How would you respond to this high school student's question re torture?

Great Debates
1

My fiancee and I recieved the below email from a high school junior (my fiancee’s nephew). Really great kid and quite intelligent for his age. Unfortunately he has very little exposure to anything but extremely conservative viewpoints. Considering his age and the fact that we are likely the only progressive people he knows I want to be careful with my answer. How would you guys respond to the below?

I want to ask you a question. I know that you are somewhat less ‘conservative’ than the rest of our family. Therefore i want to know if you can give me answers about a couple of things. Why do some people think it is necessary for United States defense secrets to be shared with the public. Whether it is officially torture or not, the CIA protects this country and keeps all of us safe from evils we never even knew about. In return for this, these men and women are embarrased by their own government and people, who claim they needlessly tortured people. What is the logic behind this? Also what is the logic behind closing the most sucessful military prison in American history (Guatanamo). These prisoners are not deserving of the same rights as Americans. First of all they are prisoners of war, secondly they are PRISONERS and deserve punishment. How can an American think this?

Secondly, what do you guys think about the Speaker of the House going after the CIA and FBI? Do you think the front page of the newspaper is the place to seek out national defense serets. These things are the downfall of the secure american we knew pre-Obama. I just hope it doesnt take another 3000 ives to be lost before we get rid of these people.

I was fair. I gave the Obama administration as well as the Pelosi/Reid led congress a chance. I tried to look at it as unbiased as I could. This change that they brought is openeing America up for another attack. WE are not european. we do not have to tell everyone everything. WE are the most powerful nation on the planet, we dont have to answer to the UN or anyone else.*

2

I suggest you use his own words not against him but to encourage him to read further.

Torture of POWs is against the Geneva convention. Article 26.

And despite being prisoners, they have yet to be found guilty of anything, so they should benefit from the rule of presumption of innocence.

3

As well as he could wasn’t very well at all. Kid’s a product of his environment and can’t help that.

Gotta give him credit for even asking, I guess.

He brings up a lot of points that are fairly easy to knock down without getting too aggressively us vs. them. Any time he says “most effective” or “keeping us safe”, you’ve got an opportunity to wow him with statistics.

4

The student needs to check what our leaders said at the time the torture took place.

http://www.america.gov/st/washfile-english/2003/June/20030626153956nirog0.7272455.html

Torture is an Affront to Human Dignity Everywhere, Bush Says.

Statement on International Day in Support of Torture Victims

Read more: “Torture is an Affront to Human Dignity Everywhere, Bush Says”

5

Torture is against the laws that these people have sworn to uphold. Laws within this nation and between other nations. These laws are contracts that civilized people everywhere have agreed are necessary to do the business of civilization. Countries that obey these laws have high credibility, much like a seller on ebay with 99.9 percent customer satisfaction appeal to new customers, countries that have a reputation for following the law have a much lower cost of doing every kind of business because of that reputation. For example, all debts of the US Government have always been met for more than two centuries, and the dollar is treated as more valuable than gold all over the world, when it is in fact, just a promise.

We have promised other nations that we will not torture. And we lied to their faces.

Conservative boy says, yes, but this torture protected us. No, it did not. There was never a ticking time bomb a la 24 that was spared because of torture, or you can bet Cheney would have gloated over it already. Not a single instance. One suspect was waterboarded 183 times over several months: this was really supposed to help a ticking time bomb situation? Experience proves that tea and cards are far more effective far faster than torture, and it doesn’t break the law. Captives have told civil interrogators useful information repeatedly over the years. Torture takes a lot of time and we can get them to say anything we want, but we don’t know what is true and what isn’t.

People who are tortured will say anything and everything to make it stop. Using torture, you can get somebody who was not born yet to sincerely confess to killing JFK. That isn’t useful unless your goal is to manufacture information. And that is what torture was used for by Cheney and Rumsfeld: they tortured for the specific purpose of linking Iraq to Al Queda and the Taliban and WMD to justify going to war in 2003. Remember when Cheney and Rumsfeld and Bush and Powell were absolutely certain that there were WMD in Iraq and that they were connected to Al Queda and the Taliban? That was because they foolishly relied on evidence gained from torture. Forty years from know, when we have a good handle on what the costs were of the war, and still will be for treating the soldiers, it will come to several trillion dollars that got us no WMDs and diverted resources from Afghanistan when they were crucial.

Our laws, our constitution and international laws condemn torture as a crime. It is no different than rape and murder, and frequently includes either or both. It does not protect anyone. It starts useless wars and recruits for our enemies. It says that our government and its officials are above the law and may do with people they declare are their enemies, even citizens, as they will, that they may torture endlessly over a period of months.

People who torture are committing acts of great lawlessness and evil because they are following orders. What is done in our name is done with our implied assent and we are as guilty of it as the people ordering it and doing it. Once we cut down the laws that protect others, we have cut down the same laws that protect us. Only by calling for prosecution and succeeding in obtaining prosecutions can we say that those laws protect anyone, much less ourselves. If we do not insist that our proxies obey the laws of war (yes, there are such things) we cannot rely on our allies to enforce those laws to help protect us. With our allies, we constitute 99.99% of the world’s population with respect to anti-terrorism. With torture and lies to start wars, all we had was a pretend “coalition of the willing”. The war against the terrorist perpetrators of 9/11 was dealt a crippling and expensive blow when torture was used to link Iraq to the war on terror.

6

First, I would try to draw out his own reasoning.

Don’t try to tell him what is what, but bring up questions that will let him come up with his own conclusions. A few well thought out questions can lead someone to a destination just as surely, but if he comes up with the conclusions himself they will stick.

You may also want to use some metaphors. Describe a different but analogous situation and then ask him if he sees any parallels.

Then, I’d refer him to some articles that present different points of view on both sides. Ask him some real questions about the articles.

I teach in China, and every day I get questions that I’d love to share my point of view on but can’t. So I’ve learned a lot of ways to challenge people into questioning their thinking without telling them what to think.

7

Don’t respond directly with rational argument; that never works for anything. So long as people have the ticking time bomb scenario in their head, it’s simply a question whose answer is motivated primarily by values, which aren’t easily displaced.

Instead, give him an example of how torture has been misused. In particular, with the work of McClatchy recently we have an incredibly “good” example of that, with information coming out that Cheney pressured the CIA to torture a co-operative captured member of Al Qaeda purely for the purpose of generating a confession linking Al Qaeda and Iraq. (This occurred after the invasion and purely to provide political cover for Cheney and friends.) Connect that with historical precedents of torture not being primarily for information gathering and appeal to his conservative inclinations of state power inherently having a high risk of perversion.

Something like this isn’t going to convince him that torture is always evil, but nothing you’re going to do now can do that. But it will at least establish in his mind a reasonable basis for opposition to torture, doing an end run around the ticking time bomb scenario running in his head, and make him more considering of anti-torture arguments in the future.

Similarly, you aren’t going to displace jingoism in his head at this point. You can, however, work to subvert it. Maybe refer him to the recent Malcolm Gladwell article in the New Yorker about David vs. Goliath conflicts. As he argues, David wins a surprising amount of the time by rejecting the conventional rules of engagement that Goliath brings to the game. In the same way, the United States would, ideally, have battles on the conventional battlefield. But terrorists reject that conflict paradigm and work by decentralized psychological violence. If the United States accepts their rules of the game, it is inherently fighting on unfavorable territory; terrorists can easily terrorize America with stabs to its soft, unprotected parts with $3.99 boxcutters they bought at Target, while America has to spend tens of billions of dollars just to get a start at defending itself, let alone permanently getting rid of terrorism, which is impossible anyway. Only by changing the rules of the game away from terrorists’ preferred method of inchoate violence and by working to create strong transnational security institutions can America hope to effectively assert its power in the world.

8

And most were never CHARGED…let alone found guilty. There are a million problems with the whole torture/Guantanamo/information thing. I agree…use his words to open the discussion and provide cites (as opposed to opinions) to support the argument.

9

I wasn’t aware that the Taliban and Al-qaeda were signatories of the Geneva convention. Nor do I recall the constitution granting rights of American citizens to foreign nationals, especially given that the constitution “people” refer to “we the people”. But then again, our judges no longer read, nor need the constitution. And it may need to be rewritten in their blood.

10

Well for one thing, just because someone is a prisoner certainly does not mean they deserve punishment, particularly because a large majority of the people being detained haven’t had anything proven against them. There are current detainees being released left and right (here is a recent one) because they simply don’t have any evidence.

Furthermore, torture is not a good way of obtaining information. Numerous highly-ranked officials in the US government has said this. People in the witch trials of Salem admitted to being witches after being tortured. Do you think that information was good intel? The point is, people will say anything in order to stop being tortured. If that means it’s very likely something like this will occur: “OK I engaged in a terrorist plot, please stop drowning me!”

And the CIA is made up of people, people who are human and make mistakes. The CIA is not perfect. To give ANY government free reign without checks and balances is something horrible and he should check into some history of what happened to past civilizations when such a thing happened.

The point is America is a civilized superpower. No superpower should EVER have to resort to torture to obtain information. There is no circumstance ever where that is necessary. To say “we’re #1 in power!” repeatedly is just plain arrogance and ignorance, because the second we started torturing prisoners (who were never tried for crimes in the first place), we lose that power and become a pathetic third-world mess.

11

So what ?

Ah. So you hold that people who aren’t Americans have no rights at all ?

So your philosophy of jurisprudence is “Some judges might not support torture ! Let’s kill them !”

12

The UN Convention Against Torture makes no distinction as to who is entitled to protection against torture.

13

According to most sources, consitutions written in blood are not necessarily legally binding, unless you’re Satan.

14

Hence they are neither encumbered by nor protected with its provisions.

Nope. I didn’t say that. Let’s reflect what rights Jefferson accorded the barbary pirates, the closest historical parallel to modern terrorists.

The function of the judicial branch is exclusively to interpret law/constitution as written, and in the context it was written in. Not make it up. Then you are blurring the branches, creating an imbalance of powers and inevitable tyranny.

15

AKA, it doesn’t explicitly apply to a non-signatory. You cannot be bound to agreement you did not agree to.

16

Wrong, as pointed out above. And irrelevant; torture is evil, and should never be engaged in regardless of who signed what.

Ah, Jefferson, the slave owner and mass murderer? We are supposed to look at him for moral leadership ?

The function of the judiciary is to interpret the law ( and NOT “in the context it was written in”, since contexts change ). Which is often conveniently misinterpreted by the Right to mean “making up the law”.

17

But the US did, so it cannot torture.

18

So since Al-Qaeda didn’t sign the Geneva convention, the US can throw it away, both when it would apply to its own citizens and nationals and when it would apply to foreigners? :confused:

I can understand someone from Al-Qaeda saying “oh, we didn’t sign it” - but didn’t the US?

19

Wrong. It cannot torture other signatories. Everyone else is legally fair game. Why in the world would anyone sign the stupid thing if they could be protected by it but not be bound by it? Use your brain for once in you life.

20

Because they wanted to be considered civilized by everyone else ? Because torture is both evil and stupid ?