Reason Talks Torture Scenarios
By Justin Gardner | Related entries in The War On TerrorismYou’ve heard the justifications for torture before…….”What if (fill in this space with a horrible scenario that could only be averted by torturing somebody you knew had the information you needed)?”
Yes, it’s the 24-ification of America, and post 9/11 we’re lousy with scenarios like these to justify our actions.
Reason’s Jim Henley brings some perspective to the debate…
This is a clue to the real misdirection of the ticking bomb scenario. It’s always presented as a “What would you do?� dilemma, but in truth it has nothing to do with you. The proper question is: “What should we allow officials embedded in the security bureaucracy to do with impunity? What shall we let their bosses order without legal repercussion?� [...]If you could stop a bomb from killing 1 million Manhattanites at the cost of your own life, would you do it? What if it would mean imprisonment for the rest of your life? Could you live with yourself if you let all those people die for your own comfort? If you couldn’t, and you somehow just had to torture this bad guy to stop the bomb, then you ought to do it anyway and face your punishment. Right? Leave possible pardons and runaway juries aside. We are hard men for hard times, and we want hard make-believe conundrums.
Definitely read the whole thing.
This entry was posted on Tuesday, December 19th, 2006 and is filed under The War On Terrorism. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
December 20th, 2006 at 12:25 am
The article makes a common mistake that obscures the torture debate. It assumes that a “confession” is the goal. When people speak of how unreliable torture is, they are often speaking about how unreliable a “confession obtained under torture is”.
If an interrogator is causing a prisoner physical or emotional distress in order to “admit you are a spy and capitalist collaborator”, then it is obvious what answer the interrogator wants. However, if the question is “where is the bomb?” then that is not the same at all.
A confession obtained under torture(or even aggressive interrogation) is irrelevant to the United States. Since confessions aren’t broadcast for propaganda value, and secret military tribunals don’t require them, confessions aren’t the point of interrogations of terrorist suspects. Obtaining useful intelligence is the goal of the interrogations, and it has the benefit of being verifiable.
Having said all that, I wholeheartedly agree that the administration has gone too far in authorizing interrogation tactics. Quite honestly, if we are ever in a “ticking timebomb” scenario, then we are already screwed. It can take days of intensive interrogation before a person “breaks” in a way that leaves them able to provide useful information. If a terrorist is caught, chances are there was intelligence that led them to be caught. Moderately competent police work should be able to trace the steps of a terrorist over the last 2-3 days in a western country.