Torture has become a hot topic again, according to my Facebook feed. While I don't watch the news, many of my friends are still apparent news junkies. As best I can tell, the story basically goes that a senator spearheaded action to get CIA records of torture performed upon detainees in the process of American efforts to prosecute a campaign against Islamic terrorism during the second Bush Administration. Liberal friends are angry about this simply because of the use of torture methods such as waterboarding, as they conclude such methods are hypocritical, immoral, and anti-American. Conservative friends are angry because they believe declassifying these records has the potential to get Americans killed and fuel further outrage in the Muslim world that can be used against the United States, both for propaganda and recruiting purposes. As the debate rages, I can only conclude that I am not sufficiently well-informed to offer useful comment on the military and foreign policy aspects of the debate. Where I can get by on mere ratiocination is the moral aspect of the debate.
As I understand it, there are three reasons to torture, putting aside pure sadism. First, it is in order to accomplish retribution against the victim for some real or imagined slight, such as a horrific crime like rape. Second, it is in order to accomplish the concession of a point of contention with the victim, such as the famed conversions by torture once commonplace in the Roman Catholic Church. Third, if is in order to accomplish a successful interrogation because of the vital nature of the victim's withheld knowledge, such as a captured terrorist's knowledge of an upcoming attack. Reasons one and two are entirely invalid because retribution does nothing to further justice and it is impossible to verify the veracity of a conversion made under torture, respectively. The third reason is the only one where I see some room for some sort of grey area. A moral question like, "Does one take one man to the point where his suffering can admit of no possible increase if it may prevent a similar increase, or death, of several other people," can admit of no easy answer.
Liberal friends argue that torture is an ineffective means of extracting information from victims because it is impossible to know whether the victim is giving up valid intelligence or simply making something up in order to make the torture stop. The CIA claims that the use of torture has yielded good and vital intelligence. Well, one side might be absolutely wrong and the other absolutely right, but I don't think we live in a world where it's that black and white. Perhaps there's always a gamble when one extracts information with torture and certain situations are dire enough to warrant whatever action it takes to shade the odds. Sam Harris notes that torturing a single man results in far less suffering than dropping bombs, which cripples many innocents and leaves them with levels of chronic pain that equal the kind of pain anyone would agree constitutes torture. For my part, I know that the idea of intentionally causing suffering to another person is utterly repellant and I would only entertain it under the most dire need. Harris also notes that neuroscience may be able to offer technology capable of reading thoughts. If this is true, the day that happens is the day that no more moral arguments for torture can even be possible. All decent people should be as eager as I am to make the practice of it a part of our past.
-Frank
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