The How much torture should a POW receive thread doesn’t really cover this issue, as it pertains to torturing of (almost all completely innocent) prisoners in Iraq. I would like this to be more of a philosophical discussion. Here is an article by Pat Buchanan which I thought was interesting.

Under strict legality, catching someone in the act of violence is different than catching them conspiring to commit violence. It is often justified to stop the person committing violence with the use of deadly force. One is obligated to give the other due process.

However, is it then more ethical to allow the almost certain deaths of hundreds of people who could have been saved by making Muhammad talk? Under this sort of a moral dilemma, what would you do if you were president? What would you do with 600 imprisoned potential terrorists whom you knew wanted everyone in your country dead and were willing to take steps in that direction upon release? Can there ever be a case for torture or the suspension of due process rights? WHy or why not?

Please, let's keep this thread civil.

I do not think there is ever a case for torture nor the suspension of due process.

Due process is a means where the guilt of a person is determined. The steps in due process are there because of the fallibility of humans to determine what is the truth. However inaccurate due process can be, hopefully it will decrease the ineptitude of humans in order to reach a correct decision. Due process is needed as there are no cases where humans have better judgement than in other cases. I expect that strong emotional reactions probably leads to poorer decision making than better. If due process is flawed, make improvements. Due process should work in all cases or it is not doing what it should be doing.

Torture is an inexact means to get information. How can information gained via torture ever be known to be valid ?

Torture also seems to exclude due process. How can one inflict such punishment without due process ?

I discount the claims of torture being useful for saving lives. They are not substantiated. I remain unconvinced. It seems much more likely that valuable information will be gained in the long run by treating prisoners well instead of poorly.

Lastly, torture seems to be based on human emotional reaction of revenge. Humans only torture those they think of less than human, less than themselves. Resorting to torture is opposite of what we should be striving to champion.

Good question Mrs. P!

The utilitarian in me says its the greatest good for the greatest number of people that one person would suffer so that thousands might be saved.

However I question the idea that torture has a level of efficacy sufficient to justify it. If I'm being "water boarded", I would rather tell my interregator anything in order to avoid being drowned, even if I had a smidgeon of blind faith that they would not do so.

Ultimately, I feel as a society, we must strive (notice I didn't say maintain) to achieve the high ground. Freedom is supposed to be beacon for people. If we are willing to make an exception for a single person to be tortured in order to save us from monsters, does that not make us a monster as well? (yes, a veiled reference to my sig below ) I suppose if I had some faith that torture would be required/used only under exceptional circumstances AND that it actually yielded information that could save lives I was accept or support it. But I have faith in neither the information likely to be revealed or our government's ability to wield that power responsibly.

However, its easy to make this judgement sitting in my cubicle. If I knew that torturing someone might save a child or 1000 children from a terrorist act and I were given the power to exercise that authority, I can't say may moral certainty would be as rock solid.

Doc

My belief is that once the system allows the loophole "for exceptional circumstances", this loophole can be always taken advantage of later on. Just like some people justify Abu Ghraib because people there are not "enemy combatants" so the Geneva Convention does not apply to them.
The truth is, torture is very ineffective way to get information - my understanding is that there're more dependable ways to get people to talk... various Truth Serums, etc.

This is a classic 'ends vs. means' discussion. If you believe that the ends can justify the means, then it is quite easy to come up with circumstances that justify torture. If you don't believe the ends can justify the means, then I don't think you'll find any such circumstances.

Personally, although I do understand the ideological and slippery slope arguments against torture, I think it could easily be justified in today's world, where a single terrorist act could potentially kill millions of people. I would have a difficult time, if I were the one who had to make the call, explaining to the friends and relatives of the victims that I had it within my power to find out in advance about that act, but chose not to. However, nor would I excessively criticize someone who, when faced with that decision, went the other way. It's a very difficult choice--Can one morally make an immoral decision? If it were me, I think I would proceed with whatever means were necessary, *assuming there was a very high liklihood of success*, and then feel bad afterward, wishing there had been a better way, but unable to see any.

As in the original thread, I think the only morally responsible thing to do if torture is - or more often, seems to be - the only option likely to save lives is to authorise the torture and then face the consequences.

In the case of a president, one should order the torture, and make it clear that the individuals who carry out the torture must be volunteers drawn from those trained in such matters.

Immediately the torture has been carried out, whether or not it yielded useful information that saved lives, or useless information that did not, one's last order as president should be to initiate one's own prosecution under anti-torture legislation, then resign.

The due process system of justice can then deal with the breach of due process and assess, with hindsight, whether or not it was warranted. The law remains paramount, and anyone that can be saved is saved. Everybody wins. (Except the poor guy who gets tortured, obviously )

If the justice system views that the actions taken are justified, then it will find one innocent, or at the very least, pass a lenient sentence.

If, on the other hand, it finds that the order resulted in the torture of an innocent (e.g. the subject of mistaken identity, or someone "bad" who did not in fact have the information they were tortured to reveal), due process will pass the necessary verdict of war criminal. Even then, one would retain one's honour - somthing that doesn't happen when illegality is condoned at the top but nobody at the top gets punished when it turns out that innocent people have been the victims of such illegality.

If our leaders - in business as well as in politics - were prepared to put their own lives, liberty, and careers where their mouths are, they would consider these decisions with more care, and the electorate would most likely develop a great deal more respect for them. I certainly would, anyway.

I believe we have to look at what protections we fought to give our own accused and how much that means for us to uphold. Is it OK to torture a foreign terrorist and not OK to torture an American serial killer in the US? Are the innocent torturee’s less valuable then the potential innocent victim’s of a terrorist plot? Is it OK to hold one level of justice for our own people but apply a different form of justice to foreigners? The main reasons I oppose the detention of Guantanamo prisoners is because I believe our standard of justice is not an exclusive club for American’s only. No matter how frustrating it is when we see an obviously guilty person walk free the reason they do is because we understand the risk of an innocent person being convicted.

We must strive to practice as we preach and therefore I don't believe it is ever OK to suspend due process. Our standard of humanity should not be compromised, even if it is to our own detriment.

Information gathered through torture is unreliable, people will say anything to end torture (look at some of the outrageous claims maid under torture during witch trials).
In the unlikely event that any information gathered through torture was legitimate, it would be inadmissable under international law.
It must be kept in mind at all times that aside from being immoral, torture is ineffective.

This is a very important distinction, some would say the cornerstone of our justice system and civil rights.

This discussion is very much a does the end justify the means discussion. There is no middle ground here, either it does or it doesn't.

I take the position that the end does not justify the means, and pretty much our entire legal system and system of civil rights supports that belief. Additionally the Geneva Conventions, in part, support that fundamental belief.

If you believe that it is ok to use torture to extract information from a terrorist, then how is it not ok for police to use torture on our citizens to extract information about crimes? What if we are talking about a serial killer that may still have live victims hidden away?

If we walk down the path of accepting torture as a necessary evil, then we also send a message to other countries as well. Those Geneva Conventions everyone negotiated so long and hard for become worthless. If we don't follow them, why should other nations?

Torture Justifications

Pros:

1. Means of punishment
2. Information extraction
3. Deterrence

Cons:

1. Moral abhorrence
2. Reciprocation
3. International law proscription
4. Constitutional proscription

Counter-factuals:

1. Extracting information via torture is notoriously unreliable.
2. It remains unproven whether or not torture deters future torturable actions.
3. Reciprocal torture is easily justified: not only is reciprocation not deterred, it is encouraged.

There is a reason some things are absolutes. Torture is one of them: we do not torture people.

One of the problems with arguing moral relativism is that there is always an extreme that can be used to justify anything. For example?

Q: Is it moral to smother a baby to death?
A: No.
Q: Ah, but what if that baby turned out to be Hitler?


The question being posed here is an extreme, what if by torturing one person we could save the lives of thousands, maybe tens of thousands? The answer has to be, no, we do not torture people.

The problem with arguing by extremes is that:
1) 99.999999999% of cases are not this extreme, and
2) Law is based upon precident more than anything else.

This extreme cannot be defined. It is not a 'slippery slope' argument to point out that if you justify tortyure in extreme situations, you must have a way of defining the situation. What if torturing one person could save hundreds? What if torturing one person could save dozens? What if the person in question were a not a middle aged man but a young woman?

Unless you can strictly define the terms of the 'extreme' then the argument is pointless, and not only pointless but dangerous. If you say you can torture someone to save hundreds, then imagine this not unlikely scenario:

Man takes people hostage, maybe even hundreds of people. maybe its several men talking a Moscow theatre full of people hostage, whatever. He will not give up, you cannot subdue him. But pick up his younger brother/wife/son, and peel a few layers of skin off his feet in front of the theatre, and watch how quickly he gives up. Is that right?

And thats less of an extreme than the case we have presented to us. Once you autorise the use of torture in 'extreme' cases, then watch and see how often 'extreme' cases start popping up.

Extreme is also entirely in the eye of the beholder, it is based on the values of a particular society. By allowing people to be tortured because they threaten some of the core elements of your society, you by proxy authorise torture of people by other states who have different priorities, for people who may go against THEIR core societal elements.

Torturing people is unreliable, it sets an apaulling precident internationally, endangers your own citizens, eliminates any moral high ground, but far more important then all that is that it is wrong.

And not wrong like crossing the street on a red light is wrong, but morally, humanely, unquestionably wrong in a way very few things are. The society that sanctions torture for whatever end is a society that does not deserve to exist.



In summation, though on the face of it it may seem impractical, the reality is even if somehow the torture of some Al Queda guy could be proven to save the lives of thousands, we do not torture people, we do not torture people, we do not torture people.

What the above Buchanan scenario does not take into account is time and control as factors. On a battlefield or emergency situation a life is taken. Kill or be killed. In the typical torture situation the victim is at the complete control of the (dare I say) perpetrator, with no seeming danger to his person. That is what makes torture unacceptable, or at least one of the things that does. The misuse of power.