I also tend to reject the scenario where people have a threshold where torture is immoral, but then say someone in a ticking bomb scenario should do it an accept the consequences. This strikes me as a cop-out. Either it’s a moral principle or it isn’t.

And…Consumatopia is right.
I have, actually, been called a naive child on the torture issue.
I did, actually, argue Alyosha’s answer in Russian Lit.
Torture is so grievous an insult to the human condition, so immoral and so deeply and profoundly wrong , that I marvel that the perps that designed and implemented this horrorshow, this slur on the name of a Great Republic, don’t either just curl up and die from shame or fall on their dishonored swords.

— matoko_chan · Apr 29, 06:21 PM · #

I stand by my earlier comment that, if we offered forgiveness of student loans and credit card debt in exchange for KSM levels of waterboarding, we would have millions of volunteers.

You have defeated your entire rationale, and exposed it as emotional projection.

And you have neglected even to attempt to answer a long series of questions and arguments, or explain why they do not go to the heart of your case, such as it is.

strangelet, I continue to believe that your notion of a Jack Bauer scenario requiring rape is an excessively lurid diversion. It’s like telling a guy his fly is open and being accused of sexual assault. If all application of physical force, representing in any ideal sense “negation of free will” is the same as torture, and if there is no difference between different kinds and classes of physical acts designed to elicit cooperation against someone’s will, then the only moral option left is self-starvation on the way to the quickest possible death, as among the radical Janes – because imprisoning the captive, restraining the captive, denying the captive cigarettes or a premium movie channel, all of that is “torture” which is the same as “rape.”

The problem relates to your intellectually fetishistic attitude toward the word “torture,” which you allow to function like a talisman of black magic in your mental dungeon, converting every act and gesture in its vicinity into a monstrous crime against humanity. However, if there’s any chance of the US raping for info, it would come about as a result of some desperate volunteer in a crisis driven insane by the socially suicidal moral pettifoggery, dishonesty, and cowardice of his Obamaist superiors.

The “why torture is wrong” piece you present is completely unpersuasive. On its face, and at its level of generalization, it presents a moral absolutist position – apparently to be applied in a socially self-mortifying way in this realm of interrogation matters exclusively, leaving all other negations of absolute free will and moral self-governance that pervade social life, in war and peace, intact.

Essentially, you want us to seek out terrorists, if at all, only for the purpose of supplicating ourselves at their feet and begging forgiveness for having sinned against them. Or would this be too much of an intrusion on their convenience and free exercise of moral self-governance? How would anything short of leaving them completely alone NOT be an “intrinsic evil” from which no good could derive?

We don’t agree about the proper use of the word “torture.” Furthermore, I don’t believe that you have for a moment in all of this discussion approached this subject with an authentically open mind. Try explaining your position without using the word “torture.”

The central moral evil in interrogating someone by means of torture is that it overrides the victim’s moral agency. That is, the whole point of the exercise is to render the victim incapable of moral self-governance, so that your will, the will of the torturer, becomes entirely sovereign. This is intrinsically wrong both in Aristotelian/Thomist thought and the various moral philosophies derived from Kant. Since, in classical moral philosophy (and indeed in the moral reasoning we use in everyday life) you can’t perform an action that is intrinsically evil in order than good may come about, you can’t torture someone to get information out of him even if that information would save many lives.

As a side note, you would think that this would all be clear to the good people at First Things, who’ve read their Aquinas and their dogmatic constitutions. I know First Things is against torture. I hope we hear some clarification from them soon.

It’s sickening

Torture is sickening. Rape is sickening.
You honestly think theres much of a difference? You honestly think that if our elected officials had a jackbauer scenario that required rape, they wouldn’t do it?
I thought your whole pragmatism argument depended on that.

What is the difference between rape and torture?

But that is your exact argument for waterboarding.
And that is what our most trusted, reviewable public servants did.
They tortured.

You’re obsessed with a word that frightens you, like a child gazing into the mirror and saying “Mary Worth” over and over again.

Our most trusted public servants did not systematically rape female anyone.

Not even close. It’s sickening to suggest otherwise.

If schools are prisons, then what are prisons?

alongside a situation so dire that our most trusted, and reviewable, public servants felt that engaging in such loathsome behavior was the lesser evil.

But that is your exact argument for waterboarding.
And that is what our most trusted, reviewable public servants did.
They tortured.

I think drugs will be reviewed as to whether they hold the potential for torture, and torture drugs will be outlawed. I was thinking of oxytocin, the “trust” drug.
Torture, in Consumatopia’s definintion, is the state where death is preferable to more torture.

But…… I am not sure if dollhouse-style neural imprinting would be classed as torture….I think when we have that technological capability, there will have to be new rules and new laws.

But to consider if we would support say…female terrorists being systematically raped in order to extract information

But, you see, there you go again with the phony scene: Who, where ever proposed that an interrogation program intended to be effective and humane would ever settle on systematic rape of female terrorists? On what planet, in what universe, in what concrete reality would those two concepts ever come together?

You’d have to propose the existence of female terrorists, or perhaps of male terrorists, who were insensitive to every other conceivable measure, but for some reason drew the line at systematic rape of the females – alongside a situation so dire that our most trusted, and reviewable, public servants felt that engaging in such loathsome behavior was the lesser evil. If our society ever reaches such a nightmarishly psychotic point, then rough interrogations – torture – of terrorist suspects will be the least of our problems.

The resort to scare scenarios suggests to me that what you’re really afraid of is your own sadistic imagination.

Are you aware, strangelet, of Dostoevsky’s plan for Alyosha in the never-completed sequel to the BROTHERS K?

If you dislocate your shoulder, then it’s possible that a doctor’s procedure for returning your arm to its socket will be the most painful thing you ever experience. For that moment, there will be nothing else in the universe except the “severe pain.” It would be torturous. But it won’t be torture. There are many other medical procedures that, for the sake of “gaining information,” inflict high degrees of discomfort, including sever pain, on the patient. They are torturous, but they are not torture.

Someday, in addition to the narcotics and other non-ideal methods of extracting information that are theoretically available to us, we may have access to new technologies, the use of which, to some, will represent a gross violation of the person of a terrorist suspect. Is that the “same as slavery” – negating the suspect’s “free will” to yield information, or not?

If we had a drug that could induce a state in KSM in which he could be convinced, to the point of desperate panic, that Allah would torment him for eternity if he didn’t reveal the location of OBL, would that be “torture”?

the wiki is wrong.

strangelet on April 28, 2009 at 4:51 PM

Wouldn’t be the first time. But thanks for the explanation. Wiki makes it sound like Buddhism.

Anyway. Arguments about the definition of torture don’t interest me, nor do hyperbolic screeching about HOW THIS IS SO TERRIBLE!1!11. They both strike me as kinda disingenuous and stupid.

Consumatopia’s arguments on The American Scene do interest me. It occurs to me that I’m open to persuasion either way, having not really made up my mind on the issue (after additional consideration). It’s not simple and it’s not easy – I kinda resent people who claim it is. Of course I’m not a subscriber to free will (I’m not a determinist either), but that doesn’t necessarily matter.

it was possible to maintain achieve a union with the divine in which the human self melted away.

the wiki is wrong.

I don’t like to speak about my faith.
But here is a simplified version of the answer to your question.
The Sufi believe that some humans are born “open-channel” to Allah, like say….Issa…our word for Jesus.
The rest of us can work toward that goal, ending in faana, the union with the Divine Beloved.
Of course there is free will…you can chose your path, you can choose not to work though the seven stages, not to study. You can choose against faana.
It is your choice.
Even Issa could choose, even al-Hallaj (the Sufi saint that was crucified for his beliefs), even Rabi’a could choose.
Freewill.

The extent to which Sufism was influenced by Buddhist and Hindu mysticism, and by the example Christian hermits and monks, is disputed, but self-discipline and concentration on God quickly led to the belief that by quelling the self and through loving ardour for God it was possible to maintain a union with the divine in which the human self melted away.

(from the wiki article)

with:

The negation of free will, the negation of what it means to be human.

Granted I know precious little about Sufism but what I read.

strangelet on April 28, 2009 at 3:55 PM

Like this kind?

I sort of think of torture like rape: It may not kill the victim, but it gives so much power to the person inflicting it and causes so much trauma to the victim that it’s obviously beyond moral second-guessing: it’s wrong beyond the pale. Rhetorically, I suspect that if we were officially raping females suspected of terrorism, there would be legitimate outrage.

Though one can’t be sure. I’m constantly surprised by what we tolerate in this country.

At Ta-nehisi’s we had a discussion of Joss Wheedon’s Dollhouse…Ta said he thought it was a rape fantasy…..in the every week overwriting of the protagonist’s memory….. I analogized rape and slavery.
It’s the same! Rape, slavery, torture, Dollhouse.
The act renders the individual enslaved, raped, tortured or overwritten with a neural imprint into a non-human.

Perhaps we could discuss why you actually buy the rather silly notion that anyone actually possesses free will in the strictest sense?

Geek??
Of course I believe in free will…..I’m a Sufi.

Its over for me.
Realizing that torture is based on the exact same premise as slavery finished it.
The negation of free will, the negation of what it means to be human.
I don’t think you have any arguments left that can touch me.
Game over.

strangelet on April 28, 2009 at 2:00 PM

Perhaps we could discuss why you actually buy the rather silly notion that anyone actually possesses free will in the strictest sense?

but…..do I want to?

As regards the real unreal thing, what makes you think you have a choice in the matter?

As for myself, I’m always suspicious of any great revelation that happens to confirm my pre-existing inclinations and prejudices, and that seems to make things easier rather than harder.

Take two Kierkegaards, and text me in the morning.

You can live a rich life without ever experiencing a single one.

but…..do I want to?
domo arigoto gozaimasen sempai_sama.

My advice is to work your epiphany-rate down gradually, first aiming for no more than 1 a day, then 1 a month, and so on. Eventually you may determine that real epiphanies are rare. You can live a rich life without ever experiencing a single one.

Its over for me.
Realizing that torture is based on the exact same premise as slavery finished it.
The negation of free will, the negation of what it means to be human.
I don’t think you have any arguments left that can touch me.
Game over.

strangelet on April 28, 2009 at 2:00 PM

Enjoy your self-dramatic dance in your imaginary victory circle.

We’re not in a position, may never be, in critical respects cannot ever be, to perform a full and objective cost-benefit calculation of all aspects of Bush Administration post-9/11 strategy. The system is too complex, and the assessment vulnerable to bias and self-serving oversimplification at every point.

Instead, we bottom-line things politically, and make political adjustments. At this moment, we appear to be turning the dial several notches to the left, while some take advantage of the luxuries of peacetime to indulge in one kind of moral posturing, and to reject a different kind (in many instances the same people now striking the former posture were straining their backs to adopt the other a few short years ago). A few bumps in the road, and the dial will be turned back right on this issue – first quietly, if the bump’s not too shocking, then dramatically if “the bumped” get angry enough.

Prior to the surge, multinational forces operated under another assumption about the “causes” of the insurgency and insurgency recruitment – that the very presence of US troops incited hostility and that handing over authority to Iraqis as quickly as possible was more important than establishing security. That turned out to be a simplistic abstraction that looked good on paper and sounded good in anti-war agitprop, b8ut arguably did a lot more harm than good.

one could argue that it took the iraqis four years of horror to realize that the US is a lesser evil. this realization may also have been delayed by gitmo and abu ghraib.

btw, here’s your EIT-abu ghraib connection:

“We didn’t kill them… We just did what we were told to soften them up for interrogation, and we were told to do anything short of killing them.” – Lynndie England, scapegoat.

Read my lips, Geek.
Torture is the same as slavery.
The negation of free will.

Yeah, so’s a 55 MPH speed limit. So are silk handkerchiefs affixing ankles and wrists to bedposts. So’s the UCMJ.

We signed a treaty defining torture.
Then we changed the definition.

Game over.

We signed a treaty pretending to define torture. Inevitably, under pressure we sought refuge in ambiguity, relativism, and legalism – and we’ve hardly even begun to test the bounds of the last.

You’re not in the position to declare any game over.

Yet once again you fully conflate detainee treatment, in particular Abu Ghraib, with interrogation.

as far as the insurgents/foreign fighters are concerned, there’s little distinction between the two. so i’m not differentiating here either. as you can see, the rest of my questions focus on interrogation methods.

We signed a treaty defining torture.
Then we changed the definition.

Game over.

strangelet on April 24, 2009 at 8:08 PM

You’re ok messing with the brain and not the body? Dude. But you’re all bent out of shape BECAUSE OF THE INSTITUTIONALIZATION? Bizarre.

I’m sorry, but it’s just weird. I really can’t detect the underlying principles beyond assigning some sort of totemic power to the term “torture.” Treaties aside, it’s just weird.

how can you say that? the widespread moral objection to the barbarism of dresden and hiroshima ensures that they will not happen again, inshallah. as a result of this objection, we now have laser guided bombs and the like, which enable governments to wage extended war in the age of real time war coverage. no civilized government is considering firebombing cities anymore.

I don’t know if you’re joking or have a childish belief that precision-guided munitions have solved the “collateral damage” problem.

your suggestion that we sympathize with terrorists is deeply offensive.

So you say when not posing as the high holy humanist. I think you identify in your imagination with the terrorist suspect undergoing harsh interrogation – not quite the same thing as “sympathizing with the terrorists” – while removing from your calculation everything outside the immediate scene.

I can answer most of your questions at once: There is absolutely nothing that you, strangelet, Andrew Sullivan, or Barack Obama has proposed that prevents the various problems of volunteers, officials acting in bad faith, and so on. All that you do is set up some obstacles whose main effect over time will be to ease your consciences. In the short term, you will encourage renditions, battlefield executions, voluntarism, overcaution, and so on. Over longer spans, you will set up ad hoc overreactions that will either be hidden under secret findings and plausible deniability, or will sweep away the would-be guardians of our narrowly defined moral purity.

As to the details of any legal regime and desirable levels and methods of oversight, no system – whether designed by Glenn Greenwald, Alan Dershowitz, you, or me – is going to be foolproof, or can overcome a presumption of bad faith on the part of principle participants.

what is your position on the allegedly significant number of insurgent/AQI fighters who were driven to fight the US by our widely-publicized treatment of our prisoners? would you venture a guess how this affected US casualties and the our overall success in iraq and af-pak?

Yet once again you fully conflate detainee treatment, in particular Abu Ghraib, with interrogation. We don’t know what would have happened if we waterboarded – if we eye-gouged, dismembered, and flayed – KSM, but handled Abu Ghraib like Club Med.

I certainly accept as credible the beliefs of Petraeus and his people that civilian protection and respect of rights was critical to an effective counterinsurgency campaign. Dicretly combatting terrorist plots already under way or being planned is something else altogether.

Prior to the surge, multinational forces operated under another assumption about the “causes” of the insurgency and insurgency recruitment – that the very presence of US troops incited hostility and that handing over authority to Iraqis as quickly as possible was more important than establishing security. That turned out to be a simplistic abstraction that looked good on paper and sounded good in anti-war agitprop, b8ut arguably did a lot more harm than good.

A policy that aims to be both as effective and as humane as possible – humane both to the “evildoers” and to their actual and potential victims – would be better than a policy that emphasizes one while merely hoping that the other takes care of itself.

And I would not…I understand your utlilitarian pragmatism…one torture for many lives….but I’m Alyosha.
I would not take one slave, not waterboard one terrorist, not torture one child.
I could not.

The scene of distant bombardiers dropping highly but imperfectly accurate bombs on distant enemies and unfortunate bystanders in distant lands for half-forgotten, but connected reasons seem hardly to register as a moral issue compared to the dramatic identification with a man whose faced is plunged over and over in water, inducing feelings of panic, fear, and shame, but little or no serious damage to him.

how can you say that? the widespread moral objection to the barbarism of dresden and hiroshima ensures that they will not happen again, inshallah. as a result of this objection, we now have laser guided bombs and the like, which enable governments to wage extended war in the age of real time war coverage. no civilized government is considering firebombing cities anymore.

Being able to sympathize with KSM and AZ, but not their their direct and indirect victims, or with the people tasked with protecting their victims, does not represent some noble moral exercise. It’s a primitive, highly selective version of morality,

your frequent lapses into wingnut talk discredit your sincerity. your suggestion that we sympathize with terrorists is deeply offensive. we believe that by upholding our standards, we are in fact protecting America’s security in the long-term.

let me throw a few questions at you that may help us better understand each other’s position:

what is your position on the allegedly significant number of insurgent/AQI fighters who were driven to fight the US by our widely-publicized treatment of our prisoners? would you venture a guess how this affected US casualties and the our overall success in iraq and af-pak?

if we implemented the rather permissive interrogation policy you recommend for so-called high value prisoners, what measures would you take to protect the innocent? how do we ensure that interrogators don’t look for information based on false assumptions (particularly in light of our notoriously error-prone intelligence services)?

how do you avoid an appalling scenario, where gov’t officials push for information that would serve their political interests or justify their actions (e.g. we know saddam and osama were good pals, and we know this guy has the details)?

isn’t it wrong to apply techniques that “shock the conscience” of many, to seek information that we’re not sure it exists at all?

does your recommended policy address the possible personal motivations of interrogators, including an inflated sense of self-importance (as in “the future of humanity is in my hands” – maybe so, maybe not) or righteous vengeance (”the guy deserves this anyway“)?

would you use techniques that “shock the conscience” of many with the aim of gathering data not directly related to an impending, major attack, but is considered to be “potentially useful”?

is a system possible that can reliably match the value of information we seek to extract to the severity of interrogation techniques we use for that purpose? in our culture, isn’t such a system a prerequisite to even considering the use of techniques that “shock the conscience” of many?

The scene of interrogation, the elements and the experience of “enhanced” techniques, loom very large when put under very close scrutiny. It’s a familiar act of selective perception: One chooses to enjoy one’s outrage over the vividly imagined violation of KSM, because the people whose murders and maimings he organized have faded into the past and the realm of statistics, and the people whom he intended to have killed and maimed are walking around whole and free. The scene of distant bombardiers dropping highly but imperfectly accurate bombs on distant enemies and unfortunate bystanders in distant lands for half-forgotten, but connected reasons seem hardly to register as a moral issue compared to the dramatic identification with a man whose faced is plunged over and over in water, inducing feelings of panic, fear, and shame, but little or no serious damage to him.

Being able to sympathize with KSM and AZ, but not their their direct and indirect victims, or with the people tasked with protecting their victims, does not represent some noble moral exercise. It’s a primitive, highly selective version of morality, one sub-level of abstraction higher than the same psychological mechanism that enables, one might even say compels, a citizen to favor the lives of friends and family over the lives of unknown strangers. A policy based on a fantastical promise to privilege the health, comfort, and sensibilities of mass murderers over those of the citizens a government is sworn to protect, and of the innocents it will someday be forced to destroy, may make a portion of the populace feel better about themselves and their government, for a while. Their marvelously if narrowly upraised self-consciousness over the banished scene of rough interrogation won’t survive the scenes of atrocity that will follow.

larison answers manzi:

One of the things that has kept me from saying much over the last week or so is my sheer amazement that there are people who seriously pose such questions and expect to be answered with something other than expressions of bafflement and moral horror. … I have started doubting whether people who are openly pro-torture or engaged in the sophistry of Manzi’s post are part of the same moral universe as I am, and I have wondered whether there is even a point in contesting such torture apologia as if they were reasonable arguments deserving of real consideration.