23 April 2009

Workout notes 4 mile run (40 minutes); got hissed at by the geese. There are so many birds on this course; it will be unrunnable soon (due to dive bombing red winged blackbirds). Then I lead Nancy’s “yoga lattes” class.

Torture Here is an excellent article in Salon (hat tip to a facebook friend)

The argument that torture works cannot simply be dismissed. During World War II, for example, the Gestapo used torture with considerable effectiveness on captured agents working for Britain’s Special Operations Executive, the top-secret organization dedicated to sabotage and subversion behind Axis lines. A number of agents, unable to withstand the pain or, in some cases, even the prospect of pain, told their captors everything they knew, including the identity of other agents, the arrival time of flights, and the location of safe houses. During France’s brutal war in Algeria, the colonial power used torture effectively. As historian Alistair Horne, the author of the classic analysis of the French-Algerian war, “A Savage War of Peace,” told me in a 2007 interview, “In Algeria, the French used torture — as opposed to abuse — very effectively as an instrument of war. They had some success with it; they did undoubtedly get some intelligence from the use of torture.” That intelligence included information about future terrorist strikes and the infrastructure of terror networks in Algiers.

So the easy argument against torture, that it is ineffective, is wrong. Torture can work. Nor can one simply dismiss the philosophical “ticking bomb” debate. Even ethicists bitterly opposed to torture acknowledge that if that hypothetical situation — endlessly depicted in Fox’s TV show “24″ — actually existed, there would be a compelling moral and philosophical argument for torture in that instance.

But in the real world, the “ticking bomb” situation never arises. It is never the case that we know we can automatically avert mass slaughter by torturing someone. Reality is not that neat. Guilt and knowledge are not established in advance. Those whom we torture may or may not be planning nefarious deeds. As the British political scientist Henry Shue pointed out in his classic 1978 essay “Torture,” “Notice how unlike the circumstances of an actual choice about torture the philosopher’s example is. The proposed victim of our torture is not someone we suspect of planting the device: he is the perpetrator. He is not some pitiful psychotic making one last play for attention: He did plant the device. The wiring is not backwards, the mechanism is not jammed: the device will destroy the city if not deactivated.” Shue concludes that “The distance between the situations which must be concocted in order to have a plausible case of morally permissible torture and the situations which actually occur is, if anything, further reason why the existing prohibitions against torture should remain and should be strengthened by making torture an international crime.”

As Shue suggests, the “ticking bomb” situation should be left in the classroom, for ethicists and philosophers to ponder. It has nothing to do with the real world. [...]

Torture is not morally justifiable. In addition, it has severe negative consequences. Once a nation embraces torture, it forfeits any claim to a moral high ground. It becomes no better than those it is fighting. It may win a battle, but it will lose the war. As America struggles to win hearts and minds in the Arab/Muslim world, the use of torture is more harmful in the long run than any “high-value” intelligence gained by its use. And U.S. torture not only builds hatred in the Muslim world, it turns our allies against us — and erodes us from within. As historian Horne pointed out, “When the news came out in France of what the army was doing, it caused such a revulsion that it led directly to the French capitulation. And not only revulsion in France, but revulsion here. JFK, as a senator, took up the Algerian cause quite strongly partly because of the human rights issue.” Horne’s conclusion: “I feel myself absolutely clear in my own mind that you do not, whatever the excuse, use torture, let alone abuse.”

But it is even worse than that. On the Rachel Maddow show, the conjecture was advanced that the Bush-Cheney torture program wasn’t really designed to obtain actionable intelligence but was rather a desperate attempt to establish a link between Al Qaeda and Saddam Hussein.

I sincerely hope that this conjecture was without merit; no I didn’t like President Bush and I despise Dick Cheney. But I sincerely hope that this country didn’t elect monsters.