Thursday, January 29, 2009

The moral dimension of torture

Let's assume we are talking about a coercive method that undeniably is torture—say breaking fingers. Let's also say the interrogator has been entrusted with the well-being of a community. And finally, let's say we are certain a captive is culpable in a plot to bomb a city, he knows when and where the imminent bombing is to take place, and he won't tell interrogator. If the interrogator begins breaking his fingers, he will almost certainly give up the information and lives will be saved.

If I am understanding you correctly, you're saying: If it's torture, it's torture, and it can't be justified, period. But what about the interrogator's moral obligation to the people he has been entrusted with protecting? If he does nothing, hasn't he violated that obligation? Can he be justified in that dereliction because acting would cause him to torture? If so, why does the morality run only in one direction—how is it that refraining from inflicting excruciating but non-lethal pain on a culpable terrorist is the more moral choice than refraining from doing what is in one's power to save the innocent people one has sworn to protect?

One pipsqueak who seems to advocate exactly that position has asked me, "How would you feel if you were the one being 'interrogated' in this fashion?"  

Well, I wouldn't like it, but then the police can treat me in any number of ways, perfectly legally, that I wouldn't like, even without a trial and conviction.  And of course, after a conviction, the penal system can do a great deal to prisoners, perfectly legally.

Putting someone in a cage, in isolation, for 23 hours a day would be a violation of human dignity if it were done to an innocent person. Yet we do it systematically to the worst criminal violators. Subjecting someone to a cavity search is a violation of human dignity, yet it is routinely done in various security contexts—especially when especially dangerous prisoners are transported from place to place. We draw these contextual distinctions all the time. We put people to death by lethal injection; we don't draw-and-quarter them. Surely it cannot be that these limitations and restraints make no moral difference, can it?

And indeed, a prisoner who objects to any of these procedures can be forced to endure them, using whatever tactics (including "pain compliance" -- another term for "torture") may be required. 

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