A Torturous Post

I’m hopelessly behind the news ticker. It usually takes me quite a while to think about and write a post on some issues. I try not to be too knee-jerk reactionary, and that, most often, means I don’t post on something until it has come and gone from the current events scene. Thus, I offer this series on torture, which was a hot topic a few months ago.

Then again, it is bound to come up again some time or later, so perhaps I’m in front of the news ticker. Actually, it was in the news a day or two ago. (Read the whole thing.  It is important.)

I should have posted on this long ago. I just wanted to do a lot of reading up to make sure I’m thinking carefully.

I’ve done a huge amount of reading on the matter, in fact. Justin Taylor, for instance, convened a symposium of key Catholic and Evangelical thinkers to make a response on the issue. The essays were very helpful in shaping my thoughts. Chris Tollefsen at The Public Discourse and Charles Krauthammer also wrote foundational pieces on torture. Though I think Krauthammer’s piece is better reasoned than Tollefsen’s, and even though Krauthammer wrote in 2005, both are good essays to consult.

The points: A) any conservative Christian thinker (heck, any liberal Christian thinker) needs to consult those resources, and b) no one can claim there is not morally serious, rigorous, appropriately nuanced thought from a conservative and Christian perspective on the subject of torture.

For a summary of the relevant “memos” (plus links), go here.

Tyranny?

First, I gotta get one thing off my chest from the get go. I sense that one side of this debate refuses to make crucial moral distinctions, preferring instead to sanctimoniously spout moral equivalencies like they are self-evidently true. For example, one of my friends said on Twitter, “We should prosecute those responsible torturing in Gitmo showing we are against tyranny.”

At first, I was a little intimidated by that statement, simply because I hadn’t thought much about the matter. But now, I have little patience for such words. Tyranny? Are you kidding me? You wanna see tyranny, go to Tehran right now and see what they do to people who protest the government. THAT’S tyranny.

Al Quaida tortures the bejeezus out of our guys, then beheads them. That strikes me as tyranny. Waterboarding a known terrorist five times in a controlled environment–tyranny? To suggest that these two are even remotely in the same boat by using the same word for them (Even if not the intent, the message is one of moral equivalence. If you don’t think the two are equivalent you need to be more precise and careful…even on Twitter.) is tomfoolery.

We waterboarded KSM and Zubaydah, two terrorists (Terrorists are not soldiers in uniform, since they attack citizens and make a mockery of wartime conventions. This doesn’t give our government carte blanche to do whatever–far from it–but it does bear mentioning. Also, I know some say AZ was only a minor AQ operative, but that doesn’t mean he’s not a terrorist.), a few times (not 183 times, which is an urban legend born out of a misunderstanding of the facts), in order to get information out of them. With both men, there were protocols in place in regards to the interrogation methods to which they were subjected. It was done in a controlled environment, and not by sadistic hearts bent on causing pain. Many who were involved in the interrogations had reservations about what was being done. Most were motivated by a desire to save American lives. This is not tyranny, not even close. Did the CIA cross the line? Perhaps. Should waterboarding be outlawed? Perhaps. Is it torture? Perhaps–more on all that later. But lets not twit about calling this “tyranny,” as if we’re in the same boat as dictators and terrorists themselves.

Even if you throw in the abuses at Abu Grhaib, which were heartbreaking and obviously gross deeds, it still isn’t tyranny. That was an aberration, not a sanctioned practice, and the soldiers responsible were prosecuted thoroughly.

Another example is here. These folks browbeat him just for posing the questions. Something makes me think they wouldn’t waste near as much ink denouncing human rights violations in Iran or China. We just gotta get past the rhetoric Patterico unveils.

The Other Side Needs to Quit Pretending Too

Second, some on the other side of the debate are guilty of knee-jerk reactionaryism (is that a word? Seven syllables…ma-y-an.) as well. As soon as somebody bucks the party line and questions the ethics of our interrogation methods of terrorists, they shout, “liberal ninny! You obviously don’t care about losting American lives!” These folk typically put too much priority on the effectiveness of the method. What is clear is that with AZ and KSM, our government produced a “fist of firsts,” and that alone means the utmost sober reflection is called for. We cannot blithely proceed simply because we’re in a “war on terror.” I am very uncomfortable with the “do whatever it takes to get the information we need” approach.

Both sides have a propensity to resort to emotional rhetorical flourishes, which is exactly what should be avoided. Both sides need to step back a pace or two, separate themselves from the politics of it, and really think, as much as possible, with disspassionate logic and cooler heads. Might be hard to do, but it needs to be done given the fact that this is so important.

Brushing Over Careful Distinctions

Third, many commentators go off the rails right from the start: they never actually define what torture is. They give no definition, then they simply call a certain act “torture,” implying that it is wrong. They let a word with heavy negative connotations do the bulk of the arguing. You can get away with that when talking about things like being shocked or having your fingernails pulled off, but in our case, this is a very sly, but underhanded way to go. One can take a particularist way of defining the term–starting with a clear-case, obvious example of torture, then gleaning a definition from that, followed by applying the definition to less-obvious cases–but one must formulate a definition before addressing the controversial cases that were the subject of so much talk a few months ago.

Here’s an example: most people just call waterboarding “torture,” therefore implying that it is morally impermissable or at least morally suspect. This begs a number of questions: is it torture? If so, why? Where do we draw the line and can that line be reasonably maintained?

Another example: many Christians cite Paul’s injunction to “let us not do evil that good may result,” implying that X act of coercion or torture (waterboarding, say) is evil. This is fair enough, but that presupposes that the act in question is, in fact, evil. It also leaves what is evil entirely undefined.

Darrell Cole, assistant professor of Religion at Drew University uses this kind of wording in his essay:

At first glance, the new threat that is the war on terror seems to offer the moral realists good reasons to begin the systematic use of torture on terrorists, though, again, the reasons are not as persuasive as they were during the Second World War or the cold war. In the former two wars we were fighting for the survival of Western Civilization. In the current war we simply want to spare ourselves the loss of a lot of lives—a noble cause, but not as noble as saving a civilization. The problem with this tactic for Christians, whether it be for the cause of Western Civilization or our own lives, is that Christians have always followed the apostle Paul and resisted attempts to justify doing evil for a good cause. For Christians, there are no “emergencies” that would justify moral acts displeasing to God. The refusal to do evil that good may come is a moral staple of classical Protestant, Eastern Orthodox, and Roman Catholic morality. (emphasis mine)

And again:

Christians have good reasons to distance themselves from the moral realism evidenced in Krauthammer’s essay. Nevertheless, the temptation to use a little evil on an evildoer can be overwhelming when a great deal is at stake. We may be tempted to count the cost on our conscience and try to figure out how much evil we can live with—how much evil we are willing to avert our eyes from—in order to save a society that we hold so dear. When we are tempted to count the moral costs, we often like to convince ourselves that we are only going to allow this particular evil to be done only once in this case of emergency. When our own lives are at stake, we do not fear the slippery slope. We tell ourselves that we will not become people who regularly do evil simply because we allow it in special cases, nor will we become barbarians simply because we practice a little barbarism for a good cause.

While he makes some decent points about the possibility of a slippery slope, notice that he simply lumps all coercion into one category called “torture,” never defines the word, and simply calls torture evil without argument. It is sloppy thinking to object to nebulous torture without getting specific.

Krauthammer uses the same language, therefore opening the way for Cole to brush over careful distinctions. He states that torture may sometimes be a moral duty, but in elsewhere he says, “there is no denying the monstrous evil that is any form of torture.” This is confusing. Daniel Heimbach, commenting on Krauthammer’s use of language, points this out, but gives a more charitable interpretation of Krauthammer in the end: “Coherence requires that we either say that torture is always a ‘monstrous evil’ with no exceptions, or that torture, while evil in most circumstances, is not evil all the time—that there are situations when torture is not truly evil. This later position is what I think Krauthammer actually means.”

Moreover, isn’t refusing to protect innocent lives evil? If “torture” can yield information which leads to significantly saving innocent lives, how, then, can Cole call undefined torture “evil,” and say that is a reason against its practice, but leave the the evil of refusal to protect totally unexamined? Perhaps, in the end, waterboarding is torture, and perhaps it is still morally impermissable, even if it can protect innocent lives, but Cole leaves this wholly unanswered.

In the next post, I will continue to discuss a definition of torture, before making some other points.