Torture by any other description/The real reason for torture

Torture by any other description
by Kathleen Parker
Copyright © 2009, Chicago Tribune
April 27, 2009
http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/columnists/chi-oped0427parker_mdapr27,0,7262237.column


WASHINGTON -- Several years ago, I asked a veteran journalist for advice.

"I'm trying to figure out if I have an ethical conflict," I began.

"If you have to ask, you do," he said.

Simple as that. In posing a question, we often reveal the answer.

Apply the same construct to torture. If we have to ask, it probably is.

Yet, as we've learned with the recent release of Justice Department memos related to interrogation techniques, Bush administration lawyers tortured the English language trying to justify the unjustifiable.

"Enhanced interrogation" wasn't really torture, they decided, as long as the pain administered didn't result in "death, organ failure or serious impairment of bodily functions."

By that definition, waterboarding -- the simulated drowning technique favored by Inquisitors ferreting out heretics -- wasn't torture. People might feel like they were going to die, but they weren't really, so ...

In other now-familiar mutations, those held in custody weren't really prisoners, but "detainees" or "alien combatants," and therefore not entitled to humane treatment under the Geneva Conventions.

Granted, it is easy now to sit back and judge these definitions and memos as morally repugnant. It is less easy to place ourselves in the mind-set that dominated the nation immediately after Sept. 11, 2001, and that guided the Bush administration in trying to prevent attacks.

But we are also reminded that those who objected most strenuously to relaxed definitions of torture and the scrapping of due process even for alien combatants were among those most familiar with war and interrogation, including Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) and then-Secretary of State Colin Powell. While lawyers sought loopholes, our most admired warriors argued for protection of the laws of war.

Few have put it more clearly than Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.), who is also an Air Force colonel and senior instructor at the Air Force JAG School and has served in Iraq and Afghanistan. In a 2006 Newsweek interview, Graham said: "Either we're going to use torture or we're not. And when you say, we won't use torture, unless we think we really, really need it [then] we're not a rule-of-law nation."

It comes down to that. We're either a rule-of-law nation -- or we're not. We can't invent definitions of torture for one type of person that wouldn't be acceptable for another, no matter how much we may despise or distrust him. As Graham put it: "I don't love the terrorists, I just love what Americans stand for."

Meanwhile, how trustworthy are the confessions of the tortured? Not very, according to those who know.

Most important, we can hardly present ourselves as arbiters and protectors of human rights when we selectively abuse those in our custody, no matter how compelling our cause. When we parse definitions of "mental pain" and "suffering," we begin to slip down the slope of moral ambiguity where deceit finds company among the dead.

The lawyers who wrote these now-public opinions clearly were looking for ways out of a moral quandary -- how to square the means with the end. And doubtless many Americans agree that protecting the U.S. against terrorist attacks justified nearly any method.

Almost daily I receive a recycled 2002 quote by Harvard law professor Alan Dershowitz, who argued in a "60 Minutes" interview that most people would justify torture under certain circumstances:

"Is there anybody who wouldn't use torture to save the life of his child? And if you would, isn't it a bit selfish to say, 'It's OK to save my child's life, but it's not OK to save the life of 1,000 strangers?' That's the way people will think about it."

In his book "Shouting Fire: Civil Liberties in a Turbulent Age," Dershowitz proposes that since torture is a given under those certain circumstances, then "torture warrants" should be issued by a judge.

He is right that most of us would do whatever necessary to save our child, possibly even torture a kidnapper. Likewise, if we stumbled upon someone trying to harm a loved one, we would kill the attacker if necessary to stop him.

But those are both darkly impassioned environments. It is by the cool light of day that we devise our laws. And it is by that same light that we judge our actions.

When we ask if something is torture, the answer is another question: What kind of people should we be?

Washington Post Writers Group










The real reason for torture
By Steve Chapman
Copyright © 2009, Chicago Tribune
Originally posted: April 27, 2009 9:11 AM
http://newsblogs.chicagotribune.com/steve_chapman/2009/04/the-real-reason-for-torture.html


The debate over the use of torture to interrogate suspected terrorists raises some difficult moral questions. Having written many times in opposition to it, though, I find little evidence that its supporters care about those issues. A sensible, humane person could say: "Torture is tragically necessary in some instances to save innocent lives, but it is a terrible thing for a government to engage in; it must be subject to strict safeguards, and it must be used only when the information needed is vital to avert disaster, time is of the essence or other methods have been exhausted." But its defenders, many of whom I have heard from, never sound like that.

In fact, they show no regrets or reservations. They make several arguments: saving innocent American lives is far more important than respecting the rights of suspected terrorists; these methods work; al Qaeda engages in far worse; and so on. Far from recognizing the need for safeguards and limits on such techniques, they would give the government a free hand to do whatever it chooses.

There is ample doubt whether deliberate infliction of pain actually yields useful information. But ultimately, judging from my reader mail, that's irrelevant. The support stems mainly not from desire to get answers but the urge to inflict pain on people we find vile. Its advocates make it obvious that this cruelty is not an unfortunate byproduct but a positive attribute.

That's why so many people endorse inhumane methods while disregarding any evidence that suggests it is ineffective. Their hatred of our enemies has made them indifferent to civilized norms. They want to see our enemies suffer hideously regardless of whether that enhances or degrades our security.

The point of torture is torture. It is not a means to an end. It is the end itself.