SO WHO EXACTLY IS HUMANIZED...:

What if torture works? (Mehdi Hasan, 25 August 2009, New Statesman)

[A]s the Guardian reports today, in its coverage of the latest CIA revelations:

Some of the techniques were judged to have been a failure, with the mock execution described as "transparently a ruse, and no benefit was derived from it". But the document says valuable intelligence was gained on various plots round the world, including one to hijack aircraft to fly into Heathrow airport.

This raises the intriguing yet disturbing question: what if torture, on the odd, rare occasion, works? What if useable, valuable and accurate intelligence is gleaned from detainees that either prevents actual terror attacks, or helps disrupt a terrorist plot or leads to the arrest and detention of wanted terrorists? Does it then become permissible or defensible? [...]

The bigger issue is: why is it "unjustifiable"? There are, of course, countless familiar and obvious moral objections which revolve around human rights, dignity, autonomy, etc. As Kenneth Roth, of Human Rights Watch, for example, has argued:

[Torture] dehumanizes people by treating them as pawns to be manipulated through their pain.

...when you don't torture a terrorist to see where they're planning to kill next? Is he more human if he gets away with murder than if you waterboard him? Are you more humane if you let people die rather than being mean to him? Are the victims better off dead than living at the cost of a brief waterboarding of one of their attackers?

Posted by Orrin Judd at August 25, 2009 4:40 PM