05-26-05 Torture

Is tourture ever justified?

There is an argument for the use of torture from a moral standpoint. There is, it is generally, a scenario under which torture is morally justified. This scenario is known as "the ticking bomb scenario". It is almost always, in some form, the basis of any argument in favor of the use of torture.

The ticking bomb scenario goes like this: Agents capture a man who they know has knowledge of the location of a ticking bomb somewhere in a populated area which, when allowed to detonate, will cost some number of lives. The agents know that the captured prisoner will provide this infomration acuratly when subjected to torture. In such a scenario, the pain and suffering endured by the one man is vastly overshadowed by the certian deaths of so many others, and the torture is morally justified.
However, the ticking bomb scenario is only theorectical. There are so many specifics that must be true for the scenario to be realized, that it has scant a chance of occuring. It must be assumed that the torturer KNOWS the bomb exists and it ticking, KNOWS the man he has captured has the information, and KNOWS the prisoner will give up such infomation ACCURATLTY under torture. The ticking bomb scerio is time dependant, specific, and limited.
Proponants of torture argue that the ticking bomb scenario, in it's pure form, is too restrictive, and less stringant criteria of "resonable certianty" or "resonable suspicion" can be applied and still be morally justified.

Example: If the existance of a ticking bomb is 80% certian; if there is an 80% chance that the captor has information that will lead to harmless diffusion; if the prisoner has an 80% chance of giving up information under torture; and if the informatio, in turn is correect 80% of the time, then the infomation obtained by torture would save lives in 40 out of 100 cases.

But, if one tortured prisoner in a batch of a four hundred resulted in information which saved 1,000 lives (or 6,000 in the 9/11 situation), the cost can be said to be justified based on the results, so long as any of the tourtured prisoners lived.
Of course, if the same four hundred prisoners get the electrode shock treatment, only to find out that the ticking bomb never existed, you've got a real moral problem on your hands.

In the above example, all the odds were based on the assumption that the bomb existed, and that the process was moving twards accurate information with 80% certianty at every step. Those conditions are still fantasticly unlikely.

When touture is applied in a non-specific and non-time dependant situation, the likelyhood of obtaining information so life saving that it provides moral justification for the use of torture is very slim. In fact, information obtained under torture is notoriously unreliable. What would you tell your captor to get that snarling dog to stop barking at you from mere inches away from your blindfolded face? I'd tell him the names of fifty people who shit diamonds, if he asked.

But, the most commonly spoken argument for the use of torture has nothing to do with ticking bombs. Simply stated, the argument is: "They do it."

"They do it, so we should, too."

By this logic, every act is ethical if someone else has done it. Since Jeffery Dahmer raped his mother, killed her, and kept her skin as a souveneir, it is Ok for me to do that, also.

"No. They do it TO US. So, we can do it TO THEM."

Oh, sorry. Big difference.

In any moral or ethical discussion of human rights, and human practices, there really is no "us" or "them". Or, at least, we should hope that there isn't, lest someday we be "them". Slavery, opression, killing, rape and torture are not acceptable for any particular group. They are either acceptable or unacceptable to human beings. Once the standard is established, it should be applied equally to all human beings.

The standard, for the US, is long since established. One of the oldest verses of our hallowed legal texts specificly decries "cruel and unusual punishment". We have signed international treaty after international treaty against the use of torture. The most recognized are the Geneva Conventions, signed by a whole host of countries . Specifically, the Third geneva Convention, signed in 1929, dealt specifically with captivity and prisoners.

(Art 17): "No physical or mental torture, nor any other form of coercion, may be inflicted on prisoners of war to secure from them information of any kind whatever. Prisoners of war who refuse to answer may not be threatened, insulted or exposed to unpleasant or disadvantageous treatment of any kind"

Naturally, the strength of any treaty lies in the parties mutual adherance to it. As such, the US, being the largest world military power, has a responsibility to uphold the treaty weighted to its size and influance. If the US abandons the tenants of the treaty in its dealings with other nations, the motivation for smaller nations to similarly abandon the treaty may be increased.

Amnesty International, the human rights watchdog group, released it's report on the state of human rights worldwide yesterday. Included in the report were scathing critisim of the alleged US torture tactics at Abu Grade and Guantanamo Bay, and the US refusal to mount meaningful investigations into the incidents. Irene Kahn, Amnesty International's sevcretary general said the following in a speach to the Forign Press association:

"Furthermore, the US, as the unrivalled political, military and economic Super Power, sets the tone of governmental behavior world-wide. by thumbing its nose at the rule of law and human rights, what message does the US send to repressive regimes whohave little regard for the rule of law anyway?"

Anmesty International has designated June 25th as a day of action against torture. And has a petition for US citizens to denounce torture here.