Torture doesn't work that well. People will say whatever you want them to say so that you stop the pain.

Re: Reopening the Torture Debate
 

I think the "rules of war" got pretty much obsolete after WW2 and total warfare. If WW3 breaks out someday, you can rip the geneva convention because it's just going to be a meaningless piece of paper and I bet you'll see stuff like Dresden and Manchuria again

Re: Reopening the Torture Debate
 

War implies that anything goes

Re: Reopening the Torture Debate
 

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By the way, I see where you're going with this.

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I wasn't going anywhere with it. Just like to encourage logical debates and cause trouble.

Re: Reopening the Torture Debate
 

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I don't see what's wrong with it in Iraq. We are fighting a dirty war against cowards who hide among the civilian populace. If they see us coming, they drop their weapons and act like innocents and they have no qualms with murder.


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1. We make mistakes. All the people we have captured aren't really terrorists.
2. We signed the Geneva Conventions.
3. It makes us look awful to the world at large and quite probably inspires more terrorism. We won't win the war on "terrorism" unless we convince everyone that our way of life is better than that.
4. Our captured troops get treated worse
5. Torture doesn't work that well. People will say whatever you want them to say so that you stop the pain.

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Sorry, I got to number 4 and immediately dismissed everything you said. Yeah, worse than being beaten, stripped, beheaded, and dragged through the streets?

Try again.

Re: Reopening the Torture Debate
 

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Sorry, I got to number 4 and immediately dismissed everything you said. Yeah, worse than being beaten, stripped, beheaded, and dragged through the streets?

Try again.

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the british captured in iranian(disputed) waters weren't mistreated. If torture and information pressing were the norm they would have been.

Re: Reopening the Torture Debate
 

Like I said before...

It's all a game. At some point, the rules will get broken.

What is the procedure (law, rule) for dealing with broken rules?

Is the rule breaking procedure the same for all rules?

???

Get down to it... Is it ok to cheat at poker if the situation calls for it?

jetboy2

Re: Reopening the Torture Debate
 

The logic comes down to a real mess.

Who cleans up afterwards is the question.

Re: Reopening the Torture Debate
 

[ QUOTE ]
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I don't see what's wrong with it in Iraq. We are fighting a dirty war against cowards who hide among the civilian populace. If they see us coming, they drop their weapons and act like innocents and they have no qualms with murder.


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1. We make mistakes. All the people we have captured aren't really terrorists.
2. We signed the Geneva Conventions.
3. It makes us look awful to the world at large and quite probably inspires more terrorism. We won't win the war on "terrorism" unless we convince everyone that our way of life is better than that.
4. Our captured troops get treated worse
5. Torture doesn't work that well. People will say whatever you want them to say so that you stop the pain.

[/ QUOTE ]

One more thing to add, the enemy is more likely to surrender if he knows that he will be treated fairly and not be tortured. At the end of WWII, the German soldiers were going out of their way to surrender to the Americans and avoid being captured by the Russians.

Re: Reopening the Torture Debate
 

D. S. is proposing, "when/if is it ok to cheat?"

Say, my daughter is dying, so is it ok to cheat in this situation to save her life?

How radical does a situation need to be in order to make cheating ok? Say....Obviously colluding online players vs individual? Or...

When is cheating allowed?

Re: Reopening the Torture Debate
 

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[ QUOTE ]
During the Cold War, when the battle of ideas was so important, the US was very careful about its image and tried hard to distinguish itself from the Soviet block. Twenty years ago, it was unthinkable for mainstream politicos to sanction torture. America did not do that sort of thing (openly).


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Bill,
So you believe that the US didn't use torture during those years, or you just wish that we would continue to keep it hush hush like we used to? Having the discussion out in the open is far far better than not having it.

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To remain human, we cannot allow torture. I recognize scenarios can be imagined where I personally would want to go against that rule. But they are so rare, the danger of allowing torture is far, far, greater than the damage of allowing it in general. I agree with this poster:

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In a case such as this, the interrogator should use the torture and be willing to accept the legal consequences.

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If it is so extraordinary a situation, some sort of torturer's Sophie's choice, then the individual should do what's necessary, and then do the time.

The problem with getting torture out in the open and regulating it is that it accepts the use of barbarism as a standard choice. Once we reach that point, the individual has no more defenses whatsoever against the might of the state, and freedom is over.

Al Qaida types do not remotely have the strength to destroy our democracy. Only we can do that.

Re: Reopening the Torture Debate
 

I hate this scenario because it is really a complete fiction. Ostensibly, it is framed to get at whether there is anything intrinsically off-limits in torture or whether objections are based in generic moral or ethical concerns. It does this by presenting a slam-dunk scenario: a hideous crime unfolding in real-time, a fool-proof technique that can be applied to an appropriate subject who is in possession of an unambiguous piece of information that once obtained almost immediately rectifies the situation. If this is indeed what "torture" is, I don't think I have a problem with it.

But this scenario does not exemplify torture. There is no ticking time bomb scenario, no fool-proof, instantly available, friction-free technique, no reliable pre-torture intelligence that says this is definitely the guy who knows the exact, unambiguous factoid that will save the day, no unimpeachable surrogate (read Jack Bauer) whose motives are beyond reproach.

The foregoing is a red herring; it takes the blood out of the problem and in flattering us that we've considered the true nature of the problem, salves our consciences while simultaneously allowing us to congratulate ourselves for being willing to deal with the harsh realities of the world in which we live.

Torture is institutionalized brutality that requires the mass production of brutes to administer, execute and manage it; a nation of brutes. Historically and humanly, there is no way around that. You cannot just turn it on like some kind of flashlight.

Let me paint an alternate scenario: somehow we've discovered that if you put a person into a room and then kill a baby in front of him every 5 minutes until he talks, it takes between 5 and 20 babies before he willingly confesses everything he knows--virtually fool-proof. We even know that the babies have to be younger than 6 months old. Now, we have a terrorist who claims to have locked 30 pregnant women in a meat locker where they will freeze to death within the next 30 hours. He's a pretty well-known terrorist and the threat is, as they say, credible. So, where do we get the babies we're going to need to kill in order to save these women and unborn babies? We have two choices: 1) we have a baby farm run by the CIA which produces a steady pipeline of 100 babies under the age of 6 months ready for any such contingency; they can be flown anywhere in the world in a few hours and we have personnel specially trained to administer the technique; or 2) we have authorized the police to abduct as many babies as they need from any immediate source (passersby, for example) should an emergency present itself. Individual police officers or other authorities have gotten a basic overview of the technique, but we rely on the urgency of the situation to motivate them to "do what is right".

I would submit that this scenario gets closer to the assessing the human costs; and by human costs I'm not referring just to the babies. What price is paid by people who raise babies for this technique? Who learn to administer the technique? Can it really be so cooly technocratic? What price is paid by those charged with abducting and killing babies in order to solve the problem at hand?

And recognize, even in this scenario as repugnant as it is, we "know" who the terrorist is and there is a magic, unambiguous piece of information that "justifies" the use of the torture technique.

But what is truly scandalous is that we are debating this question and not the much more relevant question that goes like this: you know your government is routinely torturing and otherwise treating prisoners inhumanely; prisoners they have taken care to keep outside the law and away from view. What do you think your responsibilities are given this is a government you empower with your taxes and your votes?

Re: Reopening the Torture Debate
 

I have actually discussed this with some of the classes I teach.

My own position is that torture should not be legal. However, what is legal and what is moral do not overlap perfectly. IMO, the moral thing to do is to save the woman's life. Therefore, I propose breaking the law and torturing in this situation. I also think the person doing the torturing (willingly) should face the legal consequences, and know beforehand that this will happen. This is a form of personal sacrifice.

Re: Reopening the Torture Debate
 

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I also think the person doing the torturing (willingly) should face the legal consequences, and know beforehand that this will happen. This is a form of personal sacrifice.


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I just find this position so bizarre. If torturing is the correct moral action (IYO) why would you want to create a situation that disincentives that action?