More on Torture
Yesterday’s post on the subject hardly exhausted all the practical reasons against using torture on terror suspects (to cite but one omission, torturing a suspect will likely mean that he can never be brought to trial and forced to answer for what he has done). However, the post was, I think, sufficient to show that torture “does not work” and should not be used or condoned or winked at by the United States. Nevertheless, there is one other consideration which I would like to highlight, a consideration that, to use a mixed metaphor, tips the scales against the use of torture beyond all reasonable doubt. That consideration is this. The War on Terror is not only a battle fo bombs and bullets, it is a battle of ideas. By engaging in torture, by defending it, legitimizing it, codifying it in our law, we cede a portion of the moral high ground in that battle, which is worth more to us in practical terms than several Army divisions. Our use of torture makes people who are inclined to love this country love us less and those who are inclined to hate us hate us more. When we condemn human rights abuses in other countries our condemnation will have less credibility. When Europeans and Leftists attack American policy, those attacks will have more credibility. And when American solders fall into enemy hands, they will be more likely to be mistreated.
There are some people, who call themselves realists (though in my experience they can be quite naive) who scorn this sort of argument. According to these fellows the only thing that matters in the international arena is hard power. People will hate us, and liberals will preen, and bad men will do wicked deeds regardless of how we conduct ourselves. There is some truth in this, but as with many things said by these so-called realists, there is not enough. It is true that no matter what we do there will be people who hate us. What is not true is that no matter what we do there will be just as many. There are people who used to be flag waving patriots who now question the whole idea of the war on terror and speak grimly of a political state, largely because of the issue of torture. I know some of them. There are people struggling in foreign lands against tyrants who look to the United States as an example and ideal who have been despised and demoralized by our actions. And yes, strange as it may sound, there are people out there who hate us because of what we have done to their co-religionists. The idea that torture won’t breed resentment in a culture that nurses grievance for centuries is a bit baffling.
Bad men will do bad things and liberals will preen no matter what we do, but even bad men need to be able to appear good to a certain degree and some liberal attacks will have more resonance than others. History provides hundreds of examples of this. The Soviet invasion of Hungary The British left was demoralized after the Soviets invaded Hungary. It was rejuvenated when the British invaded Egypt. Amnesty International’s letter writing campaigns have helped free more than 40,000 political prisoners over the last 40 years, not because the dictators who received many of these letters suddenly had a change of heart and became saints, but because they didn’t want to look bad. Success in Iraq, to the extent that it’s even possible, can only come if the Iraqis don’t believe that we are a malevolent and imperial interloper in their affairs.
If moral symbolism doesn’t matter, then it should be no problem if we were to hang a Nazi flag in the Oval Office. If power rules in foreign affairs, then the fact that we displayed such a flag should have little to no effect on our ability to be effective internationally. I take it as obvious that the reality would be somewhat different.
Right or wrong, a great many people see legitimizing torture as the equivalent of flying a Nazi flag. It brings us down to the level of our enemies and seriously undercuts our ability to inspire high ideals in others. Such tactics could only be justified, if at all, if they produced some enormous military benefit to counter-balance these ills, and as I have tried to show, no such benefit exists. We ought, therefore, to oppose our government’s use of torture as if our very way of life depended on it, because in the end it might.
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You make a statement that “torture” doesn’t work. So you are calling our military stupid then. Tell me why people who are fighting for their lives would waste time torturing someone if it wasn’t going to work? And the questing still remains, what is considered torture and what isn’t. If you give a murderer coffee and cake they probably aren’t going to take you too seriously and will certainly not tell you anything. You have to find what matters to them and threaten it. Maybe that isn’t always physical torture, but you can’t just ask them questions in court and expect the truth. Have you ever been on a jury? The truth isn’t what matters there. It is all about lawyers playing games trying to win peoples “opinions”. They don’t care about the truth.
Dan,
Allegations of torture used as an interrogation technique generally involve the CIA, not the military. Most people who have extensive experience with interrogation (and the CIA, surprisingly enough, doesn’t have such experience) think that torture is stupid, so by your logic you are the one who is calling the military stupid, not me. It may seem obvious to you (who has no experience in such matters) that you won’t get a murderer to tell you anything by giving him coffee, but the actual history of interrogation shows that just the opposite is true. I would add (since you mention the courtroom), that I am a lawyer and that I’ve worked both for a judge and for a prosecutor’s office, so I know a thing or to about what goes on both inside and outside of a courtroom.
The only line of this I would slightly question would be the one about American soldiers who fall into enemy hands being less likely to be mistreated if we do not use torture.
Given that a certain hard core of “the other side” thinkings that sawing someone’s head off on TV is good entertainment, I’m not sure much can be done to assure that those folks would treat our soldiers better. HOWEVER, if we are known for treating people decently, a much smaller percentage of the population will be willing to cooperate with those hard core elements, so we will effectively have fewer enemies. To a great extent, that’s what we’ve seen over the last years in Iraq, where increasing percentages of the population have decided that the US is better to work with than AQI.
On Dan’s point above: We should always beware the temptation of doing what’s easiest to do rather than what works best. I think one of the prime attractions in regards to torture is that its easy to do, and it convinces you that you’re taking big measures. The problem is, the biggest measures that you can take most easily are not necessarily the ones that work best, or work at all.
I appreciate and agree with these reflections on torture. They spark two related responses in my mind.
First, if by “work” some mean torture can function to establish the likes of a civilization of love advocated by John Paul II, then no. Obviously.
Second, then, Christians should not participate in such endeavors.
These would be my theological extensions of your argument. Basic, but true, I think.
What I want to ask you, Blackadder, is this: who is the “we” you refer to over and over again, especially in the last paragraph? Is it the American we? Is it the Christian we? We (as Christians and Americans) exist in a time when we have to make that distinction plain over and over again. Sometimes those “we”s will not be mutually exclusive. However, I, myself, seek to be a responsible American citizen, yet one who submits his American identity to his Christian allegiances so as not to practice idolatry. Christians in America need to be encouraged to consciously do this more.
You give good grounds why “we” as Americans should reject torture. I agree. There are stronger theological grounds to make as well, which can serve to highlight how our American identity oft times serves to hold us captive to a false Lord.
Darwin,
You make a decent point. Remember, though, that the current war is (sadly) not going to be the last war we ever fight, and how we treat captives now could affect how our captives get treated in future conflicts.
I also think we (and by “we” I mean Americans) tend to underestimate the positive effects of treating prisoners humanely. In his book the Interrogators, Chris Mackey mentions how in Afghanistan, one suspect started talking once he realized the Army wasn’t going to torture him, because, as he put it “once he realized this was the worst the Americans were going to do, he decided it was time to reconsider which side he was on.”
Bret hits the nail on the head, as it were. While I of course agree with the essential points you make in this post, I cannot but wince at some of the unspoken propositions. Put bluntly, it flirts with an American exceptionalist argument, where the rest of the world looks to America as beacon of freedom. That was a myth long before Bush and Cheney came on the scene. Of course, America — as with any other country– should be a virtuous global citizen, and that is direct implication of Christianity in the public square. But there is nothing special about any single country.
Second, I take issue with the mis-use of the term “liberals” (hint: if you use it the way Rush Limbaugh uses it, you are probably using it wrongly).
Third, I have a problem with the term “war on terror”. But that’s in a separate post.
Morning’s Minion,
When I use the word liberal, I mean it in the sense this guy uses the term.
MM,
There may not be anything inherently special about the US, but what you term as “American exceptionalism” is not something which is only in the heads of Republican-voting white guys.
Actually, one of the most moving examples I encountered of the power of the American ideal in the minds of people around the world was an interview I read back when the Abu Graib (sp?) abuses were first revealed. A man who had been beaten and threatened with dogs by American soldiers while in Abu Graib was being interviewed about his experience. (Plus, he’d been arrested through a case of mistaken identity, and was later released with no charges.)
At the end of the pretty harrowing interview he was asked, “Given all that the US has done to you, is there anything you think the US could do to provide some restitution to you?”
He replied that what he wanted most was a green card so that he could go live in the United States. He said that was his great dream: that he could take his family to the US and become a US citizen.
Where I sit, the fact that what he wanted most, even after terribly unjust treatment by US soldiers, was to go live in the US and become a US citizen suggested that even after his experiences America represented something unique to him.
After all, MM, it can’t be that he was just looking for a good job and healthcare, since you’ve told us many times that productivity is just as high in France, and everyone loves the shorter work week and free health care…
Brett – Yes, I agree.
When we say “America is torturing prisoners” it is much more shocking and distressing than saying “Syria is torturing prisoners” precisely because America is exceptional.
MM — you’re not from America, and yet you’re here, right? How did that occur? Sleepwalked onto a ship?
“Precisely BECAUSE America is exceptional”? But the war on terror has been lost precisely because America fought the terrorists with their own weapons. Now it is no longer a war on terror but a war between your terror and my terror. I sometimes feel that there is something irremediably, systemically wrong with the US as such that is causing it to tilt inevitably toward its doom. Entrenched greed, violence and self-aggrandizing delusion — the three poisons of Buddhism — have caused the US to make suicidal decisions again and again. A top-heavy and selfish power of this magnitude cannot regain the world’s trust, and in fact it would be a tragedy if it did. You do not trust a raging beast.