How to make, and how not to make, the case against torture.

[Donald Ian Rankin]

I think that two of the most commonly-advanced arguments against legalising torture are heavily flawed, and that the most important argument against it is seldom put forwards.

Flawed (I think) argument 1: Torture does not work.

There are two big problems with this line of reasoning. The first, and smaller, is that while *confessions* extracted under torture are worthless, and information extracted under torture isn't usually totally reliable, even unreliable information is more valuable than none.

The second, and larger, is that it's an implicit admission that if torture *did* work then it would be justified - the logical response to it is not that we should stop torturing people, but that we should torture them better.


Flawed (I think) argument 2: There are no circumstances where torture is ethical.

The "ticking bomb" situation virtually never comes up outside of fiction, but there certainly have been situations where people have e.g. freely confessed to kidnapping, but refused to reveal the locations of their victims, leaving them to starve to death. I can respect people saying "no, even in that situation, torture is not morally justifiable, no matter what", but I strongly disagree with them.


Valid (I think) Argument 1: If you torture anyone, you will torture innocent people.

It's exactly the same as with the death penalty. There may or may not be people who have done things so terrible that it is just to kill them, but even if there are, the state should not kill them even so, because if it does it will inevitably also kill people who are either innocent of what they are charged with or guilty but not of crimes meriting killing.

Similarly, I don't want to live in a state that tortures even unrepentant kidnappers, because if it does it will inevitably get it wrong sometimes and torture the innocent or not-guilty-enough or guilty-as-hell-but-with-no-useful-information-to-divulge people too.

The only safe place to draw the line is "nowhere".

That is the real reason why the state should never, under any circumstances, torture anyone, even if it might be morally justifiable to do so.


Valid but less important (I think) Argument 2: Not torturing makes it easier to persuade other people not to torture.

America can sometimes extract useful information by torturing captured enemies. America's enemies can sometimes extract useful information by torturing captured American soldiers. America torturing people makes it much more likely that captured Americans will be tortured.

But many people wouldn't torture POWs no matter what the US does, and some would do so no matter what, so this line of argument matters less than the other.