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.