Am I the only one to find it ironic that the most religiot presidential administration in our lifetimes continues to defend the practice of torture as a defensible means of protecting nthe public from terrorism?
Jeff Schweitzer is a scientist and author of the soon to be published Beyond Cosmic Dice: Moral Life in a Random World (which I have pre-ordered from amazon.com). He has a knack for deconstructing myths such as religion's monopoly on morality. He has just published an article in today's edition of The Huffington Post entitled: Dick Cheney Will Protect You, and Liberals Want Your First Born. What I like best is Schweitzer's take on former Vice-President's defence of waterboarding techniques on the basis that the suggestion that they have been effective in combating terrorism:
And now we have Dick Cheney and his new-found love for publicity in place of his previously never-ending series of undisclosed locations. Dick is out on the stump defending torture, claiming that Obama is undermining our security by being a wimp. If you're not pulling fingernails, you're with the terrorists.
Let's look at that for a moment. Cheney defends torture on the argument that coercive interrogation was essential to saving American lives. Why, then, would he stop at waterboarding? What if simulated drowning was not sufficient to get the vital information needed in the "ticking bomb scenario" that he so often cites? If torture really works, and yields information that will prevent disaster, would he not want to do whatever was necessary to extract that information to save American lives: poking out eyes, skinning prisoners alive, pulling fingernails, or lopping off limbs. By limiting the techniques to waterboarding is he showing a lack of commitment to our national security?
Cheney cannot have it both ways. He needs to answer the following questions directly: how far are you willing to go to extract information from a prisoner? If torture works, and can be justified morally as a means of protecting us against attack, how can you justify limiting torture to waterboarding? What if sticking a hot poker into a prisoner's eye would yield the location of a nuclear bomb, would you do that? If not, why not?
Once we condone torture, we have no justification for limiting the techniques used. Pretending to drown someone is OK to save Americans, but shocking genitals is a no-no. On what grounds?
If Cheney agrees that he would use that hot poker to reveal the location of a nuclear bomb, he is a war criminal, a torturer no different than the thugs that Saddam used to torture his opponents. If he would not use that hot poker, he is admitting that torture is wrong, and therefore that waterboarding is wrong. And he is therefore a war criminal for approving waterboarding.
Philosophers may argue that all we have here is a classic debate between deontology (i.e. some acts are inherently good or evil, regardless of the consequences) and consequentialism (i.e. consequences of a particular action form the basis for any valid moral judgment about that action). Personally, I find rule consequentialism to be the most appealing because it choosing rules of moral behavior based on the consequences of those rules. A rule banning torture is easy to defend because:
1. Torture doesn't work because tortured individuals will invariably tell their interrogator whatever they think the interrogator wants to hear. For example if waterboarding worked at Guantanamo, why is it necessary to use it over 200 times on one individual?
2. Most of us agree that torture is wrong regardless of whether we arrive at this conclusion because we interpret a holy book as telling us, by the secular process of applied ethics or by gut instinct.
3. Torture is contrary to to the United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights and Convention Against Torture.
President Obama is being a wimp on this issue. The easy thing to do is to "let bygones be bygones" and not bother prosecuting those who authorized and employed the interrogation techniques that he has now outlawed. However, Americans did not elect a President to take the easy way out.
Two comments. First, Obama will not go after those Americans who authorized or exercised the torture.
ReplyDeleteSecond, although I agree with most of your commentary on reasons for opposing torture, I find the reference to the United Nations' declaration against torture to be meaningless.
Sorry to be so blunt, but the United Nations is a joke. The Security Council is a relic whose membership bears no connection to the state of the world in 2009. The permanent membership is dominated by three European nations. The entire continent of Africa is excluded. The non-permament members elected to short terms do nothing, and thus, the UN throws a few bones to the poorer nations like Uganda with an ivitation to become a member of the SC. The General Assembly has no more influence on world affairs than a boat full of pirates off the coast of Somalia.
And read the actual torture Convention - notice that it does not make it an offence for a State member to fail to comply - it merely requires each State member to criminalize torture and prosecute those who participate in it, among other things.
The League of Nations had promise, but the modern UN is scared of its own shadow.
A torturer need only believe torture has worked once, and no majority opinion or UN resolution will change its mind. The majority and the UN don't factor into my decisions why would a torturer think differently.
ReplyDeleteWhy not probe the real reasons people torture others instead of creating a silly rule based on silly logic? It boils down to us versus them mentality where anything can be justified if it helps us defeat them. And taking one tool away is not going to solve the underlying issue.