Is Torture Ever Moral?
Posted on April 27th, 2009
by Patrick J. Buchanan |
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After opening the door to a truth commission to investigate torture by the CIA of al-Qaida subjects, and leaving the door open to prosecution of higher-ups, President Obama walked the cat back.
He is now opposed to a truth commission. That means it is dead. He is no longer interested in prosecutions. That means no independent counsel — for now.
Sen. Harry Reid does not want any new “commissions, boards, tribunals, until we find out what the facts are.” Thus, there will be none. The place to find out the facts, says the majority leader, is the intelligence committee of Sen. Dianne Feinstein.
Though belated, White House recognition that high-profile public hearings on the “enhanced interrogation techniques” used by the CIA in the Bush-Cheney years could divide the nation and rip this city apart is politically wise.
For any such investigation must move up the food chain from CIA interrogators, to White House lawyers, to the Cabinet officers who sit on the National Security Council, to Dick Cheney, to The Decider himself.
And what is the need to re-air America’s dirty linen before a hostile world, when the facts are already known.
The CIA did use harsh treatment on al-Qaida. That treatment was sanctioned by White House and Justice Department lawyers. The NSC, Cheney, and President Bush did sign off. And Obama has ordered all such practices discontinued.
This is not a question of “What did the president know and when did he know it?” It is a question of the legality and morality of what is already known. And on this, the country is rancorously split.
Many contend that torture is inherently evil, morally outrageous and legally impermissible under both existing U.S. law and the Geneva Convention on prisoners of war.
Moreover, they argue, torture does not work.
Its harvest is hatred, deceptions, and lies. And because it is cowardly and cruel, torture degrades those who do it, as well as those to whom it is done. It instills a spirit of revenge in its victims.
When the knowledge of torture is made public, as invariably it is, it besmirches America’s good name and serves as a recruiting poster for our enemies and a justification to use the same degrading methods on our men and women.
And it makes us no better than the Chinese communist brain-washers of the Korean War, the Japanese war criminals who tortured U.S. POWs, and the jailers at the Hanoi Hilton who tortured Sen. John McCain.
Moreover, even if done in a few monitored cases, where it seems to be the only way to get immediate intelligence to save hundreds or thousands from imminent terror attack, down the chain of command they know it is being done. Thus, we get sadistic copycat conduct at Abu Ghraib by enlisted personnel to amuse themselves at midnight.
While the legal and moral case against torture is compelling, there is another side.
Let us put aside briefly the explosive and toxic term.
Is it ever moral to kill? Of course. We give guns to police and soldiers, and honor them as heroes when they use their guns to save lives.
Is it ever moral to inflict excruciating pain? Of course. Civil War doctors who cut off arms and legs in battlefield hospitals saved many soldiers from death by gangrene.
The morality of killing or inflicting severe pain depends, then, not only on the nature of the act, but on the circumstances and motive.
The Beltway Snipers deserved death sentences. The Navy Seal snipers who killed those three Somali pirates and saved Captain Richard Phillips deserve medals.
Consider now Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, mastermind of 9-11, which sent 3,000 Americans to horrible deaths, and who was behind, if he did not do it himself, the beheading of Danny Pearl.
Even many opponents against torture will concede we have the same right to execute Khalid Mohammed as we did Timothy McVeigh. But if we have a right to kill him, do we have no moral right to waterboard him for 20 minutes to force him to reveal plans and al-Qaida accomplices to save thousands of American lives?
Americans are divided.
“Rendition,” a film based on a true story, where an innocent man suspected of belonging to a terrorist cell is sent to an Arab country and tortured, won rave reviews.
But more popular was “Taken,” a film in which Liam Neeson, an ex-spy, has a daughter kidnapped by white slavers in Paris, whom he tortures for information to rescue her and bring her home.
Certainly, Cheney and Bush, who make no apologies for what they authorized to keep America safe for seven and a half years, should be held to account. But so, too, should Barack Obama, if U.S. citizens die in a terror attack the CIA might have prevented, had its interrogators not been tied to an Army Field Manual written for dealing with soldiers, not al-Qaida killers who favor “soft targets” such as subways, airliners and office buildings.
COPYRIGHT 2009 CREATORS SYNDICATE INC.
Filed under: Politics
Pat, christians like you are the reason I am not one.
Killing is never moral. That is the whole point of asking for forgiveness. Expediency does nothing to alter this fact.
Torture is never moral. A doctor inflicting pain to save a life has absolutely nothing to do with torture, because it is not his goal to cause pain. The same cannot be said about CIA inquisitors. Rhetorical contortions to claim that the goal of a torturer is not to cause pain but to gain information will not suffice.
Indeed, one may require immoral means to achieve what one wants — win a war, bring an enemy to justice — but do not try to claim that in the process the immoral becomes moral. It does not.
Steve,
I cannot imagine a worse reason to make a serious decision about one’s beliefs than to spite opponents with whom you are angry, or over whom you feel morally superior.
Christianity is about dying to self and being raised to new life with Christ. Part of the process of dying to self is to give up the pretension of homemade righteousness. If I am right about torture and Pat Buchanan is wrong (I think this is the case), then it isn’t Pat’s being wrong that is an undeserved outrage, but rather my being right.
Truth is always a gift from God, never a self-attained trophy rewarded to the clearest and most virtuous thinkers.
Take the moral truths you have and give thanks to God for them. Try to get more. Pray that others get them, too. But do not, unless you wish to blasphemously insult God’s gracious role as truth-giver, imply that you are right because you are morally superior.
C.S. Lewis remarked somewhere that the medieval Church tried to reconcile war and Christianity by developing the code of honor known as chivalry. If we have lost it, we need to find it.
It should be noted that in the movie Taken, the “hero” does not merely torture white slavers but shoots the innocent wife of a French bureaucrat to force the latter to divulge information. In Iraq, US forces have used the arrest and imprisonment of family members to compel the surrender of fugitives. To such moral depths has this country descended and apparently PJB approves.
Saying “killing is never moral” is simplistic and reveals ignorance of what constitutes a moral act.
Nobody has bested Aquinas in devising a method to determine the morality of a given act. According to him, the goodness of a moral act is determined by three elements: object, intention, and circumstances. At least one of these must be good; others may be indifferent; and none may be evil. A defect in any of these renders the act morally evil.
The object of a given killing can be neutral, and can be rendered good or evil by intention or circumstances. The intention of a certain killing can be good: to protect innocent life. The circumstances of a killing (e.g., killing a pirate holding an innocent hostage) can also be neutral or even good.
The killing of the Somali pirates vividly and clearly demonstrates the fallacy inherent in the statement that “killing is never moral.”
Pat is right again.
Kirt,
There’s a lot of daylight in between “approving of torture” and noting that “americans” seem to approve of it.
I wish PJB were more strongly anti-torture than he is, this article honestly disappoints me, but I still don’t read it as a Hannity/Coulter-style blank check to torture on behalf of the author.
It seems like he’s arguing that nuance exists where none actually does, but at least he isn’t arguing that no nuance exists and advocating the wrong idea.
It’s funny that in thinking about the morality of killing we so often—and rightly I think—start with some simple, concrete hypothetical. E.g., what about the right to kill someone who is trying to kill you or yours?
Yet when it comes to torture, I suppose because of the way its been employed in the real world in recent history, we don’t first do that and instead start in at some more distant, vaguer point. Such as, is it right or wrong for *government* to ever torture someone to protect its citizens against X” or etc.
I’ll admit that putting someone else into the picture, governments especially, is indeed where most of the reality is, and indeed might change the moral picture.
But I’m not sure that it means that we ought not go back and start at some simplified, concrete example, just like we do with killing. Thus, to take what I understand is the hypothetical used in that movie “Taken,” who really would say that they would quail at using torture on bad guys to prevent the kidnapping/torture/murder or etc. of one of their children?
From there it seems to get interesting because with killing, while we take the initial proposition that it’s okay in the defense of oneself or another and generally go from there to say that governments doing so in war is okay too, somehow that same logic doesn’t seem so easy with torture.
Strikes me that it’s at this disconnect that some useful thinking might be directed. I.e., why is it different with torture? Somehow I sense that it is, but I’m not sure I could say why exactly.
Wait a second, “Taken” did better at the box office than “Rendition?” Add this to the ratings for the Fox series “24″ and it’s case closed: torture is awesome! If only every issue could be decided on the popularity of fictional entertainment.
Soldiers killing other soldiers is not illegal. Courts ordering the death of a prisoner after due process is not illegal. Apparently, dropping bombs in war zones that kill innocents is not illegal.
Torture is illegal not only under the GC, but also when the Senate ratified the UN convention against torture (which Reagen signed).
You know the whole nation of laws, conservative sort of thing…
With respect to TomB’s hypothetical, it is one thing to use force, even lethal force, to protect yourself or other innocent people in an immediate concrete situation. It is quite different to torture someone who is in your power and no immediate threat to anyone, but who may or may not have information about an ongoing or even future plot. Whether or not the plot is or will be directed against members of your family is an emotionally laden but irrelevant add-on. It reminds me of the taunt so often thrown at pro-life demonstrators - “What if your daughter was raped by a n#*&*%?” No, torture is morally unacceptable whether on behalf of your family or your country.
Torture is outside of the realm of due process, and by and large I would disapprove as most rational people would.
But then I’m reminded of that stadium scene from the original Dirty Harry movie - where it was implied that Eastwood’s Dirty Harry used torture to force the kidnapper into divulging the location of the abducted girl - who was in imminent grave physical danger - in the hopes of saving her life.
In such a case, there is a tendency to agree with the use of torture. But was that always the case with the CIA? Or was torture used over a long period of time, and thus not justifiable as would possibly be the case were someone in imminent grave physical danger?…
Matt,
It was not at all clear from my post, but when I said “christian” I was not referring to my beliefs, I was referring to my associations…in much the same way many principled conservatives do not consider themselves “republicans.” I did absolutely post in spite, however. And I was being honest. People who think like Mr. Buchanan (that crap last paragraph is all you need to read) started me on my long journey away from the church. “Praise the Prince of Peace, and nuke the Russians!”
If the God you speak of and I hope for exists, I think he would celebrate the demise of Buchanan’s “christianity.”
Kurt Higdon wrote:
“No, torture is morally unacceptable whether on behalf of your family or your country.”
As I said there seems a disconnect to me at least in terms of a concerned individual in some circumstances doing it and a government.
In terms of the former, and perhaps showing my libertarianism, I’d like to know the moral basis upon which it is anyone else’s business to, say, condemn a father who tortures a bad guy to save his child. Seems to me there’s three and only three concerned individuals there, and if the father and child are okay with it what standing does the bad guy have to object? And of course just by talking the bad guy can call off the torture.
Maybe this gets to the disconnect when governments do it: I.e., it’s being done by a relative disinterested person, in the name of *all* his or her governments’ citizens, no doubt in circumstances that many of those citizens would disagree with.
Cheers,
Maybe the CNN and BBC reporters could be tortured to reveal who told them that WTC building #7 was “coming down ” some 20 min. before it did …. or how ‘ bout putting Judge Wayne Alley on the rack in order to find out which G-Man told him not to go to work or bring his grandkid to daycare on 4/19/95…..nahh…
TomB, I’m a Christian and so follow Christian and not libertarian principles. The whole matter is mainly God’s business since it is his moral law which is involved. In the hypothetical situation, the “bad guy” is no immediate threat to the child since he is in the power of the torturing father. And the torturing father cannot possibly know in advance what information the “bad guy” has. If he knew he wouldn’t need to torture.
David:
“Saying “killing is never moral” is simplistic and reveals ignorance of what constitutes a moral act.”
So, God left it to us to interpret and “contextualize” the Ten Commandments. Simplistic fellow, that God.
(N.B. - Re: “fellow” - Now, don’t all you gender-sensitive readers get agitated. God, of course, is a white-haired older man. We know this because we have pictures of Him.)
Kurt:
Well of course one can easily re-jigger the hypothetical to cover your objection to the idea that the father wouldn’t know in advance what the torturee knew. But otherwise I suspect you are right that it would have to come down to a belief in knowing God’s mind because otherwise and as I said I can’t see any human-derived basis for a valid objection.
Funny—and admirable—how even though it can seem that we humans can’t derive a valid objection to something, we nevertheless have deep suspicions that God might.
As to what I wrote last about governments doing it though after thinking it through I guess the same would apply to killing/war too so maybe it’s just that deep down we believe/know that torture can be worse than death, and so is a more serious matter where governments ought not tread.
I.e., a rare example of the *sufficiency* of the human imagination maybe.
Cheers,
I too am disappointed that PJB did not take a stronger stand against torture. At least Daniel Larison has voiced his principled opposition.
Must all major pundits carefully weigh “both sides” of torture and come down in the muddled middle? Must alleged government lawbreaking be ignored in the interests of undivisive pragmatism?
Journalists and pundits seem awfully good at exposing singular politicians who take bribes or hire hookers. Opposition to systemic corruption is much harder to come by.