Torture is an issue that's raised its ugly heading during the current war. First, should the United States government engage in it? Second, should we turn suspected terrorists over to governments (such as those of Egypt or Saudi Arabia) that we know – or suspect – will engage in it?
One dilemma goes this way:
Suppose a terrorist group is going to detonate a suitecase nuke within the next few hours. We have one of the ringleaders in custody. Should we torture him, to find out when and where the nuke will be detonated, and thereby stop it and save tens of thousands of lives? Or should we say "we don't believe in torture", and allow the nuke to go off?
When the dilemma is phrased this way, it's hard to be against torture. After all, however immoral torture may be, it it saves tens of thousands of lives, it's worth it, right?
But there are several problems with this approach. First, in most cases, when we have a terrorist suspect in custody, we don't know what information he has. (I'm saying "he"; most terrorists are male; if you want to allow for the possibility some are female, substitute "he or she"; or realize that in English, in this context, "he" is often an indefinite article that can refer to either males or females.)
Not knowing what information he possesses, we can't know if it's important enough to torture him for it. And we probably don't want to torture terrorist suspects routinely.
And, even if we knew he had important information, we don't know if torture will provide us that information. Some people, when tortured, will say anything to stop the pain. Or, if he's well-trained or highly motivated, he may deliberately provide false information. So we won't know if whatever information he provides is useful. And if he can resist the torture for a while, sufficient torture to extract the information may disable him (render him unconscious or unable to speak intelligently) or kill him. Then we still won't have the information, the torture will have been useless, and we will have compromised our principles for nothing.
We also don't know if he has any information; in fact, we don't know if he's a terrorist. In most cases we may have strong suspicions, but we won't in every case. If we routinely torture terrorist suspects, we can absolutely guarantee that some of them will be innocent. Others will be guilty of only a minor offense which surely doesn't justify torture.
(I've deliberately avoided the issue of, by allowing torture – if we allow it – how far do we lower ourselves to the level of the terrorists. If you have qualms about this, so do I. What I'm trying to show is – even if you have no such qualms – torture is pretty hard to justify even on purely pragmatic grounds.)
If we routinely torture terrorist suspects, we'll be torturing innocent people. Most may be guilty, but some will definitely be innocent; others will be guilty of minor offenses. In my view, that makes us hardly better than Nazi Germany or the former Soviet Union. (NOW I'm bringing in the issue of principles.) It's one thing to consider torture under certain extreme circumstances. It is – or should be – unacceptable to consider it a routine thing.
There's another problem – the slippery slope. Once torture is openly used – even once – and people seem convinced of its justification, it's that much easier to do it again, with less justification. If you don't believe me, consider that former Attorney General Janet Reno, before she was Attorney General, engaged in prisoner mistreatment similar to what was practiced at Abu Gharib. And she did this during peacetime. And none one made a fuss until recently.
The stories below concern the infamous "torture memo", which appears to condone torture. Hopefully, those responsible will soon be fired if they haven't been already.
Phil Carter
Washington Post
Wall Street Journal download (caution; PDF; 2 Mbytes)
Law Professor's take
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