On The Application of Torture

Liberals are in a self righteous tizzy over "torture" this week. Because torture is just plain wrong, right?

Here: check out this cartoon that totally proves it through the scientific approach of "Flippant Mockery". Let me know when you are back. (Click the links for a big readable version.)

http://images.salon.com/comics/tomo/2007/11/19/tomo/story.jpg

http://images.salon.com/comics/tomo/2007/11/19/tomo/story.jpg

The logic portrayed in this cartoon is preposterous. The only good thing is that it's as good a way as any to tackle the simplicity of anti-"torture" arguments. And no - it isn't just the cartoon. The cartoon is simply indicative of positions held quite widely. And wrongly.

Panels 1 and 2 can basically be summed up as "man, we live in darker times." Well, yes, we do. Liberals may like to roll their eyes at invoking 9/11, but it happened. Really really really. And it wasn't George W. Bush who planned it. Under the Clinton administration a vast terrorist network had been allowed to flourish overseas and within self-segregated Muslim ethnic communities within the western world. The idea of democrats had been to treat it as a law enforcement issue. These attempts were proving relatively unsuccessful. An extremist Wahhabi/Salafist Islamist organizatin of activists became increasingly emboldened and was interested in creating terrorist attacks that were on a grander attack than had previously been seen. 9/11 occurred because it was not detected in time. The lesson of 9/11 was the importance of gathering actionable intelligence in order to greater ensure citizen safety. If you do not believe this to be fact and think the Bush administration planned 9/11 please leave my blog and don't bother visiting anymore. We have nothing to talk about.

Panel 2 and 3 take a very reasonable point about whether waterboarding is terror and conflates it with medieval torture like the rack and thumbscrews. But the initial point is not actually countered. There is clearly a progression of torture. If no torture is ever allowed then I should go to jail for tickling my girlfriend. Some would argue that Michael Bolton,Vanilla Ice and Barry Manilow should all be in jail. And while that last sentence was a joke, what isn't a joke is that heavy metal music was used to encourage Manuel Noriega to leave his Panama compound and come peacefully. This was indeed a form of torture as broadly defined. The real question is whether there is a difference between waterboarding and the rack. The answer: of course there is. Waterboarding has a low probability of leaving lasting physical harm. The rack is designed to inflict irreversible pain AND damage which is a precursor to execution. One procedure is grotesque, the other is extemely unpleasant. Conflating the two is fallacious.

Panels 4 and 5 purport to dismiss the ticking time bomb as a one in a million scenario. Dershowitz does the same thing in his article by talking about the imminent threat. Personally if the threat is truly THAT dire then by all means bring out the rack if you need to. But that isn't what we are really talking about.

The simple fact is this: Unpleasantness in interrogations is completely useless in extracting a confession from someone of a past crime committed that cannot be corroborated. A signed confession from a tortured person is useless. However unpleasant interrogation - from long periods of exhausting questioning to, yes, waterboarding if necessary - are very useful if one can corroborate the evidence. That can include berating a suspect until he tells you where the body is buried, or waterboarding someone until he gives provable actionable intelligence about his contacts in a terrorist cell. Any suggestion that one can learn nothing useful from torture is patently stupid. A person raising this line of argument is simply opposed to torture, period.

The fact is that a threat like Al Queda IS a constantly ticking time bomb. Uncovering it's cells and breaking it's organisation was and remains crucial to citizen safety. The judicious use of enhanced interrogation up to and including waterboarding is a distasteful but a potentially necessary step. If you wish to say it is unnecessary I will demand your proof, I will disagree, and I will accuse you of simply finding it morally objectionable. I can respect your moral objection, since in many ways I share it, but in this part of the argument you are simply kidding yourself.

Panel 5 contains the opposite of the Nazi fallacy. This is interesting. Normally one proposes something, someone else pipes up with "that sounds like something Hitler would do" and everyone falls into awkward silence until someone, wisely, punches the Hitler invoker in the face like a good civilised debater.

The cartoon's rejection of Dershowitz is essentially an inverted version of the same. Dershowitz is invoking an example from history of evidence that torture works. The retort is a non sequitur. It is saying that if Nazis did something we shouldn't do it. This is fallacious of course. Nazis made the volkswagon and the autobahn. Whether we should do what Nazis did depends on whether it is morally justifiable and effective not on whether or not they did it. So again, this is a childish rejoinder.

And finally in panel six, the democrats are accused of being mealy mouthed on the issue. And on this point he's right. The reason is simple though. The next President of the United States is probably going to need to torture somebody.

THAT HAVING BEEN SAID, HOWEVER...

This is not to suggest that torture should be used as a matter of course.

It is barbaric and generally completely unnecessary.

The potential for abuse is vast.

The spectre of Maher Arar is not long past.

The need to consider enhanced interrogation, water boarding, sleep deprivation, temperature extremes and so forth is awful. It's disgusting. If it doesn't disturb you it should.

I personally am very afraid of a world where waterboarding could be used to extract a verifiable confession from suspects in murder cases. Particularly since the police often don't know the suspect is guilty. Torturing someone to find out if they are guilty of something when you aren't sure is profoundly disturbing to me on a number of levels, and should never occur. There are lines and limits that transcend even our physical safety. Because if the government does such a thing, it has become at least as great a threat as any terrorist.

Our discomfort at the use of torture, and this debate, is important and necessary. The appropriate type of interrogation must be balanced against the threat. The use of any enhanced technique goes against the entire idea of liberty and security of the person. It requires the punishment of people before trial, without proof beyond a reasonable doubt in a manner that shocks the conscience. In short it goes against everything that we as a society believe in, and everything that has made western civilization an oasis in a desert of human arbitrary brutality the world over.

So any use of enhanced interrogation techniques. Any use of "torture" if you want to call it that, must be vigorously debated and aggressively challenged. And any found necessary - which might end up being none (but I doubt it) - MUST carefully monitored, regulated and approved. Accountability should exist.

But pretending there is absolutely place for it in a post 9/11 world, as an a priori starting point, is patently naive. Responding to the arguments in the flippant fallacious way in that cartoon above is even worse. It's deliberately disingenuous and if there are arguments against it, they aren't being made therein.

This is a complex issue. It deserves real discussion. It can't just be sneered away.