Topic: Government & Politics Clearing the Ethical Fog in the Torture Debate (5/26/2009)
The Ethics Scoreboard tries not
spend a lot of time discussing the obvious, or the issues that are already
receiving solid ethical analysis from broadcast, print, and web-based
media. But the ongoing debate about the Bush administrations use of torture
on some captive terrorists is getting less enlightening and more misleading
the longer and more heated it becomes. Because I have the happy circumstance
of being consistent on this issue, and before the political posturing,
rationalizations, euphemisms, hypocrisy and spin melts my brain, the Ethics
Scoreboard will now attempt to blow the prevailing fog away, and clarify
some controversies, many of which really shouldnt be controversial.
I. Enhanced interrogation
is an intellectually dishonest euphemism for torture, as misleading
as choice for abortion, and as deceitful as undocumented worker for
illegal alien. The phrase focuses on the objective and the result, which
is useful military intelligence, rather than the methods used to obtain
the result, even though it is the methodology that is the problem.
Adding cruel and painful methods to a legal interrogation cannot enhance
it, as enhance is generally understood to mean to made better. Something
that is inherently wrong and bad cannot make anything better. Advocates
for using torture under certain circumstances, like former Vice-President
Cheney, have a right to make their argument, but they also have an obligation
not to make it deceptively. If they want to argue for torture, they have
to deal with the word. 2. A nation like the United
States, and there is none, established on absolute principles of human
rights, must never engage in a per se violation of human rights.
Of course, it has in the past, always under a mistaken belief that an
activity wasnt such a violation. We countenanced slavery, and segregation,
until time and developing ethical sensibilities revealed that it was contradictory
to our core values. We engaged in genocidal policies against Native Americans,
by applying, and accepting, various rationalizations (destiny, self-defense,
progress) to excuse them. Nevertheless, the fact that the nation has
periodically failed to meet its own stated ideals does not make more recent
failures any less offensive or more acceptable, or decrease the burden
of persuasion those who advocate yet another betrayal of Thomas Jeffersons
words. If the United States only survives
by abandoning the principles that established it, then it hasnt survived
at all. Torture is an absolute wrong for
America, like slavery or genocide. It should not and must not be used
as a part of an utilitarian equation. No end justifies its use as a means.
It must be off the table as an option, no matter what the exigency.
The 24 type hypotheticals, the Alan Dershowitz but what if? arguments,
reduce the rationale for or against torture to simple practicalities,
and disagreements to matters of degree: Torture is always wrong to save
the life of a hundred soldiers, but to save a thousand New Yorkers from
nerve gas, youd have to consider it. No, a thousand isnt enough, because
torture is wrong. But a million lives, well, thats different! The point
is, it isnt different—not if torture is absolutely excluded from the
options available to a nation established under the Declaration of Independence
and the U.S. Constitution. If Jack Bauer wants to get a terrorist to tell
where he planted the ten bombs, he has to find another way. 3. Waterboarding is, was, and will always be torture, no matter how its done. Yes, I know the C.I.A. method, unlike the more brutal versions used by the Chinese and others, just simulate drowning without actually letting water enter the lungs. The problem with the rhetorical maneuvering is that the international definition of torture is air-tight. The 1984 UN Convention against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment, which came into force in 198y, defines torture in Article 1 as follows: "The term "torture" means any act by which severe pain or suffering, whether physical or mental, is intentionally inflicted on a person for such purposes as obtaining from him or a third person information or a confession." Lawyers and politicians and former
Vice-Presidents can play games with words like severe and suffering,
just like Bill Clinton could play games with words like sex and perjury,
but we know (and they know) that strapping someone to a board and making
them feel like they are going to die meets any honest definition of torture.
There may be legitimate arguments to be made about so-called stress positions,
bright lights, loud noises, sleep deprivation or having Its a Small
World played over and over again, but waterboarding doesnt even have
a toe in the gray area. 4. Once we accept the fact that
waterboarding meets the internationally recognized definition of torture,
the fact that there are other, worse kinds of torture is irrelevant.
True, Id rather be waterboarded than have hot bamboo splinters stuck
under my fingernails, or be left on a hill of fire ants, but it doesnt
matter: torture is torture, and the United States cant engage in it.
Nor does it matter how many individuals were tortured, or how many times.
One is too many; once is unacceptable. Again, if torture is absolutely
outside American cultural values, a single officially sanctioned instance
constitutes a significant and dangerous breach of them. Torture justified
once still is torture justified: if it can be legitimately used on one
individual, however contemptible and vicious, however useful his knowledge
might be, then we have accepted torture, and discarded our national commitment
to the inherent rights of all human beings. 5. The argument made by a wide
range of apologists that the brutality of Muslim extremists and terrorists
somehow reduces our ethical standards is offensive, facile, and wrong.
Lynndie England, the dim-witted Abu Ghraib guard who became that scandals
cover girl, talk show host Sean Hannity and others justify American torture
because we didnt cut off Nick Bergs head or kill 3,000 innocent Americans.
This suggests that Americas values, rather than being set in tradition,
ideals, morality and aspiration, simply expand or contract according how
inhumane and barbaric our adversaries are. Such values embrace no values
at all. It is Dirty Harry logic: in the classic film, Clint Eastwoods
tough police detective tortures a serial killer to get him to reveal where
he has buried a young girl alive. The film chides the legal system for
then releasing the killer to kill again (Clint violated about six Constitutional
provisions in his interrogation and investigation), making the argument
that really, really bad guys dont deserve rights. That proposition, however,
is explicitly rejected by the words of our founding documents.
Personally, I dont feel badly
for terrorists who suffer, or those who are killed, just as I, like most
Americans, find it difficult to be passionate about addressing the terrible
prison conditions in this country. I just do not feel pity for bad people
who do terrible things and then have bad things happen to them as a result:
I did not feel sorry for Lee Harvey Oswald when he was murdered by Jack
Ruby, for example. That is emotion at work, however, not ethics. One of
the essential uses of ethical principles is to keep us focused on values
when our emotions are roiling. 6. The debate over whether useful
information was obtained through torture is also irrelevant. Once
we conclude that torture is absolutely wrong, whether it is sometimes
useful, always useful of never useful doesnt matter. Would we argue about
the legitimacy of slavery by trying to prove that it could really perk
up the economy? Ill stipulate: yes, some information the CIA obtained
through torture saved American lives, and maybe many American lives. America
cant engage in torture. Or let us assume that the some voices on
other side are right (though I doubt it greatly) that torture never acquires
good information. So what? America cant engage in torture. Tell
me Id never be happy married to Ann Hathaway, or that my Rolls Royce
would be hard to park: Im never going to find out if youre right or
not, because these things cannot occur. Making the argument against torture
by attacking its utility concedes the dispute to torture advocates, who
will say, So if I can prove it works, then, you will withdraw the objection?
The answer to that question has to be No. Lets stop arguing over the utility
of techniques that cant be used anyway. 7. Also ethically irrelevant
is President Obamas empty argument that torture is wrong because
using such methods… …alienate us in the world. They
serve as a recruitment tool for terrorists, and increase the will of our
enemies to fight us, while decreasing the will of others to work with
America. Many of Americas core traditions
and fully-justified activities alienate us in the world. Capital punishment,
for example, is much derided in Europe; that doesnt make it wrong (or
right.) Capitalism, freedom of religions and speech, and womens rights
all alienate America from radical Muslim societies, and serve as a recruitment
tool for terrorists. If methods of torture were shown to be legitimate,
ethical, legal and valuable methods of saving American lives, would the
fact that they alienated foreign countries and were used for terrorist
recruitment be sufficient reason to abandon them? If using torture made
America more popular in the world, would that be a good reason to employ
it, even if we concluded it was absolutely wrong? No, and no. 8. There is no legitimate justification
for taking legal or disciplinary action against the Justice Department
lawyers who wrote the so-called torture memos. Lawyers are advocates;
thats one of their jobs. A lawyer who is asked to make the best legal
argument possible to make the case the United States can use torture under
certain circumstances is required only to make a good faith and competent
effort to do so. The lawyer doesnt have to agree with the objective,
or even believe that the argument he or she makes will prevail if challenged.
A heres how to break the law memo is both unlawful and unethical, but
a here is a way to engage in torture within the laws is standard legal
work. The responsibility for acting on such a memorandum is the clients,
and only the clients. When current Attorney General Eric Holder received
a non-partisan opinion from the Office of Legal Counsel that the bill
granting voting representation to the District of Columbia was unconstitutional,
he requested an advocacy opinion from a Justice Department lawyer making
the argument that it was Constitutional. This is exactly what was
done on the torture issue. I am confident that a Constitutional amendment
is the only way to legally grant D.C. the representation it deserves,
and I believe that torture violates international treaties and U.S. law.
That does not make the construction of a contrary argument unethical or
illegal in either case. 9. There is a legitimate ethical
argument for the use of torture under a utilitarian construct. The
argument is, simply, that a nation has a right to protect itself against
catastrophic violence and destruction, and the leaders of a nation are
bound to do everything within their power to see that a nations citizens
are so protected, including, if absolutely necessary, torture for the
purpose of uncovering deadly plots and conspiracies. This is essentially Vice-President
Cheneys position, and was the policy of the Bush Administration. It was
also the policy implicitly approved by the American public in the period
after 9-11, and thus accepted by the elected officials of both parties
at that time. I believe this position is wrong, and for the United States
particularly, an unacceptable risk to the national purpose and ideals.
I believe this would be true even if the so-called Torture Memos were
legally sound, and the U.S. could engage in torture legally. Like
slavery and discrimination, torture is unethical whether it is legal or
not. But when elected officials, using a utilitarian analysis concluding
that however wrong torture might be in the abstract, it is right to torture
one individual to save the life of many Americans, to do this in what
they believe is in the best interests of the country, and to have a good
faith argument that it can be done within the law, there should be no
subsequent attempts to punish the officials once the prevailing views
or political winds shift. The leaders of the United States
after the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon were in an
unprecedented situation, facing a different kind of threat from a new
kind of enemy. It would have been wonderful, admirable and inspiring if
they had shown the ethical certitude and political courage to resist the
clear mood of the nation that the rights of terrorists were subordinate
to the safety of America. It would also have been astounding. They didnt.
They were wrong. The best course now is to build a strong and lasting
societal consensus that torture is un-American, rather than pretend that
this was always universally accepted by the public. It was not, and still
is not. 10. Speaker Nancy Pelosis position
is untenable. Whether she was told that the CIA had used methods of
torture, was using them, or was preparing to use them in the future, if
she believed these methods were inappropriate and criminal, she had
a duty to do what she could to stop them. She was not powerless, as she now
claims; no U.S. Senator or member of Congress was powerless. Any of them
could have sought the passage of a resolution condemning torture, enumerating
specific examples. Any of them could have blown the whistle, gone to
the press, or even resigned in protest. They could have sought an advisory
opinion from a Federal Court. Despite the extreme accusations of the most
avid Bush Administration-haters, nobody was going to be shot. This wasnt
the Third Reich. If the torture was truly illegal, no official was going
to be prosecuted for stopping their government from engaging in a crime.
Pelosi and others did nothing either because they were afraid of public
disapproval, because they agreed with the measures at the time, or because
they felt the easiest course was to go along with the prevailing sentiment.
They were not willing to take the political risk of limiting CIA interrogation
methods and then being blamed later when a dirty bomb took out Chicago.
That is sad, cowardly, and typical.
But no officials who by their silence and inaction aided and abetted the
use of torture can fairly lead an effort to punish the torturers, unless
they accede to the same punishment themselves.
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© 2007 Jack Marshall & ProEthics,
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