March 10, 2003
NOBODY EXPECTS THE SPANISH INQUISITION:
The case for torture (Pat Buchanan, March 10, 2003, townhall.com)[Khalid Shaikh ] Muhammad is not talking. Yet, if he can be forced to talk, the information could save thousands. It was said to be two weeks of torture that broke the Al Qaeda conspirator who betrayed the plot to blow up those airliners. And if ever there was a case for torture, this excuse for a human being, Khalid Shaikh Muhammad, is it.Thus, the question: Would it be moral to inflict pain on this beast to force him to reveal what he knows? Positive law prohibits it. However, the higher law, the moral law, the Natural Law permits it in extraordinary circumstances such as these.
Here is the reasoning. The morality of any act depends not only on its character, but on the circumstances and motive. Stealing is wrong and illegal, but stealing food for one's starving family is a moral act. Even killing is not always wrong. If a U.S. soldier had shot Muhammad to save 50 hostages, he would be an American hero.
But if it is permissible to take Muhammad's life to save lives, why is it impermissible to inflict pain on him to save lives?
Is the deliberate infliction of pain always immoral? Of course not. Twisting another kid's arm to make him tell where he hid your stolen bicycle is not wrong. Parents spank children to punish them and drive home the lessons of living good lives. Even the caning of that American kid in Singapore that caused a firestorm was not immoral. [...]
In short, while the instant recoiling that decent people exhibit to the idea of torturing Muhammad may mark them as progressive, it may also be a sign of fuzzy liberal thinking.
Many of these same folks are all for war on Iraq. Why? To rid the Middle East of a tyrant and his weapons of mass destruction. When John Paul II argues that, with inspections underway, such a war does not seem necessary, or thus moral, Ari Fleischer instructed the Holy Father that this war has to be fought to keep Saddam from giving horrible weapons to terrorists.
But if it is moral to go to war and kill thousands to prevent potential acts of terror on U.S. soil, why cannot we inflict pain on one man, if that would stop imminent acts of terror on U.S. soil? There is no evidence Saddam has murdered Americans, but there is a computer full that Muhammad has and has hatched plots to slaughter more.
What will history say about people who hold Harry Truman to be a moral hero for dropping atom bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, but recoil in horror from painfully extracting the truth out of one mass murderer to stop the almost certain slaughter of their own people?
Mr. Buchanan skates a little to close to relativism there for out tastes, but then rights himself. The more consistent path to the same point is to recognize that the intentional infliction of pain, physical/mental distress, even death, on evildoers is not immoral in itself. In our "progressive" society we choose not to use them much--though one hears few complaints about imprisoning, isolating, and executing criminals--and we particularly eschew the use of such means for extracting confessions, more because we've found such confessions to be inherently untrustworthy than out of any solicitude for the accused. But where, as here, torture (preferably psychological and chemical, but also physical) of an individual who deserves death may yield up information that could save innocent lives, even just one life, it's hard to see why use of such techniques, under close supervision, is not
appropriate. Posted by Orrin Judd at March 10, 2003 9:40 AM
In our current situation, Khalid Shaikh Mohammed has been in custody for over a week, and there have been no arrests annouced of his agents in the United States. Nor have we apparently determined what the targets of the next "spectacular" Al Qaeda operation will be (if we did, I think it would be leaked rather quickly).
For those who think that the Administration's pledge not to torture is window-dressing, and "of course we're doing it" I would suggest you read See No Evil by former CIA case officer Robert Baer. He says that, at least under Clinton, the lawyers took over the CIA, and yes, they did observe the legal niceties and avoided association with unsavory characters (see the "Deutch Rules") , which is one of the reasons he resigned.
Perhaps things have changed under Bush, but Clinton appointee George Tenet is still the Director of Central Intelligence, so the changes may only be marginal. I don't know whether the interrogation is in the hands of the CIA or some other agency, but torture is a felony, and I suspect they are indeed following the law.
The spectacular may go off while we have KSM in our hands
Regardless of the (important) technicalities surrounding the reliablity of information gained through torture, it is clear that torture would not be accepted as part of a judicial (justice) system. Come on, you would have to repeal most of Fifth Amendment to get away with that. Obviously, the Framers must have felt that HOW you sought justice was as important as actually achieving it.
HOWEVER, assume torture were found to be a reliable way to get information which could be used by society to act in self-defense. In that context, why would legatlizing torture be any more illegitimate than capital punishment? "Cruel and unusual?" At least in my mind, the "cruel and unusual" threshold for "punishment" should be higher than for "prevention", because the "deterrent" value of the latter is much higher than the latter.
Like I've said before, authorising torture would probably lead to it becoming standard operating procedure in all manner of cases.
Torture wouldn't have prevented 9/11 and probably won't stop the next one either.
I supose it might be justified in extreme rarely occurring cases but then it should only be carried out, time willing, on the written authority of the President.
I would concede that the "technicalities" surrounding the use of torture in self-defense may end up being so high such as not to make it an effective "deterrent". Not only would the scheme have to be proven to be reliable (mostly a physio/psychological technicality), BUT like M Ali Choudry suggests, it would have to be dispensed under scrutiny (perhaps not as high as the President's) that may render it ineffective in self-defense.
Yet, as a society, should we let "squemishness" keep us from developing a "clear and present danger" framework under which to apply it in self-defense?
MG:
Hopefully we aren't going to ever bring him into our justice system.
Ali:
If they'd tortured Mouussaoui--which would have been unjust--they'd have known how to find the other 19.
MG: I'm at least in part with OJ. The Eighth Amendment (and arguably the Fifth) would apply to American citizens and aliens in our borders
. The Supreme Court has observed a wide variance between acts that in our country are per se
illegal, and those that, when executed (no pun) abroad, are not. Thus, there is no Fifth Amendment, or Eighth Amendment, or Fourteenth Amendment violation until KSM enters our justice system. To pre-empt your next argument, the Court has also noted a broad gulf between our justice system and what our armies and intelligence forces do abroad; OJ is therefore correct.
Ali: I do not believe that authorizing torture abroad, on enemy combatants, would ipso facto bring it home here. As Jonah Goldberg likes to say, if you're warning about a slippery slope, it would be helpful if you'd point out how exactly we're gonna fall down that slope. If you suggest torture abroad would lead to torture here because the same people will practice it, I note the differentiation of our police from the CIA. If you believe the police will be influenced by torture abroad to bring it home, I say, first, you have too little faith in an independent mind to reason for itself, and second, too little faith in our justice system to stop such a thing.
CB:
I just don't think torture is necessary to preserve security if you have an intelligence service that's up to scratch and its' use is more likely to cause moral ourage out of proportion to its' usefulness.
Israel's, France's and Argentina's use of torture in their conflicts against the Palestinians, Algerians and uhh other Argentinians didn't have much effect in curtailing them and have left a huge legacy of anger and bitterness.
You probably think this is a trite statement but I think advocating its' use partially removes the moral distinction between us and the enemy.
If there is a ticking bomb and a terrorist who is very likely to know where it is, by all means use pliers and a cheese grater on him. But unless the decision remains as clear-cut as that, torture should remain strictly off limits.
I'm sure were smart enough to get info out by other means.
Ali:
In the case of France and Argentina (and Iran) it was torture for torture sake, rather than an attempt to break open terrorist rings and develop information.