Torture, Concluded

See parts I, II, III, and IV in this series.

Ends and Means

Some charge that allowing for torture in any case smacks of utilitarian and consequentialist reasoning. They say that even though it might save American lives, that doesn’t make it justified. Afterall, if someone told me he’d kill a thousand people if I didn’t shoot the next person that said hi to me, I would not be obligated to shoot. Similarly, killing one human being so that we can harvest his stem cells and use them to cure disease in other people is not justified (this is an argument against Embryonic Stem Cell Research, an argument that I buy.). The ends do not justify the means.

In response, I point out that there are significant disanalogies between the two scenarios. For one, it is clear that even in the few cases we resorted to waterboarding, it was measured. This is much different than killing someone to harvest his stem cells. Furthermore, no one is arguing that the ends alone justifies the means, which is what ESCR advocates often do. The saving of American lives is not the only thing that should be weighed–otherwise saving American lives would give government agents carte blanche to torture as they see fit, and no one gets even close to advocating this–but it is an important aspect that could tip the scale one way or another. The ends don’t always justify the means, but they do in some cases.

Shooting someone to stop a massacre is morally praiseworthy, while shooting someone to take his wallet is morally blameworthy. Patterico puts it this way:

I’m not sure that I am willing to subscribe to a theory of moral equivalence on all levels, because the reason you are doing something matters. It matters a lot. If you shoot me for my money, you are a murderer. If you shoot me because I am pointing a gun at your wife, you are defending her and acting legally. If you shoot an American soldier because you are fighting for Hitler’s right to exterminate the Jews, you are behaving wrongly. If you shoot a German soldier to help prevent the extermination of the Jews, you are behaving correctly.

About the notion that we had a “double standard,” arguing that our enemies had to follow international law whereas the law did not apply to the way we treated our detainees–I don’t have a keen legal mind, but again, intent does matter here. If a bully on the playground pushes Suzie down, mounts her, and pulls her hair, and Suzie has to kick the bully in the gonads to get him off her, I’m gonna punish the bully for mounting and pulling hair, but I’m not gonna punish Suzie. Yeah, she kicked him in the balls, and if the bully kicked Suzie in the crotch, you bet I’d throw the book at him, but the intent is key when assigning blame. In this case, I’m gonna apply the rules more strictly to the bully than I am to Suzie. So for someone to cry foul because we are doing the same things our enemies are doing and have done–namely, torturing captives (well, we’re not doing the same thing…beheading…waterboarding…tomato…tom-ahh-toe.)–doesn’t hold much water for me (no pun intended). The intent, extent, and context are totally different. To force the point, the waterboarding opponent must go further.

Conclusion

In the end, as I alluded to in the beginning, both sides have some tough thinking to do. Making a government policy of when torture is allowed is very dangerous. Hitchens and others have pointed out the very greasy slippery slope that could lead us towards. Enough testimony is in favor of waterboarding to make it at least somewhat of a grey issue (i.e, “thoughtful people can disagree on it,” as they say), but it is not totally grey. If it doesn’t cross the line in the end, it’s close enough to it that I’m mighty uncomfortable allowing it, and there are other less controversial enhanced interrogation techniques that are effective too. It has too much of a tainted history for me to confidently give it a thumbs up without my conscience giving me considerable pause.  At the same time, I’m uncomfortable with a categorical ban on it either, in the case that there really *is* a ticking time bomb scenario that calls for it.  The paramaters and cautions will need to be defined in an extremely narrow way.

I’m very conflicted on waterboarding.  Talk to me on Monday, and I’m willing to allow it in a select few very narrowly defined instances.  Talk to me on Wednesday, and I back away from that.  The bottom line is that I recognize the road this allowance puts us on, but I don’t want people who have a duty to protect American citizens to have their hands tied when it comes to fulfilling such a duty.

And it goes without saying that just as a matter of prudence, if it is true that waterboarding won’t yield good info in a specific case, don’t resort to it. Hey, if the guy will talk if we give him a batch of Toll House, I’ll don the apron and slave away in the kitchen myself.

The other side who would categorically outlaw waterboarding and other less stressful techniques aren’t off the hook either. They must face some pretty tough questions, moreso than the side that is against a categorical ban. If you are one of those folks who wants a categorical ban on the techniques in question, here are a few of the tough questions you must face:

• Assume, for the sake of the argument, that waterboarding yielded info that saved the Library Tower and saved countless American lives (again, while we have some indication that this is true, we don’t know for sure, so just assume for the sake of argument). Recognize that, though it is torture, its fairly mild compared to other things. Do you still oppose it, even though it saved many, many American lives?
• How many lives are you willing to give up and endanger, in exchange for a clear conscience at night?
• How many lives are you willing to sacrifice in order to say we don’t torture?
• Are you willing to say that putting a known terrorist on the waterboard is a greater evil than failing to protect thousands of lives?

In the scenario I painted above, you don’t have the luxury of having completely clean hands. Your hands will be dirty either way. You have a choice between a lesser and greater evil and you can’t avoid both. Failing to choose one will mean choosing the other.

There are no easy answers, and those on either side who strut about winging politicized rhetoric like it’s a video game grenade need to quit playing and get real.