Torture and terrorism
Torture is an awful thing. The first thought is to reject it as a heinous crime against the human person that degrades both the victim and perpetrator.
Yet, imagine you are returning from an evening out. As you near your home, you hear screams and see bloodied people stumbling about. With rising panic, you see gunmen running away.
Terrified, you race to your house. It is in shambles. You mother is dead. A broken body squirming in blood is your father. He croaks, “They took your sister! Hurry! Look for her!�
Blind with rage, you rush outside. By chance, you come upon a gunman limping away. You see his broken leg. You hit him with all you have, stomp on his wound and shriek, “Where’s my sister? Tell me or I’ll kill you!�
The police arrive. They pull you away and grab the man. “Take it easy! We’ve got a couple more of them. We’ll get all the answers. Let us handle this.�
A month later, terrorists attack another neighborhood. There is no news of your sister and your father is maimed for life. Your neighbors are grief-stricken for their own losses. A pall of fear has settled over everyone. On international TV, the terrorists say they will kill more people like you because your government is trying to destroy their religion and culture.
You know the allegations are nonsense. You certainly did not vote for any such acts by your government. Your President tells you not to fear but he admits not every terrorist can be stopped.
Then, you learn that the man you caught and others like him have revealed nothing to interrogators partly because the law forbids torture. You know the law expresses your most cherished moral ideals. You believe the experts who say suspects disclose nothing useful under torture and the best way to get cooperation is to find something in their backgrounds as leverage.
You also know that unraveling the prisoners’ backgrounds is impossible within any reasonable period, whereas another terrorist attack could explode tomorrow. You are seething with helpless grief at your losses and those of your compatriots. You are furious that innocent people should have to live in constant fear in a country as powerful as yours.
Yet, you support legal rights for suspects because many may be innocent. The dilemma is that the one person who has vital information cannot be identified without interrogating everyone harshly.
Should you swallow the blazing pain of your beloved parents and accept your sister’s probable rape and death to uphold your ideals? Or, should terrorists have lesser legal rights than criminals, including psychotic serial killers and pedophiles?
While you grapple with these weighty issues, you long to get your country back. It was friendly and liked by others. Immigrants by the million, including illegal ones, profited from its opportunities. Its institutions researched solutions to the worst problems of disease, poverty and hunger ravaging the world.
That was before the siege by fanatics who would rather kill and die for their archaic beliefs than benefit from modern life. Worse, there is no one with whom your government can negotiate.
In these conditions, is it self-destructive to torture some individuals under tightly regulated rules to block terrorists?
I do not have an answer. However, in my numerous and daily international contacts, I find that most people do not flatly reject torture in all situations. What most find reprehensible are dissimulation and hypocrisy about the use of terror.
26 Responses to “Torture and terrorism”
An interesting question. Also an interesting question: what would you do if aliens came and invaded your neighborhood?
Both questions have as much basis in reality.
Look, all these hypothetical thought-exercises about under what situations you would torture somebody are just that: hypothetical. Nobody’s homes in the U.S. are being invaded by terrorists. No terrorists have information that must be wrenched from them within the next ten minutes or else a nuclear bomb will go off. All of these scary stories have nothing to do with what happens in real life.
We do not live in such a world in this country. Terrorist attacks do not happen every day. They happen rarely if ever. We do not have to become monsters just because we live in fear.
President Bush says that this is a battle between good and evil. But it sounds like he would rather fight evil with homegrown, American evil. Is that the right thing to do?
Yes but it does happen everyday in places like Iraq so that’s just evading the question. My problem with all the thought experiments is that they rely on the assumption that a) torture works as a practical matter and b) that limits are easily kept. There is a very good reason why the US Constitution has the 5th Admendment and that’s that people will say anything under torture — even falsely confessing to crimes that guarantee life sentences or even death. Every CIA, military and law enforcement take on the issue I’ve ever read says that torture is very ineffective in gathering intelligence and you spend most of the time on wild goose chases. So even if I were in that situation I’d oppose torture as a practical matter because I think there are faster ways to find the sister.
Moreover, how do you define “tightly regulated rules?” Let’s say you torture the gunman and he gives five people’s names — two of them actually have the sister and three are just friends not directly involved. You capture the friends but can’t find the terrorists that have her. Can you then torture them to get them to talk? Now you’re torturing three more people and it is very likely they’ll give you the same two names and each give three other people that may know something but not the exact location — especially if the terrorists are on the move. Etc. Once you go down that road (especially with the assumption that whatever is said under torture is true and requires immediate action) I history has shown it will spiral quickly out of control until the populace as a whole is just one pronouncement away from being tortured themselves.
A big question in all of this is how our behaviour, as individuals (a la Abu Ghraib) and as a government (a la Guantanamo) affect the recruitment and funding of terrorist organizations.
We know as a fact that the Muslim “street” is lied to on a continual basis about our behaviour. But does our actions help the liars whip up anger, and more importantly, money? This is an absolute unknown, as far as I know, I have never seen a statistic that accurately measures this.
So, a disturbing thought: Perhaps a pro-torture policy might actually increase the amount of terrorism, and it might actually cause, albeit indirectly, the above horor. The question posed above can be paraphrased as “How would you feel if the lack of torture caused the death of your family?” It could be also asked “What if torture caused the death of your family?” I feel this is not a stretch…some may disagree.
So…How would you feel if torture caused the death of your family?
I feel that laws should be written to err on the side of caution when it comes to human rights abuses.
The Israeli interpretation of this type of theoretical dilemma is the most sensible. They lay out a policy against torture; however their equivalent of the Supreme Court made it clear that each interrogator has the choice to essentially break that law if they believe it to be justified. The interrogator is not assured immunity for their actions, and so must weigh the precedent of the law against the implications of improbable, yet possible events such as those detailed in the post.
As I read the ruling, it admits that laws can never be perfect. There are always situations we cannot foresee and an infinite number of hypotheticals in which lines should be crossed.
The American legal system, we have in place gubernatorial and presidential pardons for exactly such complex situations. If there is a great enough mass-consensus, then the perpetrator of the crime will not be punished. While there is no direct precedent for torture related pardons, I would have no problem with one in theory given that it was preformed in an open and transparent way.
The Isrealis have it right. If the potential torturer knows he will pay a price, but truly believes it must be done, then he will do it and face the consequences. Mostly the Isrealis just believe that torture is a piss-poor way to get intell.
The Cheney administrtion is all about evading this very important constraint. Evidence includes Specter’s crappy little bill and even the comprimise bill. If Bush believes he must mightly protect us doe-eyed inoccents by waterboarding people presumed to be terrorist/evildoers/liberals, then he should be steely-eyed enough to man up and accept the consequences.
If its good enough for Isreal, its good enough for us.
Snark makes a good point about Israel.
If Bushh really believed that torture was correct I believe he should do the following:
1) Come in front of the nation and the world and admit that he has given an executive order allowing extreme measures during interragations.
2) Say as leader he will accept all moral and legal responsibility for any extreme torture.
3) Offer him self up for any war crimes associated with these policies.
If he was a truly courageous leader …
If he was a truly courageous leader …
If wishes were horses, than dreamers would ride.
Does everyone believe that torture is what we are talking about? When I picture being tortured I think electrodes, sever pain, mutilation, ect. Is anyone advocating any of that? Skipping a meal, having lights on, having dogs bark at you, while may cross the line, and I would be worried about some people taking it too far, is not torture.
Eric – The WashingtonPost and other news sources reported on the Justice Department memos that allowed the use of extreme measures short of “organ failure” to be used by the CIA. Were not talking about sending some to bed without dinner, you repeat the Dittohead meme.
From WP:
WP Torture memo
Eric,
Going for days without food or water because someone who has you captive and is in control of your physical surroundings is not “skipping a meal”. Sleep deprivation by means of lights and loud noise is not “having lights on”. Other methods that you haven’t mentioned is being forced to stand naked in a room maintained at low temperature and waterboarding. No matter how much some people may try to 1984 the situation, torture is torture.
Does everyone believe that torture is what we are talking about?
Waterboarding is considered torture by every civilized country on earth and it is.
And yes, thats whats being discussed.
Heres a more realistic scenario. You have intelligence indicating that 3 members of Al Qaeda will be traveling from a village in Pakistan to one in Afghanastan by foot in order to plot a terrorist attack within Afghanistan . You survey the likely routes, and have the manpower and equipment to watch 2 of 4. On one of those routes 3 men are seen traveling by foot. Your forces on the ground that intercept them are US special forces. The men claim to be visiting relatives in Pakistan.You find them with 2 AK-47s. They claim they are for self defense.
What do you do? Do you detain these 3 men? For how long. In the course of normal interogation they all insist they are not Al Quaeda. You cannot trust information from this village, as it is notoriously unhelpful to american troops, having some sympathy for the Taliban.
If you torture these men, it is assured that they will tell you they are Al Qaeda and of several planned operations of dubious value. This obviously isnt helpful, as torture will get them to sing any song you want just to stop it. If they aren’t, you will have tortured and detained 3 men for being in the wrong place at the wrong time.
They may be Al Qaeda, and low level, telling you stories that sound like things that maybe people were planning, but with sufficiently innaccurate details that they are wastes of times to pursue. Or maybe they do know about a plot or two in various stages of planning, but their capture may mean that they will be cancelled. They also tell you about 5 other fully worthless operations.
All of them give you names, a few possibly Al Qaeda, many of them though simply meaning that the chain of torture and interogation will get longer as you “unravel” the cells that are not terrorist cells at all.
The result is you have a list of names and plots so long with absolutely no idea what is simply an effort to please you and what is valid. Youve also quite possibly further angered the village, any nearby villages, and neighboring pakistan villagers, increasing resistance to American forces and further providing safe haven.And youve committed sever morally reprehensible acts.
Torture is only somewhat attractive when you restrict the consideration to 100% ID of terrorists and you have a pretty darn good idea of what information you are looking for, and that the detainee knows the answer. As a matter of policy, thats an absurd trifecta to assume. You will misidentify detainees, you probably wont know exactly what your looking for, and their is a good chance they will know less about what you want to know then youd hope.
Torture will get you information regardless, its just most of it will be garbage.
A famous Naval officer and navigator, Commodore Matthew Maury once said, “When principle is involved, be deaf to expediency”. I believe that is very apt here.
I can’t believe there is even debate of the rightness of torturing people – it is simply wrong. This is the United States of America – we are supposed to be the good guys -lots of men and women have given their last full measure so that we can stay the good guys – it is a betrayal of all of those who have gone before – utterly and completely. To think otherwise is simply rationalization of dispicable and reprehensible acts.
Clint
WHY TORTURE STEM CELLS?
Many hypotheticals can be stipulated but the decision in all our minds comes down to how can we USA continue to have the global advantage of compassion, integrity and lawful wisdom? Would we consider a life-saving alternative in a discovery of embryonic (human) stem-cell research for a loved one? Would we consider a life-saving interrogative technique (torture) against another human for a loved one? We need to have an intelligent, thoughtful discourse without rhetorical, political BS.
The question tried to relate it to family.
I can tell you you wouldn’t want to stand between me and someone that killed my parents and took a sister. Like it or not – if you do it, god help you for I won’t.
But we as a nation cannot act with the same rage and passion that a person who saw their family in blood would. In that manner it’s a non-question as you cannot directly relate the two issues.
Amazing what’s happening to America. Of the three Western countries attacked by Al Qaeda since 2000, only the United States believe this a topic worthy of debate. Be assured this question is not being discussed by parliaments in either Spain or Britain, nor are respectable commentators writing op-eds on the pros and cons of brutalizing your enemies.
Perhaps part of the reason for this is that for 40 years Europe has been watching citizens of soviet states fleeing from governments using the exact same techniques that the Bush administration now want legalised, techniques successive American Presidents unequivocally condemned. Interesting too is the fact that these torture victims were classed as dissidents in Europe, but as terrorists by the governments of those countries under Soviet influence.
These governments knew well that the best way to make the unacceptable acceptable was to first make the debate acceptable. That being the case, Brij can relax, the pro-torturers have already won and she can be happy in the knowledge that she has played her part.
This is always the hypotheical situation. You catch the 16 year old kid in Iraq who knows how Saddam smuggled out the bomb and the address of the apartment in the Bronx were it’s going to explode tomorrow.
You gleefully take out your electric drill.
The issue has been addressed. It is addressed by Israeli law. You can choose to engage in torture if you think the situaton warrants it, but you will lose your career and face trial.
Incidently skilled interrogators are quite unsure about torture. The FBI has been upset in a number of cases because the CIA disrailed successful interrogations with cowboy tactics.
Colonel Lang(Ret), ex Gren Beret, Arabic expert and head of the mideast desk for the DIA wrote an article about peole like you who constantly make the same point you are making, he despises them, especially the drool on their face.
Eric:
You obviously missed the accounts of the USSR. The psychological methods, the sleepness, the standing often left a much deeper psychological mark. Sensory deprivation can drive people mad. It’s like LSD.
Water boarding is like drowning, over and over. Doctors know such pain and immediately prescribe morphine for those so choked by lung disease.
Endure the stuff before you say it’s no big deal. Read up on it’s effects.
There seems to be four camps on this issue:
1 – Torture (including “torture lite”) is immoral, and should be banned (traditional American view)
2 – Torture and Torture lite are immoral, but more importantly they are innefectual and should not be used (McCain camp)
3 – Torture is immoral, but Torture lite is both moral and effective (Bush camp)
4 – Torture, although immoral and innefective, allows me a sense of personal revenge and I support it (Brij, et al)
Should we set up a poll for this?
I vote “1.”
That’s 2 for 1 Jim. Great post.
Great post, Jim. I vote 2, but 1 is good enough for me as well. There are places where you simply have to take a stand, and not let the goal posts be moved, and this is surely one of them. As an American living in Europe, I can tell you with certainty that it will be years before America recovers from the black eye that it has given itself with the whole torture/ rendition / abu gahrib / guantanamo debacle. We may think that we still wear the white hats, but that’s not how it looks to a lot of the world. They see us as no better than the Russians were under communism. And they are repelled at the hypocrisy of giving over prisoners to people that we know practice torture (the Egyptian example comes to mind) to do the dirty work while we pretend that we don’t do torture.
Aine:
I agree 100%. The terrorists paint us as the bad guys, and we make their job pathetically easy. What on earth is wrong with saying:
“We don’t torture. Period. The terrorists do, but we don’t. We are better than them.”
instead, we say:
“The terrorists frighten us. We can’t win holding our high standards. The terrorist methods seem to work, so we’ll copy them.”
When we reject our own standards, we appear evil and wishy-washy at the same time.
The reason why I think #2 should be the choice for debate is that #1 relies exclusively on values. The issue is framed by the President (and helped by the media) that the debate is merely between those that think it’s wrong period and those that are trying to save people. They are saying “we can torture-lite the most evil men on earth or we can let innocent Americans die” and #1 doesn’t have anything to refute that. So even though I personally feel it is immoral and I think it is so against American values that we should not torture — even if it did cause deaths that could be avoided (after all, millions of people have fought and died or suffered to uphold our exceptionalism, which I think is our greatest strength and weapon against our enemies) — not everyone agrees with this. However if you focus on the truth, which is that anyone that is involved in the issue adamantly rejects torture not only morally but tactically, then there is absolutely no leg to stand on. The same thing about freedom vs. security; we are one of the most secure nations because of our freedom, not despite it. The false dichotomy on these two issues in particular is a threat to our national character in the coming decades, and needs to be confronted now on both moral and pragmatic grounds because fear will almost always override moral ideals.
I agree with Mikkel- #2. Pre-9/11 #1 would have been a given, but since everything -even what we stand for has been politicized and weakened with rationalizations like calling torture “alternative interrogation”, it has to be #2.
Anybody else wonder what has happened to Democratic leadership on this issue? The WH line is that eventually it will be able to reach a compromise with the three Republicans, but I shudder to think what rhetoric would have been used about promoting the rights of terrorists over American lives if this had been brought up by Harry Reid or Barbara Boxer.
Anybody else wonder what has happened to Democratic leadership on this issue?
As often happens, they are maintaining a studied silence. They are still risk-averse, afraid to be politically outmaneuvered by the R’s.
This is why IMO they are so often seen as not believing in anything.
I never posted here but a lot of your statement goes back to a question about what we THINK we are as U.S. citizens and a country. I hope you’ll allow my comment on the Geneva Convention, which includes the TORTURE question as well as many others you bring up to the side. Edit if you feel the need, though I attempted to keep it clean. And of course, take this first part out if selected for print.
—-
Why we equate “American principles� with the Geneva Convention and it’s rules about warfare including torture, bombing, ground warfare, and even extend it to unreasonable degrees.
Once up on a time, all nations happily went about torturing any prisoner they wanted. When some of these tortures came to light following wars in the beginning of the 20th Century, the “civilized world� (please read as “us, those like us, or who we just defeated�) got together and said, “In my Grandfather’s time, war was civilized (which is a lie). We must outlaw all these bad things and agree not to do it to everyone who signs this paper.� Since this meeting was held in Geneva they called it the Geneva Convention. It was and is a farce. Allow me to explain.
If we’d used the same tactics and rules of engagement in Vietnam that we used in WWII, those being all-out war, we would have won there and in Koreabefore it. But when your enemy is allowed to retreat past an invisible line, be it a parallel or a border, and say “naa-naa, naa-naa, naw-naw, 8^Þ Can’t shoot (or fly over) me,â€? like it was a kids game of tag with a “home freeâ€? tree, the war can not be won.
The only reason the “Korea Conflict� ended up with a cease fire and an settled dividing line was the election of General Ike and he telling the United Nations �to go to hell, I’ll handle negations.�
He sent his people into negotiations carrying Teddy’s Big Stick and said, “The killing of these kids on both sides stops NOW or we will remove North Korea, most of China and any other country that gets the bright idea to go against us from the face of the Earth – and the only sign we’ll see of them is a glow in the dark.�
In less than a month from taking office he had ‘hotloaded’ SAC B-36 “Peacemaker” and a few B-47 Stratojet bombers flying within a few miles of North Korea, China, and the U.S.S.R. – oddly enough, they decided he meant it. The U.S.S.R. told China, “sorry, we no longer have your backâ€? pulled their pilots out of the “Koreanâ€? planes; China started pulling their troops back; and Korea said, “Oh crap!!â€? And did – sign the cease-fire.
Had Ike done it, it would have been against the Geneva Convention, except the Convention ONLY APPLIES when BOTH SIDES follow it. And Ike, and the rest of the world, knew that North Korea wasn’t following the Geneva Convention.
If you look back, the Geneva Convention ruled out almost all the air raids, ground artillery, and naval bombardments to land of WWII. But the Heads of both European and Pacific Theaters (Ike Eisenhower and Douglass MacArthur) approved strikes. Not to mention Truman, for once, had the guts to pull the trigger and okayed using The Bomb.
Why was it okay at that time? Because the Axis powers broke the Convention first, with the bombing and rockets on the Commonwealth of GB by Germany, and the use of torture on the Chinese and bombing undeclared Pearl Harbour by Japan, so those sections of the Convention no longer encumbered the Allies powers.
Yes, we were breaking the Convention but that VERY SAME Convention says if one side breaks a part of the treaty, which is what it is, then the other is no longer bound by it. And if you don’t think we tortured certain enemy prisoners caught out of uniform, you don’t know history! You know what the Geneva Convention says to do after torture? Hang them as they were out of uniform and below a death by firing squad.
Johnson should have been free to bomb North Vietnam and Nixon shouldn’t have had to sneak around about Cambodia. They were NOT part of the Geneva Convention and their respective nations did not follow it. And if the enemy is using a “get-home-free freeway� to get around, then that ‘freeway’ is in the war mix.
Ask any Pentagon official, or any military tactician, why “Rolling Thunder� didn’t work. The answer’s easy. Uhhhh, “carpet bombing only works when it’s bombing carpets not vegetation. Rolling Thunder needed to be used on every inhabited city and village, starting with the largest, Hà nội, down to 5,000 people. Hà nội and it’s kind should not have had any more buildings standing than much of French, German as well as many other European cities and towns. And dare U.S.S.R. and Red China to do a thing.
Sure it is against the Geneva Convention, something to which North Vietnam and Cambodia did not belong or adhere, so it didn’t apply to us.
So why wasn’t it done?? Here is why:
John Wayne, Gary Cooper, Roy Rogers, Hugh O’Brian, James Arness – believe it or not, those people or better said the myth created by those people and others in Hollywood. The movie “good guy imageâ€? that somehow morphed into the “American Image.â€?
All of a sudden, “REAL Americans� (by the way, Canadians, Mexicans, Panamanians, Brazilians, Chileans, even Venezuelans are AMERICIANS – check your globe or maps) anyway, U.S. red-blooded boys didn’t shot first because they “had to be faster and better� Rogers, Cooper and Wayne “proved� they were. We don’t have to fight the way the enemy does because Matt Dillon never shot a man in the back.
Well folks, reality check, we ain’t John Wayne. We’re more like Donald Duck. Donald (and we) try to do right but something always comes up. And even though Donald is a cartoon he inhabits a more real world than Hugh O’Brian’s Wyatt Earp on television.
There’s and old backwoods saying, “When your up to you’re a** in alligators, it is sometimes difficult to remember your original objective was to drain the swamp.�
All those Hollywood “good guys� have been getting U.S. kids killed for years. It might even be worse now as too many want to sit in front of the computer and tell our kids who are dealing “with alligators� to win it like John Wayne did – don’t draw first, don’t shoot in the back, or my favorite, give them a warning shot or a chance to surrender.
Bull! That’s NOT the way it happened in the real old West, and it’s not realistic to expect it from those kids in a real war.
O’Brian’s Earp shot the gun out of the bad-guy’s hand. Guess what? The real Earp shot them in the head without telling them to “draw.â€? You want to pick something more realistic, don’t watch Oliver Stone’s “Apocalypse Nowâ€? look to “The Patriotâ€? at Mel Gibson’s character Benjamin Martin after sees his pre-teen son shot in cold blood, he reverts back to what he’d learned fighting as the natives do. That’s war. Covered with blood and flesh and screaming before you realize it is not yours. And then, then you scream again, even louder, as you realize whose it was.
That’s more like what our troops are seeing and have seeing since Korea. And the folks back home since Vietnam have seen on television, where Roy Rogers caught everyone without firing a shot using a rope and then sits on Trigger (his horse) to sing a song, a 20-year-old kid cutting down on three guys and a woman (at home they didn’t know women dropped bombs from places up their skirts) and at home they scream KILLER, MURDER!!
It’s a lot easier to make the call from TV or a computer after the fact and not knowing the day before that kid and his buddies s were off, taking a day in the city, one leaned over to help an old woman up only to find out too late she was Charlie with a grenade. She deftly rolled the device toward the G.Is., as she dove between parked cars and was out in the city street where she looks like any other of the forty or more women in the street. She killed the G.I.’s friend and mangled five others for life.
And the next day he remembers it.
Please tell that boy he’s not supposed to be upset, mad, and scared to death of those four people standing together in the middle of a firefight and when he catches the glint of steel behind their back. Tell him the way he did it wasn’t the way Roy, or Matt or Wayne did it. Tell him to abide by the Geneva Convention.
He’ll yell back that the Geneva Convention requires ALL combat personnel to wear identifiable uniforms or they may be captured or shot on sight. — As two AK47s fall from the hands of two of the people he “just MURDEREDâ€? — but of course that was cut from the news clip.
See A Band of Brothers and watch those bombers flying over to indiscriminately pound-the-crap-out-of-the cities where the hidden Germans were. They were instructed to level the ground to help in the house-to-house battles of our troops. That was war and it was against the Geneva Convention, but people back home had the good sense to know that part of the treaty had been broken by the Axis and we could do in kind.
That was WWII. Torturing “non-combatants,� that means people fighting out of uniform, for any bit of information we could get. Killing men, women and children by the hundred in their homes, as needed, because our troops were coming. WHY? Patton told us, “Winning a war is not about some poor bastard dying for his country. It is about making the other poor bastard die for HIS country!� We are taught that, and the rest, at West Point, Annapolis and Colorado.
Our United States now wants John Wayne, standing up with bullets whizzing by, a Thompson in each hand; a Matt Dillon, waiting for the other guy to draw first; a Wyatt Earp shooting the gun out of the bad guy’s hand.
When you expect that, you are just going to get what’s left of a U.S. kid shipped home in a bloody box. And people saying, “Why did he die? Why can’t we win this faster? It must be politics!!�
Tell me please! Was I wrong? Crouched down with rounds going off all around from both sides, the reports ringing in my ears, should I have said, “Hands Up, you four! Let’s see what’s behind your back.�? I know what John Wayne would have done. But tell me what you would do! Please , tell me, am I a murder for all time? PLEASE !?
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