Torture and Terror

I began reading these articles with a pretty clear notion that on principle torture is wrong, although admittedly I had difficulty rejecting the idea that specific scenarios could not justify it--for instance, torturing a known conspirator in order to stop a nuclear explosion in NYC. While my basic ideals renounce torture in any form, I cannot deny that its use in a situation like this seems wholly justified. As Bowden writes, "few moral imperatives make such sense on a large scale but break down so dramatically in the particular." While I realize that such situations are extremely rare, I cannot help but think that they do happen, and that in these exceptional cases torture is justified. How could I not choose the lives of thousands of innocent people over the life of a terrorist who was going to arbitrarily kill them all?

The legal memos we read seemed to reaffirm my feelings of hesitance about torture. I found the Defense Department and Gonzales' exploitation of the legal language of humanitarian documents to be abhorrent and underhanded, and I scorned them (and still do) for deliberately abusing the inability for any set of words to comprehensively explain concepts like "extreme," "severe" or "intent." Equally distressing was the complete absence of any mention of morality. The memos expressed no concern for right and wrong, only strict legality. Moreover, their interest in legality was only an effort to find some way to excuse actions they wished to be able to justify.

My attitude entering into the Bowden readings would have been very skeptical if my reading had stopped there. However, inspired by the final sentence in the Gutmann and Thompson conclusion, which implored me not to simply reject torture because of its widely-touted ineffectiveness, but to "ask whether [methods of torture] should be permitted even when they are useful," I read "The Dark Art of Interrogation" with an open mind. I must say, it challenged me. I think his approach to the issue was very frank and I appreciate the subtlety of his conclusion that "coersion" should continue to be illegal, but that it was still justifiable in certain situations. On the whole, I think I agree with thisl. It is always dangerous to leave such power in the hands of a human being, but I cannot deny that certain situations can exist where the use of "coersion" (i.e. torture light) is morally the best action.

Having said this, my inhibitions about torture remain strong. I do not know if I could engage in or witness torture even in a morally justified situation for the following reasons:

It rends my heart to imagine any human being robbed of his or her autonomy. It seems to me even the "torture light" options reduce humans into dependent, scared, desparate shadows of themselves. They become more animals than men. The second paragraph on page 20 of the reader deeply shook me:

"The perfect model of an interrogation center would be a place where prisoners lived in fear and uncertainty...[i]nterrogators would be able to control the experience of their subjects completely, shutting down access to other people, or even to sensation and experience...[s]ubjects' lives could be made a misery of discomfort and confusion...[h]ope could be dangled or removed."

I do not want to imagine any person being in this state. It saddens me beyond anything I can express. The very essence of their identity and humanity would be taken from them.

The only way I can even cope with such treatment being an option is when I consider the nature of terrorism--not the "terrorism" that's been held over our heads by the last administration, but what terrorism actually is: the large-scale slaughter of innocents. A person who would perpetrate this kind of evil has surely given up his or her right to be treated humanely in all circumstances.

I do not mean all terrorists should be tortured as retribution. What I do mean is that if the innocent are truly (and I fully acknowledge that this is very rarely the case; I am not as ready to accept wide-scale practice of "coersion" as Bowden is) to be saved only through an act of torture by a terrorist, the choice must be obvious: the innocent take precedence over the evil.

As Nick said, it is hard to believe the world could come to such a place, when good people would be forced to consider torture to save lives; however, sometimes the rules aren't written by only the good. Sometimes, the power of evil can be just as potent.