The Wrong Torture Question: "Would you still oppose torture if it worked?"

[Better Believe It]

April 30, 2009

Justifying the Means
The Wrong Torture Question
By DAVID SWANSON

"Would you still oppose torture if it worked?"

Let me suggest a few reasons why I think that last question is the wrong one.

First, torture DID work. It forced false agreement with war lies, helping to launch a long-desired illegal war. And it persuaded many Americans that some very scary and very foreign people were out to get them, people so scary that they had to be tortured in order to talk with them, people whose every false utterance, aimed at stopping the pain, instead generated color-coded horror warnings.

Second, torture has boosted recruitment for anti-U.S. organizations tremendously, horribly damaged the United States' image, stripped U.S. diplomats of the power to address human rights abuses abroad, as well as stripping U.S. citizens of a clear moral right to protest being tortured, and set an example that has spread far and wide. Torture has brutalized participants and witnesses, and we are all witnesses, and it has destroyed lives both through torture to the point of death and through torture to the point of unbearable life.

Third, if you're going to violate particular laws and treaties, you can either repeal them and leave all the other ones intact, or you can simply proceed criminally, thereby assaulting the whole structure of law, leaving everyone in doubt whether ANY laws will be enforced against important people. Our government has taken the latter approach and redefined crimes as "policy differences," which is why torture is ongoing and no criminal penalty will deter its future expansion or the commission of other crimes of whatever sort by high officials.

Fourth, if torture had produced life-saving information, we would have long since heard that fact shouted from every television studio. In fact, we did hear such claims made. They just all turned out to be fictional. In the latest claim of this sort, torture supposedly produced information on the planned bombing of a building in Los Angeles, and this information was transported back in time to the moment at which investigators had already discovered that proposal and laughed heartily at the then-debunked claim that a serious plot had ever developed. The fact that Dick Cheney is pushing this nonsense on us is not actually a compelling reason to believe it unquestioningly.

Fifth, if torture ever produced life-saving information it would be through sheer luck and not intention. Nobody tortures with that intention, because expert interrogators believe other methods are more effective than torture. And if that lucky day ever came, there would be no basis on which to surmise that other methods would not have been at least as effective as the torture was. So, even if a real ticking time bomb situation could be created, there would be no reason to believe torture to be the best tool. And if you could magically design a situation in which, by definition, torture was the ethical choice, you still would not have created a situation in which ignoring the crime of torture would do less damage than pardoning the torturers.

Please read the complete article at:

http://www.counterpunch.org/swanson04302009.html

[LittleBlue]

1. Shouldn't the police start torturing Americans?

We have known gang members who will not reveal the crimes of their fellow gang members. Shouldn't we start torturing them too? We would undoubtedly save lives of future murder victims by finding these known murderers by using torture.

[Better Believe It]

3. Some right-wingnuts who hate the United States will respond, Yes!

[WinkyDink]

8. I'd start with Cheney, personally.

[ColesCountyDem]

2. On a certain level, slavery also worked.

That didn't make it any less morally reprehensible.

[TheKentuckian]

4. Working is utterly besides the point.

I'd argue the reliability of the information is beyond sketchy but the key issue is that if we are torturers then we no longer represent the ideals and goals of our nation or of any liberal democracy and have nothing worth defending other than our patches of dirt.

[Supersedeas]

9. the Media is attempting to make a political issue of it: Not using it when/if it work is a sign of

weakness.

Totally ignoring the positive message and the strength necessary to avoid and castigate torture when it might hypothetically work to get some intelligence.

[jberryhill]

5. How About Human Sacrifice?

Would you oppose throwing a virgin into a volcano once a year if it would prevent eruptions, earthquakes, pestilence, plague and famine?

[CreekDog]

6. Glad you oppose this in the US

:eyes:

[Danger Mouse]

7. Just because something works doesn't mean it's right.

[Peacetrain]

10. Working is not the point.

You can stop the spread of cancer in an individual with a surgical intervention or chemo., or you can shoot them ... they all work.. the cancer has stopped in that person.

Not even part of the equation

[grantcart]

11. The article misses the most important argument against torture, historically speaking

Even if it did work we would be against waterboarding because once you use it, you sanction its use against your own troops.



The reason that the Geneva conventions achieved what they did was not a revulsion against torture but a widespread fear that they would be used against their own troops.



As much as I agree with the higher morality argument you actually get more agreement by asking, "If it were effective would you sanction its use against our troops, including your children if they became a POW". The answer to this question is 100% no.