On torture

Torture is again in the news. In particular, I am referring to the amendment proposed by Sen. John McCain to a Pentagon spending bill which would outlaw cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment of (foreign) prisoners suspected of being involved in terrorism.

The amendment was approved in the Senate by 90-9 vote last month. Vice President Cheney opposed the amendment, asking for an exception for CIA personnel holding a suspect who may have knowledge of an imminent terror attack. The White House has said that President Bush will veto the bill if the amendment is included.

Naturally, this is a topic that provokes strong emotions. With the context Abu Ghraib and the steady stream of torture accusations against the US trickling through the media in the months since, torture has become a hot issue, generating a frenzy of news reports, op-eds and blog activity.

Reading through some of them I am struck by the intense concern with particulars. Discussions run on and on about whether waterboarding is a form of torture, or whether severe temperature changes produce pain or only discomfort, etc. It reminds me of public reaction when the Abu Ghraib stories broke, with some people calling it torture, and others labeling it more of a "college prank". Even today, the mainstream press usually refers to the incidents as "prisoner abuse" which I guess is somewhere between pranks and torture in seriousness.

What is largely ignored, at least in my experience, is the need to address the issue in moral terms. In a free society, the ultimate justification for anything must be on moral grounds. By "moral grounds" I do not mean religion - I mean the secular values on which the society is based.

Coming across one such thread recently, I posted a response which is pasted below (in blue text).

There are several different issues here that need to be separated. Trying to address them all simultaneously just confounds the discussion.

1. First is the definition of torture, since there seem to be many arguments whether a given method of inflicting pain/anxiety constitutes torture.

2. The second is whether torture is a valid means of interrogation in a civilized society, even if only applied in “extreme” cases.

3. The third is the question of defining “extreme” cases, which I’m sure is also a controversial question.

These questions boil down to a discussion of the ethics of emergencies. Before we get into that, it would be good to remind ourselves why civilized people generally don’t condone torture. After all, we are not that many generations removed from public floggings, drawing and quartering, burning at stakes, impalement, crucifixion, etc.

I think the reason for this change in our outlook is moral and philosophical. As we have learned to value life and individual rights through the course of history, torture stands ever more in stark, barbaric contrast to what we value. The most fundamental of our rights, from which all other rights flow, is the right to our own body. Torture is the simplest and most direct assault possible on the body. It is a cold-blooded, premeditated assault on life itself, perceived by the victim in its most primitive biological sense, through the pain/pleasure mechanism.

As we grow more civilized, it becomes impossible for a person who truly values life to torture anyone. Most of us are capable of inflicting pain on others or even killing them, if we are sufficiently provoked. But these are range of the moment things, which accompany extreme anger or fear, and which cannot be sustained. Someone who can actually torture another person over a prolonged period is not the norm in our society.

As we grow more civilized, it becomes impossible for a society based on individual rights to condone torture. There is too great a dichotomy between professing to support an ideal while simultaneously destroying it. Something has to give, and it is usually the good that gives way to evil, because the good requires effort and force of will to sustain, while evil doesn’t take much more effort than looking the other way.

I say these things not because I am absolutely and irrevocably opposed to torture in all cases, but as a reminder to highlight the seriousness of what we are discussing. With this context, I’ll move on to the substance of the discussion, which I think is a discussion of the ethics of emergencies. The “emergency” in this case, is the terrorist, more specifically the terrorist who has information regarding a plot which could claim many lives.

The word “terrorism” has acquired a weight of meaning and emotion beyond that contained in dictionaries, so it would be good to define what makes this crime special, deserving of special laws.

The justification commonly proposed is that of numbers, and large numbers at that. After all, we don’t currently have laws permitting torture to extract information from someone who might know the identity of a serial killer. A serial killer can kill at most a couple dozen people, which while being a respectable number for the average suicide bomber, falls far short of the destructive potential of a 9/11 type attack. Therefore, to state the threat more specifically, we are defining “terrorist” in this case as someone participating in or having knowledge of a plot that could cause fatalities in the hundreds or thousands. This is the nature of the “emergency”.

There are arguments made that torture is not an effective means to extract information, since people will say whatever they think the interrogator wants to hear in order to avoid more pain. Having no personal experience of torture, I cannot definitely say if this is true or not, but it sounds logical. However, it can’t be denied that there is always the possibility of coming across the odd individual who pours out a full and truthful account of the plot, once the thumbscrews are applied.

The “emergency” then, applies to very specific people - people who have knowledge of plots of the magnitude of the 9/11 attacks, and there is no other way to prevent an imminent attack.

Naturally, torture cannot be used as a blanket screening technique to apply on every suspected terrorist on the offchance that he might have some vital information. We don’t round up our own population and cart them off to police stations for questioning on the offchance that some of us may have some information pertaining to a crime. Since we enjoy a protection under law not afforded to a foreign populace under wartime conditions, it becomes important to make sure that the process is adequately supervised.

This brings me to the crux of the ethics argument. Since, in my opinion, torture is antithetical to the morals and principles of a free and civilized society, it cannot be allowed to remain a dirty little secret. Such secrets, which are not so secret, undermine the moral fabric of our society and take away the things that make us strong - our confidence in our ideals, our feeling of being on the side of what is good and right, our willingness to fight for the things we value.

If and when the situation calls for torture, it becomes our responsibility as a nation, which we acknowledge and live with openly. No more excuses. No more nonsense from our leaders on the lines of “It didn’t happen! Oops - well, it might have. Hmm ... looks like some isolated cases may have occurred but I can assure you we are looking into it and the guilty will be punished.” And then six months later, “we don’t torture people”.

In other words, if you want to create a legal mechanism for torture, then you must also create a legal mechanism for responsibilities and oversight. Here are some suggestions:

1. Torture must be authorized from the top by senior officials. You cannot encourage the rank and file to indulge themselves on the sly to “soften up” the target, then disclaim all responsibility from the top.

2. Torture must be supervised and recorded. A senior officer must be present at all times. A complete audio/video record must be maintained to account for every second of the prisoner’s time in custody, and presented to appropriate courts and officials when necessary.

3. Torture must be reviewed by an external agency. You cannot have one agency such as the CIA be judge, jury and executioner. The simplest course would be to put it under the review and jurisdiction of the courts.

If these things are done, then those of us who believe in torture as a valid recourse in extreme emergencies will have a leg to stand on and defend our principles to ourselves and to the world. If not, we will continue to be confronted by a trickle of Abu Ghraibs, with their accompanying chorus of contemptible waffling, denials and excuses from our leaders.