Most Arguments for "Moral" Use of Torture Are Greviously Flawed
I've seen many people argue the shades of gray as to why torture might be morally justified in the face of terrorism. But largely what the people arguing see as ambiguity as actually a lack of clarity because they are using a set of unstated presumptions.
When people like Alan Dershowitz talk about accepting or approving torture, there is usually an argument (whether stated or even internally articulated or not) that goes something like this:
The first premise is that someone knows the person to be guilty. But often we've seen that the people tortured wind up not being guilty of anything. So no one knows for sure that the person is "bad," or even that the person has specific information or is about to do anything. Suddenly the argument about having to extract specific information from the known guilty party to save someone's life in a specific amount of time crumbles like so much badly mixed and cured concrete.
Now we find a few more problems. People who understand interrogation generally agree that torture is a highly unreliable way of gaining information, because the person is likely to say anything to stop the torture. Now we have information that we can't trust to stop a harm that may or may not be happening.
It's also unnecessary. Look at a number of plots that have been claimed to have been stopped in the last couple of years. It wasn't torture that turned them up.
Finally, the last point: when you are willing to toss away principles of the nation, you destroy the true nature of the nation. Or, to paraphrase what we heard during the Viet Nam war, we had to destroy the country to save it - whether Iraq or our own rule of law. There is a theoretical gray area - if you could satisfy the conditions above. But people don't explicitly address their flawed logic, so they don't see this as a generally black and white issue.
When people like Alan Dershowitz talk about accepting or approving torture, there is usually an argument (whether stated or even internally articulated or not) that goes something like this:
- There is a bad person.
- That bad person knows of specific harm that will be done.
- The person will get away without punishment and without being stopped because he or she hasn't yet done what would be considered illegal.
- Torture will extract the information that will stop the specific harm.
- Therefore, we should use torture to extract the information and stop the harm.
- If we make a mistake, it's justified and excused by the good we do or at least intend.
The first premise is that someone knows the person to be guilty. But often we've seen that the people tortured wind up not being guilty of anything. So no one knows for sure that the person is "bad," or even that the person has specific information or is about to do anything. Suddenly the argument about having to extract specific information from the known guilty party to save someone's life in a specific amount of time crumbles like so much badly mixed and cured concrete.
Now we find a few more problems. People who understand interrogation generally agree that torture is a highly unreliable way of gaining information, because the person is likely to say anything to stop the torture. Now we have information that we can't trust to stop a harm that may or may not be happening.
It's also unnecessary. Look at a number of plots that have been claimed to have been stopped in the last couple of years. It wasn't torture that turned them up.
Finally, the last point: when you are willing to toss away principles of the nation, you destroy the true nature of the nation. Or, to paraphrase what we heard during the Viet Nam war, we had to destroy the country to save it - whether Iraq or our own rule of law. There is a theoretical gray area - if you could satisfy the conditions above. But people don't explicitly address their flawed logic, so they don't see this as a generally black and white issue.
Labels: definitions, Iraq, justification, morality, torture
posted by Erik Sherman @ 2:04 PM
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