I suspect the present day witch-hunt against those who “tortured” has more to do with politics than reality. Why? Because I’m old enough to remember the laments of the Church committee hearings back in the 1970’s.
Those hearings resulted in the CIA pulling back from the “hands-on” dirty work of spying, relying more on electronic surveillance and reports from less politicized intelligence sources.
One result, of course, was September 11.
You are going to hear a lot of nonsense in the discussion, which will be of course politicized rather than rational.
A lot of the questions will be if torture really works.
Nonsense, say the guys at Strategy Page.It works, but usually it only gives you one piece of the puzzle: You have to combine the information with lots of other information to figure out what is going on.
Filipinos know that torture works, because it was used to save the Pope’s life in the Bojinka plot.
The police were aware that bomb-makers were around, and so when the terrorist’s hot plate caused a fire, suspicions were raised. One guy escaped to kill another day, but his partner was caught and “interrogated”, revealing the plot to bomb the Pope, who was coming to Manila for World Youth Day, along with about five million people.
The cops, worried about the Pope’s safety, ended up flying him there in a helicopter, and the good news is that no one was killed that day.
The bad news is that a lot of the information about bombing planes and flying planes into buildings was ignored by people who should have known better.
So I ask you: was the “torture” of this terrorist ethical?
If you are a pragmatist, the answer is yes. Selected torture saves lives.
Of course, you might want to worry that using torture might expand to non essential matters (the slippery slope theory). But a limited use of moderate torture that saves civilian lives is ethical.
That is the argument of the Bush administration.
Others say: no, we will take the moral high ground. No torture because we are good guys,.
This is the “Shep Smith” argument.
You see President Obama’s dilemma.Ironically, there is a third argument, but it is not secular, but religious.
There is a God, and he requires one to act ethically in one’s life.
You are not responsible for someone else’s actions, only your own.
It is permissible to kill in self defense or in defense of another (either a personal attack or in a just war).
But it is not permissible to deliberately harm a person who is helpless. Period.
So what if the Philippine police hadn’t found out about the plot to kill the pope?
Well, the Pope, and probably several hundred people watching the motorcade, would have died or been injured.
But perhaps the long term result would have been a more thorough investigation into terrorism, so that those devastating terror attacks would never have occurred.
If you are opposing torture because you hate Bush, or if you oppose torture because you are so naive that you believe in sweetness and light will work. If so, I have nothing to say to you.But if you oppose torture because it is wrong to harm a helpless human being, and because it is ethically wrong to do a bad deed to get a good result, then I hope you believe in God, because that position is only tenable if you believe that in the long run God will make all things work for good for those who love him.
Finally, if you oppose harming a helpless human being to get information about terrorism, to save lives, then I have another question:
Do you also oppose killing an unborn baby so that the mother is not put at risk?
Do you oppose killing a helpless embryo to get stem cells to “save” the lives of the sick?
(Yes, I know, recent advances suggest adult stem cells can do the same thing, but I’m theoretical here).
So, if you aborted your kid so you could finish college, but cry for a murderous terrorist, may I suggest that you need to do an examination of conscience.
As for me, I oppose torture, because I am a Christian. If I die in a terrorist attack, it would be God’s will.
I speak from experience. When we were missionaries, we knew darn well that our hospitals could be attacked and we could be killed, but we took the risk..and some of my friends were indeed killed when their missions were attacked.
But none of us had families.
And unless you take into consideration the ethical dictate to protect the helpless, you can not be so strict.
So, to tell you the truth, I don’t mind dying myself, but if that SOB in front of me had information that would save my kid’s life, I would probably lose my temper and do anything to get it out of him.
But I pray that I would never have to make such a choice. Because it is only when we chose to do what is right in the hard cases that we reveal our own character.
But I do understand those who would chose a small evil to save the lives of the innocent.
Heck, even Jesus kicked A** when he saw the crooks shafting the poor in the Temple….so I figure he’d understand.
————————————————————–
Nancy Reyes is a retired physician living in the Philippines. Her website is Makaipa Blog
7 users commented in " The “Logic” of Torture: Can we take a life to save a life? "
Follow-up comment rss or Leave a TrackbackI see your point and through it a glimpse into the problem. Myself, I’m not into God’s will as it applies to everyday life. If I should contract a cancerous tumor, I might consider his will (and I’m more of a lapsed Catholic) however, I’ve smoke for years and am willing to consider my own actions as a more likely disease vector. I’m careful crossing the street, however, I ride a bicycle these days, certainly not god’s will if I don’t pay enough attention. Still, life can blind side us now and then.
To the point of torture and one life versus many. Give me some water and point out the positive and negative terminals on a battery. I choose to obey the laws of the society I live in and the guidance of my religion. That doesn’t make me a saint, but I would like to think that planes falling out of the sky for a reason other than poor maitanance or bad luck or a bird strike or somewhat different than a plane falling out of the sky while under the control of another human being bent on some warped guidance is not god’s will, but a failure of society to coddle my belief in the right to walk down the street in a more or less safe manner without worrying about some zealots who desires to spread their version of whatever. Just give me some conducting liquid and point me to the A and B terminals please. Any other grievance can be settled in the world court.
Did you catch this quote from the Wash Post Thursday edition?
We can fall to the level of those we torture, but torture does work when we can cross check. The Bush admin tried to play the game, but the problem was they didn’t have the cross check information available and in the end, the information gained didn’t provide any real time news. Too late, too bad, so sad. At least, they did keep the opposition running hard enough, long enough to gain some breathing space and so we (on the mainland) can walk the streets without feeling the need to look up. Looking around for the corner bandit is another story.
Sorry my above post didn’t receive the quote from the post. Try this version
I see your point and through it a glimpse into the problem. Myself, I’m not into God’s will as it applies to everyday life. If I should contract a cancerous tumor, I might consider his will (and I’m more of a lapsed Catholic) however, I’ve smoke for years and am willing to consider my own actions as a more likely disease vector. I’m careful crossing the street, however, I ride a bicycle these days, certainly not god’s will if I don’t pay enough attention. Still, life can blind side us now and then.
To the point of torture and one life versus many. Give me some water and point out the positive and negative terminals on a battery. I choose to obey the laws of the society I live in and the guidance of my religion. That doesn’t make me a saint, but I would like to think that planes falling out of the sky for a reason other than poor maitanance or bad luck or a bird strike or somewhat different than a plane falling out of the sky while under the control of another human being bent on some warped guidance is not god’s will, but a failure of society to coddle my belief in the right to walk down the street in a more or less safe manner without worrying about some zealots who desires to spread their version of whatever. Just give me some conducting liquid and point me to the A and B terminals please. Any other grievance can be settled in the world court.
Did you catch this quote from the Wash Post Thursday edition?
“We can provide the ability to exploit personnel based on how our enemies have done this type of thing over the last five decades,” Joseph Witsch wrote in a July 2002 memo.
That is from the man. Why should we be shackled by the rules of an enlightened society to the point where we are at the mercy of a somewhat barbaric interpration of another? That is my read on the situation.
We can fall to the level of those we torture, but torture does work when we can cross check. The Bush admin tried to play the game, but the problem was they didn’t have the cross check information available and in the end, the information gained didn’t provide any real time news. Too late, too bad, so sad. At least, they did keep the opposition running hard enough, long enough to gain some breathing space and so we (on the mainland) can walk the streets without feeling the need to look up. Looking around for the corner bandit is another story.
If you give people the power to torture, even if the proposed reasons for it might justify it to to some degree, I guarantee you the torture will spread from cases of absolute necessity, to those of less necessity, and eventually it will become a common practice for just about anything and nothing at all. Torture is common practice in some countries. The state of Florida tortured children to bloody pulp for decades. It really was sadistic, cruel, and completely out of hand. I might have started with limited cases, but it became a form of inflicting pain and humiliation on a routine, systematic basis for infractions so small and insignificant most would have been laughed off in the rest of the world. Nobody who is safe from the prospect of being tortured himself or herself is qualified to make favorable decisions about torture.
Mark, you have a good essay but you say that “The Bush admin tried to play the game, but the problem was they didn’t have the cross check information available and in the end, the information gained didn’t provide any real time news.”
Unless you work for the Pentagon you may be wrong.
My point is that torture is wrong even if it brings us information, the same way that abortion is wrong even when it helps a woman or killing embryos for stem cells is wrong even when it might cure people.
The “slippery slope” argument is enough to stop us from using torture, allowing abortions/destroying early human life to benefit people.
But too many of the arguments are from those who never had to make such hard choices.
No I don’t work for the pentagon and I’m a hoser on the torture score, as I’ve never put myself in the position where I might have to make the decision to hook someone up. I’m just a bit tired of hearing that torture doesn’t work when applied and analyzed throughly and seized your soapbox to rant against the blindness of the media. That torture never works is just a falsehood.
If we agree on anything, it is that facts that are reported as trueisms by the media and accepted blindly, when historical examples show the opposite to be true. Yeah, torture is a really bad method to obtain information. Torturing even the worst cretin, drags down the person committing the act and the society which justifies same.
Neither of us can answer the question (well, maybe you can) but I can’t put a value on a thousand or even a million lives versus the life of one. Without due process, of course. Stalin and Hitler being exceptions to my mind and morals. I quess, I’m a cynical Malthusian and see that war is a necessary evil. I’m selfish enough to think that torture could keep my loved ones safe in the face of the never ending struggle. I have to admit, I envy your solution with your endavours on the farm. Thanks, I’ve spent the better part of an hour with this reply and gained a certain amount of peace along the way.
Beating the pants off so many white house boys in the old days served as a deterrent. It reminded of what was in store for them if they attacked and hurt others, and I assure you, many WHBs were budding violent criminals honing their terrorist skills against their so-called brothers in pain. At FSBO the beatings reached a frenzy of psycho-sadistic paraphilia; it was a blood orgy out of control. Who knows better than I do? I witnessed it for seventy days, and I have no reason to lie, and good reasons to conceal all of this. It was unbeliavably cruel. Many times I counted the exact number of lashes given to single individuals,e.g., 40, 60, 80, 100, more, but telling coddled, middle-class Amerikans brought only answers of incredulousness such as, “You must be mistaken. Nobody could do anything like that and get away with it.” Long before the WHBs organization I had placed short comments about the systematic abuses of children by the state, but only to be denounced and called a liar. After the WHBs released their own versions on the WWW, and I was proven right, the forums refused to admit any more of my articles because it showed I again was right and everyone else was wrong.
To Mark:
Get off medicalizing and psychologizing 9-11. it was an act of war like any act of war in thousands of years of human history. If you think there were no reasons for it and it was the result of mental imbalance, you have to attribute the same to all combatants even in your own country, but you cannot do that. You had better study history again and get more real-world experience in the area of warfare before you start taking the “Us all good and them all bad” mentality. If you cannot conceive of the fact your government and its military provoked those attacks and they had it coming, it’s too bad you allow your emotions to color your judgements and your intelligence is so limited, but in Amerika that is no handicap. You have plenty of company.Jingoism: it’s not becoming.
Leave A Reply