Torture: means toward an end
Recently, the Bush Administration has come under fire for allowing torture of enemy combatants in secret prisons throughout the world. There are many justifications that the Bush Administration has used: that these terrorists have no protection under the Geneva Conventions (for relevant definition, see here); that the rules of war do not apply to those who choose not to follow them; that torture is justified if the information leads to the saving of American lives.
It seems to me that there are a couple of things that have to be looked at in relation to this difficult concept. The first is the question posed by Utilitarians: does the good of the most justify the use of less than moral tools on a few? The Second is the question posed by Deontologists: despite an overwhelmingly justified end, are there some means that cannot be justified?
To sift through the philosophical gobbledygook, the questions are: Is one person’s good (or many peoples good) more important any anyone else’s? Are the some means that should never be employed despite the end?
I guess I must be a deontolgist. I suppose I am learning more about myself every day. I guess if we go to far then we become not any better than they. Are there not always lines that shouldn’t be crossed?
On the other hand, I might go back to Nephi cutting off Labans head in order to get the brass plates. As long as the spirit leads you to this type of action you are ok. I somehow doubt that is the criteria that is being used currently.
Comment by Eric — 12/11/2005 @ 10:20 pm
As long as the spirit leads you to this type of action you are ok.
You see, this is quite scary to me. Forgive me, but I don’t particularly trust anybody to get that kind of revelation. This road leads to Iran.
Now, I don’t think the Israelis have the solution; however, there is one aspect of their system that I find extremely attractive. That is that torture is illegal. As I understand it, torture is well defined and illegal. If a situation arises where someone might believe that torture is justified they have the option to do so. However, they will also be prosecuted under the law for it.
I believe that there are a number of things that should be proscribed by law that could conceivably, by exigency, be required for the good of society. It doesn’t change the facts that the laws should stand and that the perpetrators, even if for the good, be prosecuted to the fullest extent possible. If it turns out to be truly exigent, perhaps the courts would be lenient.
While I like this idea, I don’t know if it has been successfully employed in Israel. Recent reports suggest that it has not been.
Comment by J. Stapley — 12/11/2005 @ 10:32 pm
It was my understanding that torture was legal in Israel, (I am certain it was legal until 1984 and in 2000, Ariel Sharon was going to introduce legislation to make it legal once more (I believe it was carried out but I will need to get back with a cite).
Another question is, What really is torture? Blaring non-stop Brittany Spears or Solitary Confinement. It seems we are looking at a continuum.
Comment by Craig — 12/11/2005 @ 10:44 pm
The question you raise is an interesting one, but I think it’s actually a distraction from the main issue. If you focus on the fanciful “torture a terrorist to prevent a nuclear bomb in Manhattan” scenario, I expect you’d get most people to agree that the torture is justfied. But the political issue isn’t about this fanciful scenario, it’s about the routine use of torture by U.S. government officers. I don’t trust governments to use these powers wisely, especially when everything they do is so top secret that there’s very little oversight.
(In the unlikely event that the fanciful scenario does arise, then you could just break the law and use torture anyway.)
Comment by ed — 12/11/2005 @ 11:22 pm
Seems to me that they have legalized coersion, but they keep crossing the line. I could be easily mistaken, though.
Comment by J. Stapley — 12/11/2005 @ 11:41 pm
J.
You make a good point to me (#2). I was not suggesting following the spirit as a practical course of action for any current government.
Craig.
Good question about what is torture. Even being imprisoned could be considered by some to be torture. It becomes a question of where you draw the line.
Ed.
While I have never been there, would saving Manhatten really justify torture? 🙂
Comment by Eric — 12/12/2005 @ 8:29 am
Sorry to keep coming up with additional questions, but they apply:
Both Machiavelli and Richelieu theorized that morality was a concept that was relative to the state…for reasons of state or Raison d’etate anything the state did was moral. In other words, what the state does is right. If constraints of the international system force a state to use traditionally immoral means for the good of the state then the are, a priori, moral.
Comment by Craig — 12/12/2005 @ 10:07 am
The means that you employ are the ends that you will be judged by.
Consider the Book of Mormon and pre-emptive strikes.
Not to mention the fact that torture invariably produces useless pseudo-information.
Sigh.
As for the Britney Spears approach, try being waterboarded for sixty seconds. Then post on the topic again.
Comment by Stephen M (Ethesis) — 12/12/2005 @ 1:46 pm
RE: Comment #7, I know that you are not really a totalitarian, Craig, so this seems to be a bit of controversy for controvery’s sake. Are you really positting that the maximization of the good (whatever that is – obviously not freedom and human rights in this case) can define what is moral.
As I stated in the previous comment, create robust laws to protect human rights and freedom. Then if, in the anomolous case that exigency requires breaking them, prosecute under the law. In such a case Justice and the Good are both preserved.
Comment by J. Stapley — 12/12/2005 @ 2:05 pm
J,
You are a true greek. Tragedy of the individual giving the sdelf for society. The only problem is that it gives rise to the practice of sacrificing our truest heroes, but those heros might not mind, I suppose.
Comment by Steve H — 12/13/2005 @ 1:16 am
The Wall Street Journal points out an interesting paradox for those willing to justify war but unwilling to allow for coercive interrogation techniques during a conflict. Why is is moral to target an individual for death during a conflict while at the same time protecting that same individual from coercive interrogation techniques?
Comment by paul mortensen — 12/13/2005 @ 9:37 am
Since there seems to be a uniformity in perspective about morality in warfare, let me pose two scenarios where it may be a little more difficult to draw the line.
First, Say you are on your mission in Peru and have been serving in a mountain villiage. One morning, the National Army shows up and informs the town that it has become known that the villiage actually sympathizes with the Sendero Luminoso (Shining Path terrorist organization). They announce they will randomly round up and shoot 10 villiagers as a deterrent. You protest and the officer in charge says he will make you a deal…he hands you a pistol and says you choose one to shoot and do it and we will let the rest go…what do you do?
Second, You are Truman at the end of WWII, do you drop the bomb? Understanding that Hiroshima and Nagasaki were not military targets and the Atomic Bomb was a weapon of terror, what do you do?
In both cases the means are horrific, but doesnt morality compell action?
Comment by Craig — 12/13/2005 @ 9:51 am
To reply to Stephen M. (Ethesis) Post 8:
For those that study security and intelligence, torture alone can be unreliable, however, as part of an intelligence gathering program, torture (or physican and mental duress) can be an effective way of gaining information.
Typically, a subject is deprived of sleep, bombarded by loud music, fed in a way that destroys the body’s internal clock. These are perfectly legal softening up techniques and are not considered “torture”.
The subject then is mentally prepared when the guards describe in detail the proceedures which will be employed. This is usually enough to loosen tongues. That information is then subjected to corroboration and if not credable, rejected.
Waterboarding does not inflict lasting physical harm. However, the fear of drowning is often enough to allow the interrogators to decide whether the subject indeed has the information and whether he/she is lieing.
Additionally, I have never participated in activities which might get me waterboarded. As has been stated previously, these subjects are those to whom regular rules of warfare do not apply based on THEIR choices and actions.
Comment by Craig — 12/13/2005 @ 10:03 am
Craig, in comment 12 you pose a couple of questions. As to the first, my reaction would be to say the good is optimized when the indavidual concedes and shoots one person in the village. I would further assert that the good is further optimized if the indavidual asks for a volonteer and then submits himself to be prosecuted under the law for his actions.
Now, when it comes to the bomb, I think it is, first, important to note that the First presidency has proclaimed that war is not of God. Furthermore, soldiers are not responsible for the death required by their hands of the Goverment. I don’t know that we can ever fully comprehend the choice made by Truman. The most compelling analyses I have read have vindicated Truman, but I myself don’t have enough information to judge.
Comment by J. Stapley — 12/13/2005 @ 1:56 pm
In regard to this specific issue, machiavellian wonderings aside, there’s also the concern of the quality of information obtained under duress, not to mention the international diplomatic fallout of being ‘a nation who tortures.’
Are the means worth it still if the ends they acheive are flawed?
Are we considering the additional cost in international relations? (added in to the equation of ends vs means)
Comment by Naiah Earhart — 12/14/2005 @ 5:55 pm
With regard to Hiroshima and Nagasaki, I defer to the view of Reuben Clark, who called the bombings shameful. I suspect he’d say the same about torture today.
Comment by EricG — 12/17/2005 @ 10:03 am
16.The bombings of Hiroshima undoubtedly spared my father’s life. They were very very good. They also spared many Japanese lives. This issues is almost out of the realm of debate.
1. The issue we are confronting today is whether we should be like anti-Nephi-Lehis. Remember that the Nephites did not subscribe. They fought with superior weapons and they kept on fighting and slaughering until they got an unconditional surrender.
Every day I read about Muslim honor killings and other brutality to women and I wonder if we are actually dealing with human beings. I don’t feel any moral restraint when my enemy is some kind of loathsome creature whi has no humanity.
Comment by GeorgeD — 12/29/2005 @ 10:06 pm
J. stapley, I think you do have enough information to judge. I think we can decide, but not without offending someone. I’m not sure this is an issue we can remain permanently on the fence of. I was going to say more, so as not to end with a preposition, but oh well.
Comment by annegb — 12/30/2005 @ 10:54 am
“What if by torture, we save American lives?”
False choice. We never have any way of knowing whether torture is actually going to save lives. We don’t even have an assurance that the coerced info will even be true.
Artificial hypothetical that’s simply untestable. The argument convinces me of absolutely nothing.
Besides, I’d rather lose thousands more American lives before I’d see the US degenerate into a brutal system that tortures people and ignores “inalienable human rights.”
Comment by Seth R. — 2/2/2006 @ 10:05 pm
Seth, I agree. I’d rather risk being blown up while I’m checking at Wal-Mart than my freedom.
But the deal with Truman and the bomb and what we may be doing here, torturing people, that’s apples and oranges.
In my book.
Comment by annegb — 2/3/2006 @ 9:30 pm