Suppose the political climate in America changed enough that Congress and the courts agreed to allow torture of criminals and terror suspects under very specific circumstances. Further suppose that a five-member commission is formed to define those circumstances, and that you are nominated to serve on that commission as chair. Of course, you have the option of declining the nomination–but you happen to know that the person most likely to be chosen to replace you holds political views diametrically opposite to your own. Also, if the other four members of the committee, all pro-torture to varying degrees, agree that you are being completely obstructionist in your work as chair, they can remove you from your post and replace you with the aforementioned substitute.
In other words, torture will be legalized regardless of whether you serve on the committee, but you can moderate the committee’s recommendations, to a point, if you choose to join in. Let’s also say in you’ll be allowed to publish position papers before, during, and after the committee does its work to make your personal positions clear.
All clear? Good. Now I have two questions:
Would you choose to serve on the committee and reduce the overall amount of torture, or would you prefer to keep your hands completely clean, even though that meant there would likely be more torture?
What circumstances would you be willing to allow torture to exist?
What proposal would you resign rather than given even a reluctant imprimatur to?
I would refuse to serve. If I decided to break my principles over this, I’d be more likely to just bring a gun and kill the bastards, instead of collaborating.
None that are likely in the real world; I’m sure someone could come up with some implausible scenario of course.
I would make the case that torture is against the law in all circumstances. I know you say I will then be removed but I would not waver from that point.
I do think there are very narrow circumstances where torture is permissible but would never codify those into law. If a situation is so extreme as to merit torture on the spot I think the person should be let off the hook via presidential pardon which should be forthcoming in such instances (e.g. someone planted a nuke set to go off in six hours in New York so someone worked the guy over with pliers and a crowbar to get him to say where it was).
Nitpick : As someone pointed out in another thread about torture, even that scenario doesn’t work. It seems highly unlikely that a fanatic couldn’t hold out against or deceive torturers for a few hours, if he knows he’ll win and have his vengeance on them if he does so. Not to mention, torture will likely reinforce his fanaticism, by proving that his enemies really are evil incarnate.
If there is a nuke in Chicago (or wherever) set to go off in 6 hours and I have a guy in front of me who knows where it is/how to stop it I will go to town on the guy. I do not have time to fuck around nor do I give a shit if I reinforce his feelings that westerners are evil incarnate.
From what I have heard about torture there is really no holding out against it. The person may tell you BS info to get you to stop but it is movie fantasy to suppose someone will tough it out for hours or days. One of the people the US tortured got the respect of his torturers by holding out for two minutes when subjected to the waterboarding technique. If you do not want to read that link the average person holds out against it for 14 seconds.
it is particularly ironic that the information in produced by the very waterboarding in question, was of such questionable value as to be considered by the c in c eligible for use as a public relations counterattack on the bipartisan demand for fisa accountability.
Even then, professionals on background denigrated the seriousness of the plot,and , by implications, the usefulness of torture as an interrogation technique.
Is this from an episode of ‘24’ ?
Think why your hypothetical situation would arise…
In the real world, innocent people get tortured; torture is not used to stop one incident but to fight unending ‘War v terror’.
Perhaps the information will be out of date when released. Perhaps the movement wants a martyr.
Consider what using torture says about the torturers.
Somehow I don’t think he was interested in their ‘respect’.
Is this really what the US stands for?
Is ‘Bring me your masses, yearning to be free’ out of date now?
Why would these torturing fiends want reasonable little old “me” as chair of their rubberstamp torture board? Arguably the only reason would be that I had a well-established reputation as being opposed to torture, and that they could then say of the group’s recommendations, “Look even Evil Captor has signed off on these techniques, so you know there’s good reason for them, and that they’re not all that harmful.”
Under those circumstances the very LAST thing I should do is join the board. All that will happen as a result is that the torture recommendations will be that much harder to defeat politically. Better to let the pro-torture group have their way for the short term and then go after the bastards hammer and tongs until the American people get sick of hearing about all the awful things being done in their name, and things change.