Torture: Foolish and Wrong
by
Craig Duncan
Department of Philosophy and Religion
10/17/06
President Bush says he opposes torture. Today, though, he signed into law the “Military Commissions Act of 2006,” which (among
other outrageous
things) would allow him, alone and in secret, to determine which
interrogation methods do and do not comport with the Geneva Conventions. In all likelihood, the Bush Administration’s
aim is to continue abusive interrogation methods that on any reasonable
definition amount to torture (methods such as “waterboarding,”
for example, in which a detainee is laid on his back and choked with water
until he believes he is drowning). This new law, however, is both foolish and
immoral: foolish, because torture won’t
make Americans safer; and immoral, because torture is the grossest of affronts
to human dignity.
Start first with its foolishness. One reason torture is foolish is that in the short-run
torture is unlikely to produce the information needed to stop terrorist
attacks. For starters, the tortured
person may well be innocent. Or he may be guilty, but by just making up
answers he may be able to stall long enough for the attack to proceed.
A second, even more
important reason not to torture is that torture has counter-productive long-run
consequences, and hence carries a high danger of at best winning the battle but
losing the war. Why is this? At least four reasons stand out.
First, relaxing our
constraints against prisoner abuse only encourages the abuse of American troops
who are captured in war.
Second, torture gives
evidence of American brutality, and terrorists’ appeals to this evidence serve
their recruitment goals. Thus, even if
you actually foil a bomb plot, you have in all probability merely created scores
more bombers.
Third, torture can serve
terrorists’ political goals by inspiring a rise in anti-Americanism among even
non-terrorists. The harm this does to the fight against terrorism is
incalculable, since foiling terrorist plots requires the pooling of
international intelligence resources.
Political leaders in countries with strong anti-American publics will
feel less free to cooperate with American intelligence agencies. Moreover, disgruntled civilians in those
countries will be less inclined to inform on any terrorist activities they learn
of.
Finally, engaging in
torture surely has a harmful, brutalizing effect not only on those unfortunate
American officials who are assigned to be torturers and hence forever changed
for the worse, but also on American culture at large, to the extent that
torture encourages us to approve of cruelty.
Please don’t be tricked by
These considerations show
torture to be foolish. It is also
gravely wrong. Torture is the ultimate
insult to another person’s dignity, the most complete act of humiliation
possible. This is so because torture is
the total subjugation of one person within another’s power; thus it destroys
the subjugated being’s very integrity—his or her wholeness, his or her
separateness—as a person. In short,
torture aims at nothing less than the utter destruction of its victim’s will,
the essence of his or her personhood.
That is why it is the ultimate form of disrespect for human dignity.
If you are inclined to say
“Big deal, terrorists are no better than animals,” then reflect for a moment on
the fact that in holding these suspects morally responsible for their actions,
you are already putting them above other animals: you are imputing to them a freedom of choice,
the possession of which makes them responsible for their actions, and hence
deserving of punishment for abusing this freedom. Since it is this freedom of choice that
constitutes our human dignity, however, it follows that in holding criminals
responsible for their crimes we are imputing to them at least a minimal form of
dignity—a dignity that places moral limits on how badly we may treat those
people who possess it, no matter how execrable those people may be in all other
regards.
In short, you cannot have
it both ways. You cannot hold terror
suspects responsible for their actions and at the same time regard them as mere
animals.
For all these reasons it is
both foolish and immoral to get rid of the legal ban on torture. Of course, the Bushs
and Cheneys of the world may object that a legal ban
on torture is still too risky. What,
they will ask, about a ticking time bomb hidden in
Two replies are in order
here. First, this thought experiment
simply ignores the many dangers of torture described above. In effect, it
proposes that we dismantle the legal ban on torture with the unpredictable
one-in-a-million supreme emergency case in mind, and thereby unwittingly bring
upon ourselves the lethal and all-too-predictable, odds-on dangers of torture
mentioned earlier. Instead of harming
ourselves like this, let’s keep the legal ban on torture, and if that
one-in-a-million emergency case ever arises, let’s have those officials who
break the ban use the legal strategy known as the “necessity defense,” and
argue in front of a jury that their lawbreaking—that is, their torturing—was
justified. (“Necessity defenses” are
used by individuals who find themselves in extraordinary circumstances where it
makes overwhelming sense to break the law—as in the case, say, where a
pharmacist dispenses a life-saving drug without the legally required
prescription, in order to rescue a customer who has collapsed on the floor of
his shop in a medical emergency.)
True, when defendants use
the necessity defense there is not, and should not be, any
guarantee that the jury will agree that the lawbreaking was justified and
exempt the defendant from punishment.
Hence, necessity defenses are not without their risks. But people who shun all risks surely don’t
become soldiers or military officials in the first place. Let’s give due credit to our soldiers’ and
officials’ courage, to their willingness to run risks for the fellow citizens’
safety.
Second, the Bush/Cheney
argument that a legal ban on torture is too risky is flawed inasmuch as it
insults, not just the courage of our soldiers and officials, but also the
courage of the American people in general.
“Just do anything to save us, please!!” it
portrays the American people as saying.
“We will give up who we are!
Forget our deepest values, our cherished traditions! We’d rather sacrifice those things than be
exposed to any risk of danger at all, no matter how slight! Yes,
This, however, is not the
American people I know. Last time I
checked, we were still the home of the brave, NOT a country of cowards
concerned only with saving our own skins, no matter what the cost to our honor.
(Click
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Duncan’s