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Torture and Civilization
Christopher Orr weighs in with a utilitarian argument about why torture is bad:
When a group of combatants are badly outnumbered, or surrounded, or otherwise very, very unlikely to win a conflict, they have a considerable incentive to surrender —
but only if they believe they will subsequently be treated with mercy. That is why individuals, and nations, surrender. The humane treatment of surrendered captives, therefore, is a crucial — arguably the crucial — understanding between adversaries if their conflict is to end in any way other than with the wholesale slaughter of the losers.
If arguments like this persuade anyone, I'm all for them. Any port in a storm. But ultimately these exercises in logic chopping never work. Is torture OK against an enemy that refuses to give up? Is torture OK in a non-combat setting? Is torture OK if you somehow convince yourself that it will save the lives of your enemy in the long run by ending the war sooner? In the end, you can always chop the logic a little bit finer if you're minded to. It just doesn't work.
I don't have either the vocabulary or the literary sensibility to explain with any eloquence why I oppose torture, so I usually stay out of conversations like this. Besides, they depress the hell out of me. But for the record, it goes something like this.
I don't care about the Geneva Conventions or U.S. law. I don't care about the difference between torture and "harsh treatment." I don't care about the difference between uniformed combatants and terrorists. I don't care whether it "works." I oppose torture regardless of the current state of the law; I oppose even moderate abuse of helpless detainees; I oppose abuse of criminal suspects and religious heretics as much as I oppose it during wartime; and I oppose it even if it produces useful information.
The whole point of civilization is as much moral advancement as it is physical and technological advancement. But that moral progress comes slowly and very, very tenuously. In the United States alone, it took centuries to decide that slavery was evil, that children shouldn't be allowed to work 12-hour days on power looms, and that police shouldn't be allowed to beat confessions out of suspects.
On other things there's no consensus yet. Like it or not, we still make war, and so does the rest of the world. But at least until recently, there was a consensus that torture is wrong. Full stop. It was the practice of tyrants and barbarians. But like all moral progress, the consensus on torture is tenuous, and the only way to hold on to it — the only way to expand it — is by insisting absolutely and without exception that we not allow ourselves to backslide. Human nature being what it is — savage, vengeful, and tribal — the temptations are just too great. Small exceptions will inevitably grow into big ones, big ones into routine ones, and the progress of centuries is undone in an eyeblink.
Somebody else could explain this better than me. But the consensus against torture is one of our civilization's few unqualified moral advances, and it's a consensus won only after centuries of horror and brutality. We just can't lose it.
War is instinctive
-- Kirk in 'A Taste Of Armageddon'
Unfortunately an examination of neo-con thought reveals that they are perfectly happy with "the wholesale slaughter of the losers."
Of course the Neo-cons didn't mind mistreatment of losers ....
...... as long as the Neo-cons are not the "losers." Look what's going on in Washington now. The "losers" have suddenly decided civility really isn't so bad after all.
When it comes down to it,
When it comes down to it, there's a fight in is this country over civilization.
Some of us believe in science, analytical thought, personal freedoms, rule of law and a common morality that does not discriminate against those who are outside our group. We don't like violence, even if we believe that war is sometimes necessary.
Our opponents who don't believe in these things are basically barbarians. They hate science, love fundamentalist religon, disdain the rule of law and see no problem with changing standards of morality for those seen as others -- whether it's torturing Muslims or denying marriage to gay couples. They actually like war, and don't like diplomacy. There are a lot of these people.
awfully simplistic
So at the bottom of everything it's the moral athiest versus the amoral theist? I find this a silly argument.
Correct
I agree entirely with this, and I think that a lot of people (and especially a lot of influential elites) didn't and don't understand just how fragile progress can be. A lot of people became complacent and just assumed that we Americans would never descend so low, and the response from many elites--denying that waterboarding is torture, insisting that we "keep walking"--indicates an awareness that what happened is wrong, as well as an intense desire to avoid introspection and continue their states of denial.
The truth is that the institutions we constructed to stop this sort of thing betrayed us, but that was inevitable, as those institutions were created by people who were definitionally imperfect, and thus their systems are imperfect. The founding fathers were a little cagier than people might realize, but they weren't perfect. The only way to keep civilization going is for people to believe in its goals.
What we can each do
“True human goodness, in all its purity and freedom, can come to fore only when its recipient has no power.
“Humanity’s true moral test, its fundamental test (which lies deeply buried from view), consists of its attitude towards those who are at its mercy: animals.
“And in this respect humankind has suffered a fundamental debacle, a debacle so fundamental that all others stem from it.”
Milan Kundera, The Unbearable Lightness of Being, 1984
Bravo, Kevin
You said it as well as it could ever be said.
Well put. I wish more
Well put. I wish more people on the left would make these kinds of arguments, which basically amount to "it's wrong". Instead of trying to argue, "it's profitable to do what's right," which only works when it happens to be profitable to do what's right.
Well said
But who can argue against the odd witch burning....
Sorry, I couldn't resist. It's not actually funny.
But what about enforcing the law?
"moral progress comes slowly and very, very tenuously"
Especially when good people like Kevin Drum don't demand vigorous prosecutions under existing laws against torture.
Or Who Fail To See
tagged as:- result
where the War Train is headed until it's too late to stop it.
torture
no one else could put it more simply and elegantly than you did.
credit where credit is due
The enemy we fight has no respect for human life or human rights. They don't deserve our sympathy. But this isn't about who they are. This is about who we are. These are the values that distinguish us from our enemies, and we can never, never allow our enemies to take those values away.
-- John McCain (or, rather, the 2005 version of John McCain)
I dunno about how much
I dunno about how much consensus there was about not torturing. I actually don't believe there was really all that much consensus at all (unlike with slavery and child labour laws). I think torture is still a work in progress..
Bravo
Not bad for a fellow claiming to lack eloquence. Torture is always wrong, there is no excuse, justification or parsing it.
We are a nation of torturers.
We lost it long ago, Kevin. We’ve gone through two presidential election cycles during which the Democratic Party’s candidate was unwilling to bring up the torture issue and condemn it without equivocation. As far as I’m aware, we are the only nation in modern history to publicly justify and even applaud torturing our captives. Yes, others have done far worse things, but it was always kept hidden because it was something which even the Nazis were ashamed of doing and for which they knew they would be reviled by the civilized world. Only America has sought to publicly justify what the whole world has considered for centuries to be torture.
Think about it. Did anyone ever imagine that we’d being having a debate about whether we should torture captives; what different kinds of torture should be permitted; whether judges should issue “torture warrants” ? You can’t pick up a major newspaper (today’s NY Times, for example) without reading an apologia for torture. Listen to television or radio and you’ll hear important, highly regarded people singing the praises of practices favored by the Gestapo, the NKVD and the Spanish Inquisition. One of our most popular television shows, “24”, openly advocates for torture and indeed the “hero” of the show is a man who regularly uses torture to protect our country.
Those who condemn torture are publicly ridiculed as naive or “anti-American”. In America there is no consensus against torture. We believe in it. We revel in it. We are a nation of torturers.
Mitch Guthman
torture is taught at the US military's School of the Americas
Americans still fly POW/MIA flags from the Vietnam Occupation because of the perceived poor treatment captured Americans received from the North Vietnamese. The Russian Front during WW II is still the standard for fighting until death because the harsh treatment of German POW's by the Soviets was so well known. There is nothing new about torture and harsh treatment of prisoners except exceptional Americans have engaged in its practice as a national policy and refuse to acknowledge its illegality. However, American civilization is not devolving, but exposing itself for what it has always done to Native Americans, Filipinos, Vietnamese, etc. Torture and harsh treatment are also taught at the US military's School of the Americas (Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation), for the benefit of client Latin American right wing dictators and their US corporate bosses. Torture has enriched America's wealthy, so it will continue to be used.
Boronx
There is an army camp outside my home town that has an large and beautiful American flag mosaic near the entrance. The story is that an Italian soldier was imprisoned there during World War 2 and felt so much gratitude towards Americans for how well he was treated that he laid that mosaic by single handed.
"Somebody else could explain this better than me."
No, your explanation was perfect. There are many logical and legal arguments against torture, but in the end... its about who WE are, not about any other environmental factor.
Who We Are?
Who we are isn't really Drum's argument here. Instead, he's reminding us that we have a responsibility to join in the march of civilization and to contribute to its progress and to defend its gains.
This is a responsibility we owe to our contemporaries and to our progeny. But it is a responsibility more dearly paid to the generations that came before us, to those who hoped that WE might be the ones who thrive in the Utopia they hoped they were building. But it isn't us, and we can't yet redeem that hope. Not in full. We can, however, redeem a piece of it by continuing the project.
So it's not about who we are. It's about who we want to become.
That soars, Mr. Drum. The
That soars, Mr. Drum. The only thing you got wrong was saying you don't have literary chops. the pen and pen-penultimate paragraphs say all that needs be said. Lincoln was wrong too when he said few would remember what he said that day, so you smart guys do make mistakes! Seriously, those two paragraphs deserve to be embroidered and framed. On very rare days here in the blogosphere the smog of politics lifts and a small but precious ray of noble truth shines through.
We were more moral then.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biscari_massacre
"General Omar Bradley was informed of the massacre, and in turn informed General Patton that roughly 50 to 70 prisoners had been murdered in cold blood. Patton noted his response in his diary.
I told Bradley that it was probably an exaggeration, but in any case to tell the officer to certify that the dead men were snipers or had attempted to escape or something, as it would make a stink in the press and also would make the civilians mad. Anyhow, they are dead, so nothing can be done about it."
I agree with several of the
I agree with several of the commenters. For a piddly ol' routine blog posting, it's a tour de force, Kevin.
Very, very well said Kevin.
Very, very well said Kevin. Thank you.
Kevin, nicely said I have to
Kevin, nicely said I have to say. That is just my humble opinion. Mike at equipment operator jobs guide site.
Individuals may get wiser, but the society gets dumber
Time was when we were the good guys, the Norman Rockwell, 5 Freedoms people...you did the commie scare in James Bond by showing that they tortured....tho I guess, even then it was going on in the CIA.
Now a bright young right wing guy here at work weasels semantics about torture.
Oh well...even Jefferson said, "When I considcer that God is just, I fear for my people". So maybe this moral stone deafness isn't new.
My wife said to me the other day, "You know, you're an idealist".
Rule of Law
It took two centuries for the US to establish itself as a moral nation, based upon rule of law, fairness and democray. It tooks only moments to bring it all down crashing around us.
We must prosecute. We must uphold the rule of law, or other nations will see to it that we no longer stand among equals.
INVESTIGATE. PROSECUTE. PUNISH.
You left out a step:
You left out a step: CONVICT. When I advocate a position other than "prosecute yesterday," I do so because I lack confidence that a jury of our peers can be relied on to convict, based upon what I know now. I think I would vote to convict, but that is not the point. And a not-guilty verdict would be consequential. The law is not so black and white as it appears in the heat of discovery, or on the page. Prosecutorial discretion is not just an excuse for letting people go. It is a process. I have more confidence in eventual justice than I do in swift justice. Frustrating? Yes.
It is also as bedrock a principle as what Drum said about torture, above.
Why is there even an
Why is there even an argument over what kinds of torture are "legal?" There's a self-defense exception to murder, but we don't make murder legal because of it. Those who kill in self-defense are tried for murder. Those who torture should be tried for torture. If they can prove self-defense in court (that they saved real specific lives from real specific criminals who were apprehended through torture with no other alternative), then it's up to a jury of their peers to acquit them. But torture, the deliberate inflicting of suffering on a helpless victim, can never be made legal in a civilized society under the rule of law. Are we really blowing up thousands of years of legal and moral evolution -- because a Justice Department lawyer wrote a memo? In that case, we don't need to fear the Taliban. They're already here.
test
test
I disagree - you are quite
I disagree - you are quite eloquent.
Torture
Anna Fowler - The methods of torture used by the employees of Blackwater are against Christian beliefs. Erik Prince, a hidden multimillionaire and an acclaimed "Born again Christian" is the proprietor of this company. Cheney awarded this contract to Prince and if thoroughly investigated, will definitely prove war crimes were committed and I firmly believe not only those who participated in the degradation, humiliation, painful methods of torture, but Prince and Cheney should also be prosecuted for these evil and inhumane crimes.
"But like all moral
"But like all moral progress, the consensus on torture is tenuous, and the only way to hold on to it — the only way to expand it — is by insisting absolutely and without exception that we not allow ourselves to backslide."
The laws against torture are institutional acknowledgments of and commitments to the consensus that torture is wrong. People like Kevin who oppose prosecution are backsliding.
Thanks for your views. I
Thanks for your views. I was so impressed. This is the first time I've ever been motivated to comment on any posting.
Unanimity.
Those who split hairs about what "works," even as they can only make this claim in a very narrow (and I would say relatively unimportant) sense of working (i.e., much more about it is counterproductive), are in essence agreeing with Mr. Drum here as they went through excruciating efforts to avoid changing the laws which made illegal what they claimed was essential and working. If they actually believed this, and though that their arguments were persuasive, changes in existing law would have seemed to be in order.
Unhinged
I think that your moral compass is correct, but your reasoning is completely wrong, and in fact illustrates why we have the problems with torture.
You declare, correctly, that torture is a moral issue, and that expediency and logic are not the proper measure of morals. But you then go on to argue that morals should be pinned to an equally worthless foundation -- some nebulous concept of "progress".
The only argument you seem to be able to make against slavery, torture, and other moral failings is that "we used to think it was OK, but then we stopped thinking it was OK". This is not only circular and wrong, it is horribly dangerous. Defining moral progress as simply that which does away with the past, is an extraordinarily poor foundation for morals. Such reasoning was used to justify eugenics, euthenasia, and all sorts of other nasty things.
Morals must be based on eternal foundational precepts, not current fashion. For example, "all men are created equal". Therefore, all moral "progress" should be considered instead to be moral "reformation".
Torture
God you people make me sick - you scream about our nation doing things you disagree with - things that were done in an honest effort to keep us safe - what pompous assholes you are.
Look at the world you live in - women in Pakistan can be punished for leaving home without their husbands permission - and are required to submit to sex on demand. They will be killed by their family if the date or marry outside their faith. And if they commit adultry they will be stoned.
The man that you all pity because he was waterboarded cut a a man's head off on video and was PROUD OF IT.
Thank God our military understands that we have a few folks like you to deal with - it is a price they have to pay. But they know that their is a real enemy out their - that will not only torture them - but kill them if they are captured. As Jack said in "A Few Good Men" - "You want me on that wall!"
Grow up - you have the luxury of even having this debate because a lot of good men had the courage to do what needed to be done when it needed to be done!
And when the next prisoner with valuable information is captured and it is determined we want this information these same good men will do what it takes to get it - thank God!.
No
I am on the tiniest possible computer, or I'd include links and better research, but:
I don't think it's as clear as you seem to think that he was the one who killed Daniel Pearl.
Other's bad behavior does not justify yours, except in narrowly proscribed situations.
Those on the wall should not be given free reign. Discipline is important, no?
soliloquy
Don't sell yourself short Kevin, that was a pretty impressive soliloquy, definitely had me humming along.
no
The only argument you seem to be able to make against slavery, torture, and other moral failings is that "we used to think it was OK, but then we stopped thinking it was OK".
Kevin shouldn't have to spell everything out in excruciating detail Joshua, especially as he claims he isn't and won't, it doesn't take much work if you examine our proud civil libertarian tradition and sensibility about civilization to see where the core of the objection to torture lies - human dignity, inalienable rights, due process, God's children, there are thickets of context to what he's saying, but perhaps you've grown up in a different tradition, culture or place, and if that's the case be a bit more cordial and generous in asking for further elaboration.
Yes
Jimm,
I think you're presuming too much about Kevin, and also too much about our "culture or place", although you are right about "tradition". He points out that morals become unhinged when we anchor to logic or expediency, but the only anchor he offers is "progress", which is the opposite of "tradition".
You may think that our "culture and place" still adheres to the same anchor for morals as we have in "tradition". But you would be wrong. In fact, in the name of "progress" we are afraid to even say it, and we have outlawed its teaching in schools. The anecdote about slavery is particularly telling; as if we anglo-saxons innovated that "progress" in the past 150 years -- nevermind the Haggadot that we have read to our children for 3500 years.
I am sorry, but I will not assume that someone is anchoring his morals in tradition when he explicitly states that he is anchoring them in progress. If he wants to clarify, that's fine. Until then, I will assume he meant exactly what he said.
Torture?
There is a moral order to the universe? You have to be kidding. What you call torture I call revenge, and it feels good. If you mess with me don't let me get my hands on you.
I'm always amazed at how
I'm always amazed at how little "it's just wrong" means in America.
Well said Sir
Kevin, well said, I couldn't agree more - it turns my stomach to see people defend torture
you might be a bit humble here...
Saying "torture is wrong" shouldn't take any great gift of words. That said, you do an admirable job here. The only thing I'd add is that it has taken the hard work of many many people advocating against barbaric practices like torture to get to our current state. It does their work and memories a sad disservice to throw their achievements aside so quickly. It is decidedly against the spirit of conservative thought to ignore the wisdom of our elders so.
Torture Consensus Continuum
Very well said Kevin. I always read your blog but have never been moved to comment.
The consensus the world community had achieved about torture was one I thought was a given. And I've been very disheartened to realize that I am living among so many people who have either not thought about the subject at all, or who refuse to acknowledge that of course it is wrong and evil *no matter the reason it is performed*. I keep saying "why is this even a question anymore?", the answer of course is that that human nature allows us a bottomless well of self-justification. The consensus about torture is a continuum, because different people (and countries and societies) mature at different rates. Being able to rationally consider torture and what it causes as a result is not something that all people are able or willing to do. It is not a fun topic to sit around thinking about, I'd much rather spend my time on something more pleasant. But, unfortunately my government made this choice, and used my tax dollars to create a program of torture carried out around the world. We've now become examples that Egypt and other countries use to support their continued use and acceptance of torture. The ripple effect is going to continue for years and will require something extraordinary to curtail it. I think that a cycle of full-on investigation, prosecution and conviction here in the US would go a long way to starting to put our toes back in the pool of morality that we still think we belong in.
Torture is bad -- but is it the worst?
Torture is bad. We should be ashamed when torture even begins to look like an attractive option; it means we've failed at many levels already and are staring into the abyss.
But is there anything -- anything whatsoever -- that's worse? Only one morally-wrong thing can be "the absolute worst"; if torture is it, that puts a lot of awful things (e.g., genocide, summary execution of innocents, selling an entire race into slavery) as being better than torture.
Saying something is morally wrong, extremely repugnant, and spiritually degrading (with which I agree) and advocating that it be expressly and absolutely forbidden (with which I don't agree) are two very different things.
I think you slightly
I think you slightly misunderstood the argument - that we should not treat captors inhumane, because this makes it more unlikely to surrender. This certainly is not ment to be an argument that torture is allright in circumstances not involving combat, it just emphasises the point that a prospect of torture will make surrender more unlikely, which will result in prolonged fighting and increased loss of live for both sides.
Sadly, I dont have a source, but this point has been sufficiently proven for example by a comparision of rates of surrender in World War II between east front (high probability of mistreatment) and west front (low probability of mistreatment).
Bravo, Kevin!
Bravo, Kevin!
Thank you for this true and eloquent statement.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/04/30/anti-torture-protesters-a_n_193886.html
Simply *saying* that torture is wrong is not enough.