Why Am I Having This Debate?
I am reading across the Internet that I am a torture apologist. That is inaccurate. Reading comprehension is not a prerequisite for the Internet. I doubt that anyone making that assertion can point to a statement of mine that supports the use of torture in real life. I am open to debating the issue, but I haven’t decided in my own mind that torture is appropriate in the real world, and so I don’t think I have said that anywhere. Feel free to correct me if you think you can find a statement of mine to the contrary.
I have said that I would support limited waterboarding of a known mass-murdering terrorist if it were 100% certain that it would prevent a terror attack. But, as many have noted (and as I knew when I posed the hypo), any such hypothetical is necessarily hypothetical, because it assumes the benefit of hindsight in advance.
Many will no doubt point to my hypotheticals as evidence that I support torture. I see myself as conducting a philosophical exercise that isolates certain variables to explore the basis for commenters’ objections to torture. I intend to continue my series of posts, but that doesn’t mean I support torture. Didn’t you folks take philosophy classes in college? Did you think that the philosophy professor advocated cannibalism or infanticide or the other topics he made you debate?
This is better than philosophy class because I get to learn from you. Many commenters have made excellent points, which I am going to consider as I think about this issue.
I have an interesting set of hypotheticals to pose to you later tonight or tomorrow, so stay tuned.
I would be interested in your response to this. Obviously I’m much more interested in discussing the factual stuff than hypotheticals, but if you’re uninterested in that I’d also be interested in the response to the hypotheticals.
Katherine (0a7665) — 11/15/2007 @ 6:49 pmQuestion: What is “limited” waterboarding?
Fake. But accurate. Remember?
chaos (9c54c6) — 11/15/2007 @ 6:58 pmIn a previous post, you indicated, “we also face the fact that coercive interrogations pose substantial obstacles to criminal prosecutions.”
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That issue can be resolved by dealing with coerced interrogees outside of the criminal justice system. See military commissions, which have relaxed rules regarding the admissibility of evidence obtained by coercion.
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While the question of admissibility in criminal courts is a substantial factor in considering use of a stern interrogation technique, it is by no means a show stopper, given the range of legal systems at our disposal and under our control.
cboldt (3d73dd) — 11/15/2007 @ 7:04 pmEh, don’t let ’em worry you. I look forward to more hypo’s.
joe (c0e4f8) — 11/15/2007 @ 7:06 pm(“Isolating certain variables” of course, is not an ideological neutral exercise, since the immorality & bad consequences of torture are related: it has such terrible results in part because it’s so immoral; it’s so immoral in part because it has such terrible results. Having the debate in terms of deck-stacking hypotheticals we’ve all heard 10,000 times before, and ignoring the far-less discussed factual evidence about the consequencs of U.S. torture policy is also not a neutral choice. So I find your “hey, this is just like philosophy 101” claims extremely disingenuous. Nevertheless, if it’s philosophy 101 arguments you want instead of a discussion of actual policices & actual consequences, by all means go ahead & answer the second half of the post instead of the first–it isn’t just snark, I have a serious point).
Katherine (0a7665) — 11/15/2007 @ 7:07 pmHere’s another point, grasshopper:
what if you were 99.99% sure that it would prevent a 9-11 (and it’s only waterboarding, etc.)? How about 90%? 1%? What if it was just to prevent a battery?
TCO (1c4d1b) — 11/15/2007 @ 7:14 pmIOW, what’s your threshold? How much life and limb? How much certitude? To make the tradeoff worth it?
TCO (1c4d1b) — 11/15/2007 @ 7:15 pmKatherine, as i read it part of the initial point was to get some specific commenters on his blog to get off their high horse and admit that, sometimes, the ends justify the means. Until that point is made it’s hard to have a conversation about trade offs and the least bad alternative.
I read some of the archive and some of the comments annoyed me in how badly they suffered from that flaw. Patterico seems a lot more invested in this than I am so I figure it’s been really obnoxious for him. That makes sense since it’s his blog.
Think of it as the mirror image of someone that refuses to admit that there will be trade offs with any policy. Or that they’ll do anything to stop a terror attack, no matter how terrible and immoral.
Letting thousands die because the person who can disarm the bomb has invoked a right to counsel seems as silly to me as wanting to torture at random and see who gives useful info.
I don’t know if we’re ever come up with a workable policy. But it’s good to discuss.
I think factual examples of how the government has broken the existing rules, and/or other mistakes will be invaluable in that part of the discussion.
I’m not sure if this is where he’s taking it, but as I said before, I’m finding it a good use of time.
But how can you have that discussion when one group is saying “any torture is wrong and you’re evil for considering it.” and the other is saying that questioning anything the government does proves that “you hate America and want the terrorists to win.”
It would be fun if towards the end patterico excluded from the conversation those who either refused to answer the questions or who’s answers were silly and beyond the pale.
joe (c0e4f8) — 11/15/2007 @ 7:28 pmOkay. So, if you read the first hypothetical in the linked post,should I mark you down for:
Katherine (0a7665) — 11/15/2007 @ 7:36 pm(a) “Dick Cheney’s cardiologist is morally justified in assassinating him & this shows how reasonable people can disagree about the morality of doctors murdering patients & those categorically opposed need to get off their high horse?”
(b) the ring goes to Gondor
(c) yes to all of O’Brien’s questions?
See, when you’re doing it at random, that’s when you need to start looking at what you’re doing.
But if its targeted and specific?
Well, I guess I don’t need to say it…
Scott Jacobs (a1de9d) — 11/15/2007 @ 7:46 pmLook, it’s Bill Mahre!!
Scott Jacobs (a1de9d) — 11/15/2007 @ 7:46 pmShorter Katherine:
I’d rather that millions of innocent Americans die horribly (like those who burned to death in the WTC or were crushed by the Towers’ collapse)in a terrorist attack than cause any lack of satisfaction in the life of a known terrorist.
Paul (ec9716) — 11/15/2007 @ 7:54 pmKatherine – As you describe in your linked piece, when you get around to providing backup for some of your claims, such as the U.S. torturing innocents and torture always spreading even if it is highly constrained, could you drop the links over here please?
Thanks
daleyrocks (906622) — 11/15/2007 @ 8:09 pmKatherine,
I’ll answer your hypos. (Little wink to the usual commenters.)
1) It’s shocking that we are even having a debate about whether to assassinate the Vice-President. But that’s what you get when you debate with moonbats — they are assassination apologists, because they all secretly want to assassinate Bush and Cheney.
2) Your hypothetical is stupid because the answer is so obviously designed to elicit a “yes” answer to assassination.
3) Also, the answer to the hypo is “no.” Assassination is always wrong. Again, why are we even having this debate? How have we gotten to the point where we are even talking about this. You disgust me.
4) Why do you have to choose such an unlikely hypothetical?
5) Let me ask you a hypothetical in response . . .
6) I hope you die in a fire. Also, what do you do for a living? I find it creepy that a [whatever you do] would be talking about assassination. God, I need a drink.
7) The next time you ask this, can I kick you in the nuts? It’s a hypothetical.
8) The fact that we are even having a debate about assassination really says something about the left. Yes, I know I said that, but it bears repeating. It bears repeating.
I hope that answers your question.
Patterico (bad89b) — 11/15/2007 @ 9:06 pmHeh. The number 8 next to a close parenthetical makes a little guy with sunglasses. Lookee there.
Patterico (bad89b) — 11/15/2007 @ 9:07 pmAnd for the first time ever I think Patterico is old.
chaos (9c54c6) — 11/15/2007 @ 9:09 pm? How come?
Patterico (bad89b) — 11/15/2007 @ 9:11 pmCause of this little guy? 8)
Patterico (bad89b) — 11/15/2007 @ 9:11 pmPatterico: “This is better than philosophy class because I get to learn from you.”
And vice versa.
Patterico: “Many commenters have made excellent points, which I am going to consider as I think about this issue.”
I’ll try to make two more.
1. We ought not to have in our armed services men and women who have done things in the service of their country that would really shock the consciences of sensible, fair-minded neighbors if those neighbors fully understood what the veterans have done. There shouldn’t be pariahs in hiding who were placed outside the bounds of decency (secretly or not) by what the did on service.
As far as possible, the nation should be united, especially in war. I don’t want anybody who is supposed to be still “us” to have done abhorrent things, to be “untouchable” as a result of duty.
Torture, or stuff that looks like torture in the light of common sense (regardless of legalities and terms of art) is naturally repulsive. Unfair people may be invincibly hostile to the realities of combat and those who’ve engaged in it, and that can be discounted, but even fair-minded, sober people have qualms about torture and torturers.
Since government mandated torture is inconsistent with healthy ideals of cultural solidarity, we shouldn’t have anyone like that in our national armed forces, or really in our contractor or mercenary forces either.
(However, rendition meets this argument. I don’t care what happens to jihadists. They are our blood enemies, and every woe should fall on them. I only care that none of us are soiled by having done vile things. So if people who are all our enemies in one way or another are eager for their own reasons to do bad things to each other and we can get copies of the reports, fine.)
2. Assuming we torture as policy, twenty years down the track, what sort of people will be in charge of that?
In every profession, there are official rewards, and unofficial satisfactions that come with the job. If you want to shed human blood and be a respected and good person, be a surgeon. If you like the position of power that nurses can have over patients, and you still want to be a good, nurturing person (that is, you will not abuse that power), why not be a nurse?
There is nothing wrong with this. For everybody’s good, the work has to get done, and not by people who are too distressed by wielding a scalpel to build up experience in the job.
Currently, you’ve got people using coercive interrogation techniques who a few years ago never would have expected that they would be doing that. The doctrine changed, and willy-nilly what they did changed.
That’s a pretty good situation, but it can’t last.
The history of church inquiries in Europe strongly suggests to me that in time, and likely not very much time, you will find people gravitating to the places where some people have authority to do cruel things to others, or to direct cruelty as a matter of policy, looking for the unofficial satisfactions that go with that. And I don’t think there is anything you can really do to stop that.
I think the kind of people that will inevitably find their way into this work, and authority over it, will be the kind that would get a kick out of extorting a confession out of some poor mook by threatening member of his family with rape and torture in Egypt. They would see nothing wrong with that except the legal risk, which they’ll try to reduce.
To build up a class of people who will tell you whether torture is effective and good, and who have a painfully obvious undeclared interest in always saying they could do better if their hands were freed a little more – this is a bad thing.
It feeds into cultural change, which is part of my “slippery slope” argument.
When you agree to do debatable things today, you are not settling the issue there. You are setting up another debate later.
If there is one thing the course of the pro-life / pro-choice struggle in my lifetime has taught me, it’s that once you establish practices like abortion, euthanasia, selective infanticide for the handicapped and so on, and once there are people who terrible things for a living, in effect, there’s never any end to it. There’s always the next logical extension, and the next and the next and the next. You wind up stuck in perpetual series of defensive struggles over truly awful stuff that ten or twenty years ago people hotly denied could be a consequence of the “reforms” that were being pressed then. Once people would have said you were slandering them if you said this could lead to infanticide, then a decade or two later they’re pressing for legal infanticide, with arguments including “everybody does it anyway”.
I’m afraid that torture might turn out to be that kind of debate. Logically, it shouldn’t be nearly that bad, because torture isn’t going to be the kind of influential big business abortion is. But European history tells me that this is the sort of thing that can grow and get uglier than would have seemed likely when a policy and an institution of coercive interrogations got started.
David Blue (d0ac59) — 11/15/2007 @ 9:13 pmLet me try. 8)
And Patterico isn’t old. He’s hip.
Wait a minute, saying he’s hip makes me old.
DRJ (9578af) — 11/15/2007 @ 9:16 pmDRJ is old?
Since when did 24 become old?
Scott Jacobs (a1de9d) — 11/15/2007 @ 9:19 pmI’m old. Patterico is at the best age for a man. I’m still looking forward to the post about the Harley, sports convertible and/or skydiving, though. ;)8
nk (09a321) — 11/15/2007 @ 9:21 pmThat’s cute, but I actually answered your hypothetical & you haven’t answered a single one of mine.
Katherine (0a7665) — 11/15/2007 @ 9:26 pmKatherine – In a July 9, 2004 post you wrote:
“I don’t know how many prisoners have been tortured, but it’s almost certainly fewer than the 3000 innocents bin Laden has murdered, let alone the 4 million more of us he has promised to murder. Yes, it is better to hurt people in an attempt at self defense or democracy building, however misguided, than to kill them for the sake of killing them.”
Has your opinion changed?
daleyrocks (906622) — 11/15/2007 @ 9:27 pm(unless a single one of those was your real answer, in which case please indicate which.)
Katherine (0a7665) — 11/15/2007 @ 9:31 pmI know, Katherine, it’s unfair to you. Just sharing some of my frustration.
For what it’s worth, I love the posts you have done and while I wasn’t previously acquainted with your stuff, I may have to start reading it.
I just have to stay away from the comments.
I have more hypotheticals coming tomorrow, by the way, and I think you might find them interesting.
If I get time, let me look at yours.
Patterico (bad89b) — 11/15/2007 @ 9:36 pmThe thing I found most interesting about the various comments to your posts is that so few people are willing to debate honestly. Obviously few of those commenting have ever participated in debate. Their inability to stay within the framework tells us much about the way they think, none of which I consider good. I am left wondering if it is possible to hold a debate on any subject in which many people will respond only with emotion instead of logic.
On the plus side, it showed me why it is imposable to have friendly arguments or debates with some people. They appear to be incapable of thinking in the abstract and have to relate to everything personally. Some of the comments also show that the writer considers him/herself so morally superior that any other opinion on the subject simply has to be wrong and not worth addressing or responding to.
Fritz (575bc0) — 11/15/2007 @ 10:44 pmBlue:
I hate to think any nation would have a military that had to meet the expectations of everyone in a nation. Last time I looked Qualers are still opposed to war and the more extreme among them would rather have had the Nazis triumph than to fight them. So when our soldiers have to meet the expectations of everybody we are in trouble.
Just think of police having to meet the expectations of rapists, child ,molesters and ACLU members. Your comment displays a moral dyslexia that is amazing.
It is the mentality that has no qualms about dropping a hundred nuclear warheads on a nation but objects to a sniper taking out a hostile political leader and thereby saving hundreds of millions of lives. Pathetic.
Do we not violate these people’s privacy by questioning them? Dowe not violate their rights by questioning them without a lawyer bveing present. The answer is no. These people have placed themselves at odds with the laws of mankind. One only need ask how would an American terrorist be treated anywhere in the Middle East? And that is the point, as a terrorist he has no rights. People who insist on classifying them as criminals have all ready defined them,selves and their mindset. They are incapable of objective thought or reason because they can grasp or deal with reality.
Thomas Jackson (bf83e0) — 11/15/2007 @ 10:52 pmKatherine –
a) Not justified in murdering the VP based on the doctor’s beliefs, and your BDS.
b) I never saw LOTR, so I could not follow that scenario. I am scared of midgets and dwarves, so I would waterboard them first.
c) If it takes that long, and that many caveats to type up a hypothetical, it is easier to just come right out and make your point.
Good Allah, Patterico, you sure have the Leftists frothing over the mere idea of discussing these issues. You see, it is settled debate for them, received wisdom if you will, that we torture. Not out of necessity. But to satisfy our bloodlust from hurting the brown people.
JD (33beff) — 11/15/2007 @ 11:44 pmI think people in the military or other security services should be seen as neighbors first and warriors second.
If you accept the model that says they’re something like a foreign legion, separate from the people though ultimately paid by the people, I think it’s a grave error. And I think it’s a graver error if you accept the idea that to some extent your warriors are untouchables our outcasts who do things that decent people wouldn’t do. I think that kind of division weakens and endangers us.
So yes, the armed forces should try to comply with the common moral sentiments of decent, ordinary people, according to which torture is icky to say the least.
If the culture of the nation is becoming so diverse that there are not enough generally accepted moral assumptions and sentiments to, that’s a big problem. But the solution would lie in measures to promote a patriotic common culture: education with a melting pot and not a salad bar in mind, limitations in immigration and illegal settlement and so on.
The moral connection between the people and the army has to be made strong, which means it must first be made possible on both sides.
David Blue (72f7b5) — 11/16/2007 @ 4:57 amThe Thunder Run has linked to this post in the – Web Reconnaissance for 11/16/2007 A short recon of what’s out there that might draw your attention, updated throughout the day…so check back often.
David M (447675) — 11/16/2007 @ 9:54 amFor what it’s worth, Michael Yon opposes waterboarding as torture. He does so, in part, because he has seen how the moral difference between ourselves and al Qaeda has turned many Iraqis to our side. He believes that keeping that difference clear and sharp is both moral and to our ultimate advantage in terms of hearts and minds.
Yon believes that the pictures from Abu Graib cost us a great deal in terms of public trust in Iraq. Therefore, even approaching things from a purely practical perspective (rather than a moral one), if pictures of waterboarding or other torture were to surface, they would do damage to our ability to work with partners abroad.
Yon has a lot of credibility, and he certainly makes a powerful argument.
Nathan Wagner (5d1721) — 11/16/2007 @ 3:12 pm