Torture

The Wall Street Journal, in this morning’s edition, has an editorial about progress in the US debate on the use of torture. An interesting passage:

From the WSJ “Tortuous Progress” ($)

Mr. Cheney’s stand is smoking out the critics, who for months have hid behind incantations first about Abu Ghraib, which numerous probes have proved had nothing to do with interrogations, and then the so-called “torture memos,” which sanctioned no specific interrogation techniques. So congratulations of a sort to the Washington Post, perhaps the most vociferous promoter of the “torture narrative,” for finally admitting in a Sunday editorial what so offends its editors.

It turns out to be “waterboarding,” a rare interrogation technique reportedly used against the hardest al Qaeda detainees. The method involves immobilizing a detainee and inducing a feeling of suffocation. The Post says it should be banned both as torture and contrary to the U.S. Constitution. That’s certainly worth debating, though the Post may get an argument from U.S. servicemen who’ve endured the waterboard as part of training to resist interrogation — proof that, if practiced properly, it does no lasting physical harm.

There’s also last week’s ABC News report that 11 of 12 captured al Qaeda kingpins who have talked only did so after being waterboarded. This would appear to contradict so many glib suggestions, such as those in an open letter yesterday from Congressmen calling themselves the New Democrat Coalition, that such techniques “just plain don’t work.” The truth is that sometimes they do work.

I had not heard about that ABC news report, but I’m not particularly surprised. The argument has been often made that torture “never” produces desirable results (the claim is that people simply lie or make up stories to avoid the pain). I find this assertion unlikely, mainly because it’s all too easy to imagine myself spilling the beans when faced with the prospect of horrible pain, disfigurement, injury, etc. I wouldn’t last long.

It’s also interesting that this story (the 11 of 12 successful uses of torture) wasn’t more widely published. To me, at least, it’s an important counterpoint to the point of view getting the most play in the media — that all torture and coercion is bad.

Later in the same editorial, they make a point I’ve often made (though not so eloquently) in my own internal debates on the subject of torture:

But let’s say waterboarding were banned. The critics are still conveniently vague about just what interrogation techniques they would allow. The Post frowns on “other CIA pressure methods.” Well, what are they? Sleep deprivation? Exposure to hot and cold? Stress techniques such as kneeling for a long time? Or how about good cop-bad cop interrogation of the kind practiced in the average American police precinct? That can certainly be “degrading” and “cruel” if you interpret those words in the most expansive manner.

Part of the problem with interpreting those words is that they depend on the context. All things being equal, we can’t think of a worse human rights abuse than blowing someone to bits with a Hellfire missile. Yet no one objected when that happened to al Qaeda leader Hamza Rabia in Pakistan two weeks ago. If certain individuals can be ethically targeted for death in a war, then wouldn’t the same hold true for rough interrogation methods? A strange code of morality would allow the killing of Rabia but not his stressful questioning to prevent further murders he might plan against innocent civilians.

If it is moral to kill an enemy, how can torturing that same enemy be immoral? It’s ok to end someone’s life, but not ok to cause him to suffer and unwillingly give up information, but leave him alive? I can’t connect the dots on that moral argument.

And that leads to a potentially uncomfortable counter-argument: that if it’s moral to kill your enemy, then anything short of killing him is also moral — including torture of any kind. Am I willing to go so far?

A thought experiment is in order… First, hypothesize that Osama Bin Laden was standing right in front of me, on his way to (say) blow up Los Angeles with a dirty nuke. I have my Smith & Wesson 7 shot .357 magnum revolver in my hand, fully loaded. Do I have a moral problem with firing all seven rounds into Bin Laden? Absolutely not. In fact, I have a moral problem with not doing so.

Continuing the experiment: suppose Bin Laden isn’t holding the dirty nuke himself. He’s merely coordinating the attack — he knows who all the attackers are, what their plans are, what the nuke looks like, etc. Along with the revolver, I have a red-hot branding iron. Do I have a moral problem with pressing that branding iron into Bin Laden’s flesh in the hopes of getting him to tell me the whereabouts of his co-conspirators? Into his eyeballs? Into his genitals? Permanently disfiguring him? Crippling him?

A few lines ago I was perfectly ok with killing the SOB. Would I now hesitate to cause him some pain? Uh, no. No, I would not hesitate.

Continuing the thought experiment: does it really matter what name I use in the experiment? Substitute “Abdul Al Cameldriver” for “Osama Bin Laden", and I come to the same conclusions.

From a stricly moral perspective, I have no problem with torturing my enemies. I said that carefully, for I most definitely do have moral problems in other cases — for example, I think torturing criminal suspects is completely beyond the pale. It’s also a rather completely different set of circumstances.

The Geneva Convention (which many of the arguments against torture rest on) was designed to accomplish something very different. It’s a framework in which nations at war with one another agree — mutually — to honor certain rules with respect to the treatment of prisoners and captured civilians. This convention has benefits for both sides, and depends on the mutual benefit to provide an incentive for compliance. In World War II, both the Axis and the Allies treated their prisoners fairly well, and in part, certainly, this occurred because each side knew that their fair treatment of prisoners of war would encourage similar treatment by the opposing side.

In the war on terror, this symmetry is completely missing. Our enemies show no mercy on their prisoners — in fact, they behead them and distribute the videos. Absent the moral argument and absent the practical reasons (which is really what the Geneva Convention formalizes), what reason do we have to refrain from coercing information from our enemies in the war on terror?

I hold that there is no reason to refrain, and every reason to proceed. I, for one, would sleep better knowing that sophisticated electronic instruments were being daily applied to our Al Qaeda prisoners, delivering heretofore unknown levels of pain in an effort to extract every possible nugget of useful information from them. If they should expire in the process, I’ll shed no tears. As they shed no tears for the innocent victims they behead, much less our warriors that they kill.