May 14, 2009--Torture

Those who support the use of “enhanced interrogation techniques,” or torture, pose the following question—

If one of your loved ones was in imminent danger of being killed by terrorists, and if you had in your hands someone who you knew (put aside for the moment how you “knew”) was involved in the planning, and if you knew that, as they would put it, that “the clock was ticking” on the plot that placed them in danger, and if you knew that by waterboarding that plotter you could get “real time” information that would save them and others, wouldn’t you be in favor of using torture?

This is the ultimate question. Presumably you would say yes if any innocent people were in equivalent danger, but the case for the use of torture is so much stronger if the person about to be massacred is a member of your family—a spouse, a child, a grandchild.

Though I am against the use of torture, I know I would say yes. “Waterboard the bastard so that my grandson and others,” I hope I would add, “can be spared.”

But then it gets complicated. The emotional response is clear and understandable, but if there were a little time to think things through—as there is now as we stumble toward a national debate on the subject—shouldn’t we be asking some of the following questions and demanding unemotional answers before the United States, a nation of laws, authorizes the use of torture? Since for many of these questions there are not as yet equally clear answers:

First, shouldn’t we separate the legal and moral issues from the practical?

It is true that the US for decades has passed laws and signed international agreements that forbid the use of torture. Ronald Reagan, for example, in 1984 signed the UN Convention On Torture, and he was no friend of the UN. I could site many other international and domestic law and treaties that forbid practices such as waterboarding. So it is clear that there is much bipartisan precedent that deems torture to be against US and international law and covenant.

But, if we put all of this aside, which is not a casual thing to do even in circumstances when that clock is ticking, we have to face the substantial practical question—whatever we think about these legal and ethical issues, does torture work?

Does it quickly yield reliable, critical information that is not obtainable in an equivalent period of time by other, legal methods? Because if it does, unless one is so objectively and dispassionately guided, so fervent in ones ethical or religious convictions, or so genuinely and totally pacifistic—all commendable—it is difficult to assert that in those thankfully rare circumstances when there is that incontrovertible threat to the nation—much less to those near and dear—a president (and for me to even consider this it must be the president) should be expected (not just permitted but expected) to make an extraordinary exception and personally authorize the limited use of torture.

If you are still with me and haven’t already hit the Delete key since this subject, or my apparent views, are so abhorrent to you, allow me a few more thoughts.

If this case can be made for a presidential exception and if lives could be thus saved, how could we say “no” to this option? Whatever we think about the wars in which we are currently engaged, haven’t there also been “good wars” that we might all agree we needed to wage? World War II is pretty much everyone’s favorite example. We faced indisputable threats on various fronts, we had been unceremoniously attacked at Pearl Harbor, most of Western Europe and South and East Asia and the Pacific Islands had fallen into Nazi and Japanese hands, and genocide of massive proportions was being perpetrated West and East.

So there was little debate about whether or not we should enter that global war; and once in it, we knew (really knew) that not only would we have to authorize the killing and maiming of enemy forces but we also knew, and approved, the bombing and killing of non-participants. Hundreds of thousands of whom were then killed and wounded.

Waterboarding in a relatively few instances in response to the asymmetrical threats we now face—against direct terrorist threats—pales, doesn’t it, by comparison to what we did between 1941 and 1945?

But, again, only if in certain limited circumstances it can be proven that torture uniquely works.

That is the central practical question, which, if answered in the affirmative, for me pushes aside the moral and legal restraints.

And to this we do not, as far as the public knows, yet have indisputable answers. In the halting debate to this time, this is in dispute. Some are saying that one of the two terrorists who was waterboarded, Abu Zubydah, allegedly chief recruiter for al-Qaeda, “sang like a canary” even before he was forcefully interrogated much less tortured—and gave up Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the 9/11 terrorists operations chief, while his wounds were being tended to. Perhaps out of relief that he was being treated, ironically, humanely.

But, with credibility, it is also asserted that KSM did not “break” while being interrogated legally, though harsh methods were used, and only gave important information when he was waterboarded, albeit 183 times.

I do not have an opinion yet about my practical question—do certain forms of torture work? And as far as I know, no one else does. Including the FBI and CIA and Department of Defense or members of the previous or current administrations. There is currently lots of self-serving posturing about this—most prominently by Dick Cheney (whose motives are suspect)—but little on the record that can be considered definitive.

We each know what we ethically and morally think and feel about torture, but none of us with certainty can demonstrate that it works, or doesn’t, in those limited circumstances that I have attempted to lay out.

Shouldn’t we insist on having these answers? Doesn’t it require us to suspend judgment and to take the dialogue for a time out of the partisan and ideological arenas so that calm minds can look at all the evidence, call for more study if needed, and then report their findings to us?

If certain forms of torture are the only way to get certain kinds of information in certain kinds of situations, than we must allow and expect our president to make the very occasional and circumscribed legal exception to carry it out. If the president and his administration unilaterally and without congressional approval and Supreme Court sanction attempt to redefine the law and thereby claim that they have made torture legal—as the Bush administration did—they should be investigated, impeached, and tried.

But if we find that torture, even in these extreme circumstances does not work, then it should be forbidden in all circumstances and anyone, including the commander in chief, who authorizes its use and carries it out should be held accountable and prosecuted.