spooje: For the sake of the hypothetical, I was assuming both items are knowable and known. If they’re not, the criteria of the ticking bomb scenario are not met, and torture would be morally unjustifiable. Obviously, there will probably never be a ticking bomb scenario in real life, and nothing remotely resembling it exists within those cargo containers in Afghanistan.
No problem - “rightly, IMO” refers only to the view, and not the action. I agree with the assessment, given what I know of the history of US involvement in the Middle East, but that doesn’t mean I’ve also concluded that any and every action taken to “strike back” is therefore justified.
I’ve said it before on here and I’ll say it again: I was horrified and appalled at the September 11 attacks. I neither support nor condone them by any stretch of the imagination.
That’s what I figured. Thanks.
It is a basic tenet of our civilization that the ends do not justify the means. Ever.
Evil means cannot be made good or justified by the best of ends. Ever.
That does mean we pay a price. Every day. And we should be very willing to pay it because the alternative is to sink back into the darkest ages in history.
:mad:
To me, torture is to fighting terror as the nuclear first use policy Bush keeps floating in the media is to our long-term security. In the long run, a torture policy will hurt us far more than any temporary benefits to the war on terror in the short-term. It seems to fall generally under the new: “do as we say…” Doctrine.
Torture is never acceptable. Is this moral absolutism? Maybe. Is rape ever acceptable? No. Does it “stifle debate”? Of course not. You present your arguments as to why torture/rape/murder are acceptable, and people can feel free to debunk them.
The “ticking bomb” scenario works under a number of premises that are false in order to create a false dilemma. Number one, it assumes that said individual has the information that we need, and that we know he has it for certain. This is never true. Since we’re dealing with “what if’s”, I feel perfectly entitled to suggest that the “what if” of us having the wrong man, or the man not actually knowing the information, are perfectly reasonable spanners to throw in the works.
Number two, it assumes that, even if the first criteria are met, which is not certain and certainly not absolutely knowable, torture will actually get the information we need from him, and that there is no better way of getting it from him.
This is incorrect also. The subject will lie. He will lie because he doesn’t want us to know the truth. He will lie because he doesn’t know the truth. He will lie because he has told us the truth, and we didn’t believe him, so he’s making shit up. This is a given. If we didn’t expect him to lie, we wouldn’t be torturing him.
It is possible that he might, at some point, tell the truth under torture. The key, key question we need to answer is, given that we expect him to lie, how do we tell when he’s telling the truth? If we can find out and corroborate the information by some other means, we have no need to torture him, therefore the question is moot. If he is our only source of information, torture is an unreliable way of extracting the information.
Reason one why torture should never be used, then, is as follows. It doesn’t work.
Examine history. Examine the Inquisition. What do we see torture being used for? With alarming frequency, we see torture being used for one thing: to enforce the will of the authorities on the people. While torture is demonstrably nearly useless at extracting accurate information, it is excellent at making the subject say what he thinks you want him to say. Trample the icon and be spared.
Reason two as to why torture should never be used, then, is that it is too efficient at keeping populations captive by their governments to let any government use it.
Then there is the other issue. We said we wouldn’t do it. We signed treaties that specifically stated we would not torture nor seek to justify torture. These treaties are part of the national laws of all Western Democracies. No individual is higher than the law. It is illegal.
If you believe something is unjustly illegal, you may break the law (under the tenets of civil disobedience), as long as you are prepared to be judged under it. “In an unjust land, the only place for a just man to be is in prison.” Failing that, you may campaign to have the law changed. What you may not do is claim that the law does not apply to you. What your government may not do is tell you to break the law.
This is the Rule of Law. Torture harks back to the Rule of Force, which is a state that the democratic process and popular sovereignty were specifically designed to eradicate. If we cannot uphold the laws in our own lands, by what principles can we enforce laws in others? “Before speaking against the mote in your brothers eye, attend to the plank in your own.”
This is how we attain the moral highground. We say “We believe X to be wrong. We therefore do not do X.” The moral highground is achieved by adherence to the rules we set for ourselves. If we say “X is wrong, but if Y does wrong thing Z to us, we will do wrong thing X to them because it is then justified,” we disgrace ourselves and return to the simple, crude, tribal mentality which says that borders are physical things, and not ideological ones.
So, finally, reason number three that torture should never be used is that our word must be our bond for our own good.
Three reasons as to why torture should never be used, specifically focusing on the moral dilemma of the “ticking time bomb”, and why it is a false dilemma. Feel free to disagree on the points, but an argument of “moral absolutism stifles debate” will be soundly mocked.
I wasn’t going to contribute to this thread because I feel that my view - that torture is never justifiable - has been well argued by others.
But in case anyone is is any doubt about just how easily principles, treaties and human-rights conventions can be cast aside, have a look at a thread in IMHO entitled “Are they torturing Khalid Shaik Mohammed, and do you care?” http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?s=&threadid=167165
Perhaps I’m naive, but I was horrified by much of what I read there. There are plenty of people wholeheartedly arguing for torture, “because of 9/11” and offering detailed, bloodthirsty suggestions as to method. Perhaps more sinister still are those who begin by saying they think torture is a bad thing in general, but that in the case of Al Quaeda/Iraq/insert current enemy here, perhaps a “little bit of torture” would be acceptable. What scares me is that I suspect these views are more representative than the more thoughtful arguments I’ve read in this GD thread.
What I’m trying to say is that commitment to human rights seems pretty fragile at the moment, and as someone else said, the standards of the Dark Ages (and 20th-century Europe, for that matter) lie just below the surface. Torturing people in the name of democracy is an obscenity.
I guess my standards are different, but being deprived of sleep or beaten up are not very extreme methods of torture. They are mild torture, at best. Torture is having your wife raped while you watch, or having nitric acid dripped on you.
I had a friend who was in possession of some drugs, when the cops found him & arrested him he lost his job and his wife left him. he suffered more mental trauma than he would have if he had been beaten up. and it was all legal.
Virtually anyone who gets arrested will suffer moderate to severe psychological torture in the immediate present & distant future. I don’t see how thats ok but beating someone up is the end all of evil.
whether or not torture is a line the US has yet crossed in this situation, I think this quote applies. I believe it was Nietzsche who said:
“When fighting monsters, take care not to become one yourself”
More effective is the instillng of abject psychological horror. Drugs that heighten emotional and physical sensitivity, together with a good knowledge of the subject’s religious beliefs can be very effective. If 9/11 could have been prevented by getting infomation in this manner, the end would have more than justified the means.
I just want to say I agree with all those who say torture is never justifiable. Even in the slightly flawed ticking-bomb scenario.
Torture was routine in the old South African apartheid regime. My Grandfather was tortured on Robben Island, then released. We are talking electrodes, near-drownings, beatings, startvation…He was completely stuffed for the rest of his life because of it, and I’ve been told it contributed to his schizophrenia. Classmates of mine at High School were also tortured (yes, beatings are torture), and more than one of them admitted to to confessing to anything to make the beating stop, even if tehy were just in the wrong place at the wrong time.
Torture is just a wat of asserting dominance and breaking a person’s spirit…I don’t believe it’s a valid, or reliable, interrogation technique.
…beatings, starvation
…just a way of asserting dominance
sigh my spelling is torturous
McDuff–
Very well written and thoughtful post. While I do not agree with your sentiments, you represented them very well.
I will say that in my opinion, stating that you will never under any circumstances do “X” is naive. I think that most people that make statements like that have never been put in a situation where choosing to do “X” is the lesser of two evils.
And the ends never justify the means? Rubbish. The revolutionary soldiers that fought for our country’s freedom from British rule used methods and tactics that were abhorrent to the British commanders of the time. Yet if the colonial forces had fought in the ‘traditional’ way, and stood toe to toe with the Brits, I highly doubt we would have won our independence as a country. So the freedoms that we have today, and everything that has taken place in the world as a result of the founding of our country, wouldn’t exist, if someone then hadn’t thought that their ends, did indeed justify their means.
Do I feel that torture can be a useful tool in some situations? Yes. Do I feel that this is one of those situations? No. Do I feel that sleep deprivation and physical discomfort is torture? Yes. Are these acts on the same level as what someone of high rank in our military would undergo if the situation were reversed? Not at all. Would I be willing to support the idea of more forceful torture if there was a need for it? Yes. And because of that fact, I am very grateful to people like the posters here that will continue to speak out, and act as that “conscious” that governments sometimes cannot afford to have.
Very interesting. Not only your interesting “you’re naive because you’ve obviously never had to choose between X and Y” argument, a variant on the “You’ll understand when you’re older,” schtick, but also because of your stance that it is possible for torture to be the lesser of two evils.
Actually, they don’t. That’s the underlying principle on which all the recent human rights agreements on torture are founded. They are all unequivocal about it: even if you suspect terrorism, even if the victim has been tried and found guilty of a violent crime, it is still illegal in the US, the UK, France, Germany, Spain, Canada, et al to torture them or to transfer them to another country where you expect or suspect torture may be used against them. Illegal. It’s on your statute books. Anyone who does so, anyone, is therefore breaking the law.
Which covers my point three quite nicely, I think.
But, suppose that the law is wrong. Outside the realm of law, we have to address this point:
You answered yes. I, also, answer yes. Torture is very useful at keeping a population in fear of authority. Torture is immensely useful at enforcing the status quo. Torture is fantastic at getting people to tell you exactly what they think you want to hear.
However, when it comes down to actually gaining any useful information… even its defenders are notably scant of real information here. Students of the historical uses of torture may well be familiar with the The Malleus Maleficarum, which is an interesting little exercise in every fallacy under the sun. They present a lovely little approach to torture, with all the safeguards you can think of, yet they themselves claim that “torture is often fallacious and ineffective. For some are so soft-hearted and feeble-minded that at the least torture they will confess anything, whether it be true or not. Others are so stubborn that, however much they are tortured, the truth is not to be had from them.” And yet, these authors endorse the use of torture, even as they denied its efficiacy!
You no doubt claim that it will be useful in some cases. I say it will not produce any information that could not be gained through other means.
Again I present the arguments. The subject of torture will lie. We expect him to lie. We know he will lie. What we do not know, and have no way of knowing, is why he will lie. He may lie because he knows the truth and does not want us to have it. He may lie because he does not know the truth. He may lie because he told us the truth and we didn’t believe it the first time around.
I repeat, the reason why he is lying is immaterial. The fact of the matter is that the torturers have no way of knowing what the reason for his lies are. They have no way of knowing when he has stopped lying and is telling the truth, or when he told the truth, had it denied, and has resumed lying again. How am I so sure that we cannot know this? Because if we did know it, we would have no reason to torture him! The information would already be available to us.
Will torture ever be the lesser of two evils? No. No, it will not. It will always be an inefficient and barbarous method of obtaining nearly useless information from a person. It will always be better kept out of the hands of those in authority than placed in them. Always.
Lest we forget, also, bear in mind that someone will have to actually do it. Yes, I am sure that there are people who will view torture as their “duty” and perform it with a “heavy heart,” but I somehow doubt that these people will find jobs as torturers. More likely, as has happened at every point in history, those filling the posts will be those who delight in the sufferings of others, or who bear grudges, or who believe that inhumanity is something only bad people can have, and as they’re not bad people and the torture victims obviously are, well, case closed.
We, in the west, have a moral highground. We are better than this. You say yourself:
which is very nice, but play back the tape to 300, 500, 1000 years ago and we realise the reason why we’re better now. It’s not because there is some inherent goodness in our society or people. It is not because we are more or less fanatical, worship God more or less (or worship the right God), it is simply because we already did this, we screwed up completely. We proved to ourselves and to the rest of the world that we could be complete and utter psychopathic bastards for no real discernable reason, and we could justify it to ourselves and believe that all “higher goods” justified whatever means we could use, no matter how abhorrent. And because we went through this, because we looked back on those times with shame and horror at what we could become, we have vowed “never again!” and erected laws and safeguards which prevent us from becoming the monsters we used to be. Our laws on torture specifically say that we cannot justify torture. No threat, no war, no drug, no danger, no fear, no crime, will be allowed as a justification of torture (or for “Inhuman or Degrading treatment”, see The 1978 case of Ireland vs United Kingdom (ECHR) for more details.
Finally:
Nor would the Inquisition. Nor would the witch burnings, nor the whole of the Dark Ages. Arguing the merits of religion with a friend the other day, I found it hard to make the case “For” while presented with the fact that the Dark Ages suspended human social advancement by about 400 years, principally through the fear of torture. This was done in the name of “a higher power,” “a greater goal,” and just because we, today, view our goals as being more noble and enlightened than those silly superstitious Catholics, we do not know how history will judge us.
We are not fighting a war of independence from a higher power. The Good Ol’ USA runs the world. You are the British Empire. You are the Catholic Church. You are the Romans. You will be held to a higher standard than those who do not rule the world. You will hold yourselves to it, or history will be as merciless to you as it was to the Inquisition. Don’t feel that your noble goals will make it better. I can point to a hundred things that were great under the British Empire. For every attempted genocide there was a burgeoning infrastructure in Africa; for every proponent of eugenics there was an enlightened biologist bringing medicines to countries previously lacking. Yet our legacy is still remembered, and rightly so, as the inventors of the concentration camp and the dividers of Africa. The benefits that Empire brought Britain and the world will always be with us; the horrors that we brought must be remembered so that they can remain firmly in the past. We have banned torture for a very good reason: we never, ever want to go there again.
To those who believe the ends never justify the means, I have two questions to ask:
1.) Do you think the Allies were right to use naked force against Germany & Japan in WW2?
2.) Do you think the Union was justified in using force to reunite forcibly the South with the North in the American Civil War, and, incidentally, free the slaves?
That doesn’t apply to this issue at all.
The ethical question isn’t “Do the ends justify the means?” but “do the ends always justify the means?” Obviously, in general, some ends justify some means. The two cases you listed above would be viewed as justified by some, unjustified by others. Some might view the declarations of war in both cases as justified, but draw the line at some of the specific actions perpetrated during the war.
In the case of torture, both legally and ethically, the ends are so flimsy (or so terrifying) and the means so abhorrent and prone to abuse that the equation simply does not pan out. These ends do not justify these means.
Or to put it another way, the ends and means must be judged seperately from each other, and one must not be used to mitigate the other.
Thank you for your clarification, McDuff; however, sailor said above, and I suspect many others reading this thread agree with him:
“It is a basic tenet of our civilization that the ends do not justify the means. Ever.”
Also, there has been quite a lot of discussion on this board about torture done during Inquisition and Medieval times. Can anyone produce a cite showing torture is ineffective when done in a scientific manner by experts trained in physiology and psychology, rather than by sadistic religious fanatics, and who use standard forensic techniques to double-check the answers?
Well, the sentiment is true. Even if it is hacked and slashed of the nuance of detail that a lawyer would demand, the spirit is pretty much accurate.
It essentially means that we consider, in this day and age, any given act on its own merits. We have many examples of legislation, HR agreements and case law stating that, generally, western society is no longer happy justifying a morally abhorrent act merely because it can be seen to have some positive side effects. The act is judged on its own rights. References back through history to “well, we did it then” don’t hold any water, because we fully expect ourselves to have grown up in 200 or even 50 years.
I don’t believe you’ll find any examples of any situations where trained medical professionals have performed acts of torture under scientific conditions. Somewhat tellingly, I think the closest you’re likely to get is the Nazi regime. It would be a breach of scientific ethics to conduct any studies into torture of the sort you describe, so I’m really not sure how you would expect this kind of research to be carried out.
I’d like someone to attempt to disprove the logical argument set out above for the inefficiency of torture as a method of gaining information. If someone can provide a reasonable logical proof of a situation in which we can read someone’s mind but still need to torture them, I’m all for opening up the debate to the issue of whether we should allow any government to have the most abused tool of authority in all history, ie if the benefits could outweigh the costs. As it is, I stand by the assertion that the benefits are slim to none and the costs are so potentially huge that it is suicide to give on this issue even an inch.