I repeat here a post made last November on a busier thread covering the same topic. The original poster outlined a case where we have a suspect in hand, a suitcase nuke, and the city of Chicago. The question asked: Is torture wrong if it has the potential to save many lives. Here's my response...
The Ticking Bomb ScenarioThat is what your scenario amounts to: Dershowitz's "ticking bomb" scenario. And Amnesty International's answer:
http://www.amnestyusa.org/askamnesty/torture200112.html (kudos to ajk at U75):
--------------------------------------------------------------------
The ticking bomb scenario falls apart upon careful scrutiny. It assumes that law enforcement has the right person in custody. That is, the suspect knows where the bomb is and when it is scheduled to detonate. What if there is only a 50 percent chance that the suspect knows the information? What if this number is only 10 percent? Second, it assumes that torture will be effective in gaining access to the critical information. In fact, however, torture is notoriously unreliable. What if there is only a 60 percent chance that the suspect will reveal accurate information? How about 20 percent? How low are we willing to go? How should we make the decision whether to torture? How many people must be endangered before the torture option can be considered?
---------------------------------------------------------------------Further, <name deleted>, I think your scenario is a red herring because almost universally societies that torture use torture not to gain information but to terrorize insurgent populations. We don't need to be debating whether or not our soeciety should condone torture -- it shouldn't -- and we should actively pursue and bring to the light of day if some of the stories coming out of Gitmo are true (torture there and torture by proxy when we ship high-level suspects off to countries willing to torture for us).
Post 9-11 one of the most chilling things I witnessed in the U.S. media were the shallow arguments made for use of torture.
Back in the late seventies and early eighties a heroic woman was writing a "poetry of witness", Carolyn Forche. She witnessed (on Amnesty International assignments) the horrors aided and abetted by the USG in Central America (think "School of the Americas"). Again, torture is not used so much to obtain information, but as an instrument of terror to control an insurgent population. Such was/is the case in Central America.
I offer a snippet of Carolyn's poetry here as an appeal to the heart:
---------------------------------------------------------------------
Return
(for Josephine Crum)
Upon my return to America, Josephine...
<snip>
...Lil Milagro Ramierez,
who after years of confinement did not
know what year it was, how she walked
with help and was forced to sh*t in public.
Tell them about the razor, the live wire,
dry ice and concrete, grey rats and above all
who f*cked her, how many times and when.
Tell them about the retaliation: Jose lying
on the flat bed truck, waving his stumps
in your face, his hands cut off by his
captors and thrown to the many acres
of cotton, lost, still, and holding
the last few lumps of leeched earth.
Tell them about Jose in his last few hours
and later how, many months later,
a labor leader was cut to pieces and buried.
Tell them how his friends found
the soldiers and made them dig him up
and ask forgiveness of the corpse, once
it was assembled again on the ground
like a man. As for the cars, of course
they watch you and for this don't flatter
yourself. We are all watched. We are
all assembled.
<snip>
And so, you say, you've learned a little
about starvation: a child like a supper scrap
filling with worms, many children strung
together, as if they were cut from paper
and all in a delicate chain. And that people
who rescue physicist, lawyers and poets
lie in their beds at night with reports
of mice introduced into women, of men
whose testicles are crushed like eggs.
That they cup their own parts
with their bedsheets and move themselves
slowly, imagining bracelets affixing
their wrists to a wall where the naked
are pinned, where the naked are tied open
and left to the hands of those who erase
what they touch. We are all erased
by them, and no longer resemble decent
men. We no longer have the hearts,
the strength, the lives of women.
Your problem is not your life as it is
in America, not that your hands, as you
tell me, are tied to do something. It is
that you were born to an island of greed
and grace where you have this sense
of yourself as apart from others. It is
not your right to feel powerless. Better
people than you were powerless.
You have not returned to your country,
but to a life you never left.
--- from The Country Between Us, 1981
---------------------------------------------------------------------
Aside: Most of the arguments for torture that I've seen in the major media are fear-based. Always it's "us" against some horrible, less than human "them". There is, for those that would torture, no middle ground, no alternate way, except to get "them" before they get "us". I admit that my mind does not work that way. I cannot accept my government torturing anyone for any purspose.
There is no doubt whatsoever in my mind that use of torture as a means to an end is an evil act, regardless of ends achieved. I ascribe to the notion, "cease to do evil; try to do good". We would not need to debate these points if everyone ascribed to the first term. And as my avatar says (to the left of my post), "You must be the change you want to see in the world."
Printer-friendly format
Email this thread to a friend
Bookmark this thread
(1000+ posts)
Send PM |
Profile |
Ignore
