So I went and saw Syriana last night. Pretty good flick. Very heady, definetely makes me want to read the book. But it got me thinking about a few issues that I’ve been batting around in my head for the past few months. Thought I’d submit the issues to the Barnson Board for subsequent analysis and review.
A lot of controversy has been generated recently surrounding possible US involvement in secret interrogation camps and the supposed methods those camps use to extract information.
So what’s everyone’s take on torture? What defines it? Is it to be universally condemned, or is it at times necessary? Should the US use it as a means of extracting information regarding terrorist plots that would threaten homeland security? If so, should we admit to it? And would it be consistent with our current definition of human rights violations?
For that matter, let’s throw assasination into the mix as well. Can the covert assasination of an enemy official be a morally just decision?
Discuss. 🙂
Preventative Measures
If you knew that personally authorizing for the torture of foreign nationals, whom you would never meet, would have prevented 9/11 then would you give the go-ahead order?
The U.S. military has been torturing for years and years, likely resulting in much success. No one wants to talk about it. I don’t want to talk about it. I really don’t want to hear about it. But deep down, in this awful way, I know that if it came between the safety of my family and the cruel-and-unusual punishment of someone whom I’d never meet…
We should all take a trip to the PsyOps division at Fort Bragg and see just how unpleasant it can become. Maybe it would change my perception.
The Great Double Standard
1) When it comes to my rights as an American, then I demand my freedom and my right to privacy. The government has no right to invade my privacy for whatever reason.
2) When it comes to my safety as an American, then I grant the government the right to torture, monitor, harass, and do whatever them deem necessary to anyone who want to harm me and my family.
The devil is when statement 1) and staement 2) are at odds.
The fact is the government and military daily perform acts which are not politically correct, are morally reprehensible, and would cause a furor if known to the world. Except if your moral base is the safety of the United States without care for anything else.
We may want to play by the “rules”, but when there are many people out there who don’t give a damn about the rules, it’s naive to expect to defend yourselves according to some code when the enemy has no such code.
Hence why we don’t march in lines to fight wars any more. Makes it easy for the guerillas to pick you off.
So in essence the question is not “Did you order the Code Red?” but “Was he wrong for ordering the code red?”
My $.02 Weed
Except that
Except that I never wrote a position defending your #1. In fact, I think that collective rights will outweigh individual rights in an organized society.
Bait taken
I’ve been taking a breather from commenting, but I just can’t let something like that slide! Please provide an example of a “collective right” that isn’t just an example of an “individual right” that a lot of individuals hold.
(Just to keep equivocation out of this, be sure to clearly define a right, and where it comes from. I suspect that may be a source of confusion.)
Eminent domain
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eminent_domain
See the recent Supreme Court ruling.
It depends
You have the right to own property. You may not have the right to own a specific piece of property, but the government must fairly compensate you so you can own property elsewhere. The government can’t replace any personal attachment you have to the land, but they can’t just grab it from you without paying you for it.
Plus, in your citation it lists a bunch of states which peoposed or passed state legislation to limit emminent domain to its historical limits. The Supreme Court even hinted to the states to do this.
I don’t feel the government has the right to invade my privacy until I give them just cause. The Patriot Act is not going to solve any problems until the agencies responsible for our safety get their act together.
Didn’t the FBI know about the attacks beforehand but fail to act? How many times did the World Trade Center get attacked before the terrorists got it right.
There was a good analogy on talk radio today: If you have a radio program that has a lousy host, horrible ratings, and isn’t worth listening to, do you buy better equipment in the studio? No, you fire the current personnel and hire new people. So why give the government more power when the current powers they hold were able to forewarn of the impending attacks but no one used them?
My $.02 Weed
And a right is…?
The fact that the government can do it doesn’t make it a collective right. Rights are imbued to individuals by the very nature of their beings–coercion does not create a right. If I have a gun, and you do not, I do not have a right to use it to frighten you and take your property. And given that the government only derives authority from the people that comprise it, it cannot morally do any more than any individual within it could do (morally, not practically, speaking–an individual would have the right to attack another country that was threatening him, but not the ability, obviously).
To say that Eminent Domain is a collective right is to suggest that the government has a right to do anything it does. I’ll have to agree with Justice Thomas on the Kelo ruling, when he wrote, “…something has gone seriously awry with this Court’s interpretation of the Constitution.”
There comes a point…
I understand your point of view about natural rights and all, but there has to come a point where practicality and functionality make it necessary to override a “right”. I don’t believe Eminent Domain should be used to help Joe Developer build his latest mall, but if one fellow loses some property in order to save a lot of people money when building a new road, then so be it.
It may clash with your ideas of natural rights, but it makes sense for the group. 99% of the time, I would side with the individual, but there are times when the gov’t does have the “right” or at least a “good reason” to put out an individual for the good of the people.
That being said, the current Supreme Court ruling was horrible. One thing I feel is that the smallest possible government is the best government.
My $.02 Weed
Quacking like a duck
The fact that the government can do it absolutely makes it a collective right. Governments taking personal property for the assumed greater good seems like a collective right to me. Also, if you have a gun and I do not, and you happen to be a member of the U.S. army, you still have the ability to walk into and take over my house in times of war.
Of course, we’re just thinking about situations in the U.S. As I’ve written previously, world history is riddled with organized societies in which the collective right trumps individuals rights. Keeping with the nature of this post thread, how does detaining an enemy combatant without a quick and speedy trial, without presenting the charges, not constitute an instutional form of collective torture?
Huh?
Why on God’s green earth would we want to keep with the thread? There’s no precedent for anything like that on this board 😉
The funny thing is the US is using war-time reasons for holding enemy combantants without ever have formally declaring war on Iraq or Afghanistan. Something for the political and diplomatic types to argue over.
I thing there’s a fine line here: if a person wishes harm against me (or my country by extension), then I have no problem with extracting information from him by whatever means prove effective. However, who determines the intent of “that person”? If we hold and interrogate an innocent person, does anyone get punished for the mistake? Since it’s all done clandestine, I seriously doubt it. We probably say these things happen is times of war and we’re really sorry, but oh well.
I’m for anything to protect the country as long as they’re check and balances to make sure those with such powers don’t abuse them.
The question is: does this occur, or even can it occur? And if not, do you take your chances with people who have this power and a “theoretically” safer country, or do you champion human rights and risk another 9/11?
I personally take the latter unless you can show me how you’re keeping the defenders in check.
My $.02 Weed
So, might makes right
Come on, Sammy. You’re suggesting that Mao, Stalin, Pol Pot, etc. all acted in accordance with collective rights? A right is not just a “capability;” otherwise, the word “right” wouldn’t serve a purpose. Rights could never be violated, because as soon as you lost the ability to do something (say, worship as you please), the right would also be gone. Do you suggest that human rights under Saddam were intrisically different than human rights in the US? Of course not–they were identical, but simply more violated.
As far as protecting the rights of enemy combatants, there is no moral injunction to do so. When threatened with violence (and some may say we weren’t, but that’s a different debate), the aggressors’ rights are forfeit. If I use my gun to gain forced entry into your home, I have committed an immoral act (violating your rights, I hope you’ll agree–despite your recent comments). If you then use a moment of inattention on my part to hit me with a bat and kill me, that’s nothing but good karma. I removed my claim to my rights by violating yours. By introducing violence, I removed reason from the interaction, and your response is likewise liberated. It’s the same on the field of battle. (John Locke carried this to its rational end: aggressor nations, having forfeit their natural rights, may be morally enslaved upon defeat.)
And on assassination, the taboos reek of an old-boys club. Western leaders don’t want to be assassinated, so they try and encourage good playground behavior by not assassinating evil leaders. I’m not sure that it’s effective (Saddam tried to ax Bush I) and I’m pretty sure it’s stupid (thousands to die, rather than one). But death is easier to think about, and much easier to wash your hands of, when it happens collectively (and semi-randomly).
Civilizations at war lose civility
I think we’ve become sheltered from the reality of war. We’re off across the globe attacking counrties most of us will never see and mosty of the populace couldn’t locate on a map. So we debate the finer points of should we do this and do that. We can do this because we were lucky enough to be born in the most powerful country in the world.
For those in Iraq and other countries, they don’t have time for such niceties. The live with the everyday, right-next-door threat of being killed, taken over, threatened, etc, etc. They would probably like to preserve human rights, but are forced to deal with the much more dirty prospect of survival.
We are lucky because we are buffered from the most part from dealing with such gutteral decisions. We have the free time and safety and most importantly, FREEDOM, so we can philosophize about how our country does this right and that wrong.
So I agree with Daniel that if someone clearly attacks us, then we have every right to use them to our advantage by whatever means necessary. However, I think we abuse that right if we start to use people who aren’t clearly our enemies.
Any country, if faced with an attack, would use whatever means necessary to prevent that attack, and should. If Germany geared up again as it did in the early 1900s, do you think the rest of Europe would want to play by the “rules”?
Europe clamoring against us for the CIA bases and torture is political grandstanding, because they know if they were threatened they’d do it too.
The question is: Did Iraq really threaten us this time? Why are we really in Iraq? A topic for another time…
My $.02 Weed
Need To Recognize
You need to recognize that I’m not advocating for any collective right over the right of the individual. I’m not stating that things like institutional torture, eminent domain and violations of the Third Amendement are justified. I’m stating that they happen all the time, and that in organized societies, collective rights trump the rights of the individual.
Mao, Stalin, Pol Pot, etc. didn’t act in accordance with any collective right. They WERE the collective right. They believed that the collective society was more important than the individual. And with that in mind, they used state militia, fear and torture to supress the individual.
Step right up for your ACLU card.
Much better
I’m glad to hear you clarify this. You’re still using the word “right” in a way I can only describe as wrong. Rights exist in individuals, and they can delegate some of those rights to a government (creating police forces, armies, etc.). Immorality also is performed by individuals, and when big powerful groups of individuals are immoral on a grand scale, it’s tyranny, not “collective rights.” A right is a “just claim,” not an “immoral claim.”
Verbiage
So your problem this whole time has been what you feel is an improper use of verbiage? 🙂
A rose by any other name… (II)
Could this be an extension of a conversation I vaguely recall us having 14 years ago in which you said (I think under the influence of a book you had just read) that swearing wasn’t bad because they were just words, and words didn’t have inherent meanings?
The problem was you said the government had the right to do whatever it had the capability to do. That’s wrong. But it doesn’t appear to be what you meant, and the problem was the use of the word “right.” So yes, words have meaniings ;).
For The Record
For the record, that would be your problem, not mine. 🙂
14 years ago I was 17 years old. I was guily of being under the influence of a teenager, if anything. Since then I’ve gone to college and gotten even more stupider.
I understand your point. You don’t like the association of the word ‘rights’ with governmental powers. However, and this is for another post, but I think that when a people with inherent individual rights allow a government operated by the people to carry certain rights in an organized society, then those rights could be considered collective rights, and that those collective rights historically gain more power and presence than the rights of the individual. Again, I am NOT stating that those collective rights should be more powerful than individual rights.
My opinion…
Is that you can’t fairly assess the question of torture until you can assess how effective it really is.
I’m deeply suspicious that information extracted in a torture situation would tend to be any more reliable than information extracted by some other means. If you look at the hypotheticals bandied about, they seem to rarely take into consideration that the prisoner under duress can lie or deceive the questioners to stop the torture just as easily as he or she could tell the truth.
In fact, if I were part of some organization that may have the sort of information that would be highly valuable to an enemy should I end up being in a torture situation, I would set up a failsafe response in advance that would tip off my allies what was going on. For example, I might tell them a location or a name that is a complete red herring but my allies could watch to see if a search was done regarding that false bit of information. If it was, my allies on the outside would, in effect, have been warned that an intelligence group was after them and maybe even know the nature of the situation they were in – depending upon how elaborate we prepared our dis-information scheme in advance.
For example, if someone started looking for someone named Pierre DuDelonge working with Saudi Intelligence in Marseilles (all made up of course), that might be a code to my allies that their plans to bomb the U.S. embassy in Tanzania have been compromised. (Imagine how powerful it would be if there were three of us being tortured and we all gave up that same information? The torturers would really think they were on to something whereas we, the prisoners, would actually be using our captors as unwitting message senders to our allies!)
In other words, the guys trying to extract information from me would have no way of knowing if my information was genuine except by following up on it and that simple fact makes my information suspect. Any thing I say must be corroborated by other information gathering sources before it has any actionable value.
And, if I’ve thought of this with only a few minutes thought, I’m certain anyone who might actually find themselves in a similar situation will have thought of it too. (Dantooine. The rebels are on Dantooine.)
So, I would say torture might be a case where the ends might justify the means – but since we have no hard data on whether or not the ends are being met – any discussion about the means must be limited to speculation.
The real question isn’t “should we torture to get information?” It is, “Does torture yield useable information?”
If it cannot be demonstrated to be more effective that other means of intelligence gathering then our question is resolved. We should not torture.
So, that’s my position. The burden of proof lies upon anyone claiming that torture works to demonstrate that it really does. And, knowing the shadow-world in which torture resides, I don’t think there will be any takers.
I believe that torture is more a political and psychological weapon against those who are NOT prisoners than as a genuine source of information.
Have you guys….
Have you guys tried that apple pie at Marie Calendar’s?
That’s some damn tasty stuff. Kind of a rip that they charge extra for the tin though. As if you’re going to order it without the tin.
Hooray! Over ten posts in a
Hooray! Over ten posts in a 48-hour period. I knew I could count on you all for scintillating reprieves from my work day. 🙂
One thing I’m noticing is there seems to be an underlying sense of “if it truly protects American lives, the lives of my family, then it’s justifiable.” The real problem, as Troy so aptly put, is whether or not it’s a method that truly protects us. Good points all.
But I’d like to throw something into the mix here. This is very much in the spirit of Des Cartes, who experimented with a form of reasoning in which you threw everything you believed out the window… cast doubt on everything until you find the one thing you truly can’t doubt… that sort of thing.
So much of ethics has to do with priorities… to quote West Wing: “Why is the life of an American citizen worth more to me than the life of a Qumari?” “I don’t know, sir… but it is.”
So let’s take a priority that we’ve all held to be pretty much paramount and throw it out the window:
Think of the ones close to you. Your sons, daughters, wives, friends. Your fellow Americans. Place yourself in a situation in which you stand before an avowed radical terrorist who has certain knowledge of an attack that will send everyone you ever cared for up in a cloud of radioactive smoke. Know that you have the option to perform numerous acts of torture – fingernails, electric shock, castration, even executing the ones *he* loves in front of his eyes – and know that by performing these things he will eventually break, and it will *guarantee* the safety of your 8-year old daughter.
And don’t do it. Walk away, with no other basis than that torture is wrong. That the life of some of America’s citizens are not as valuable as the soul of America herself.
Hypothetical situation clear? OK. Now here’s the tricky part. I’m not asking you to give reasons to disagree with the above situation. We all know there’s a million and one reasons for that. I’m asking you to justify it. Give me some reasons why it might be the right thing to do. Note, I’m not saying agree with it really. I’m pretty sure I don’t agree with it myself. But then, to my mind that’s all the more reason to try defending it for a while, at least in a safe environment like this one.
Any takers?
Boom…
I could not defend that position. I believe that torutre is an effective tool of WAR. Torture has been used as long as there have been societies and civilizations to use it. Torture is not always a means to gather information from the person who is being tortured. It is also used as an excellerant to get other troops who witness the torture verbally or visibly to break. I had the opportunity to work with PSYops while in the service, and it is a scary group of people. I worked with a troop who was assigned to a training camp the service has for it’s special ops units. Part of the training is going through PSYops courses. He said that he was not right in the head for a long time, and he was an instructor.
I would fully support doing what ever needs to be done to ensure the safety of my family, friends, and country.
WAR is meant to break things and kill people, the person who wins is the one with the bigger gun. War is not a socially accepted means of solving conflicts because people get emotional about the decisions that need to be made (it makes us human). War can not be won by following a set of rules. Remember back to your child hood when you would have staring contests with someone. It started out by playing by the rules, but then someone would start to try to blow air or do something to make the other flinch. WAR is the same way on a grander scale. I think the purpose of the military is to go and fight wars. We create and equip our trops with battle gear and then ask them to use restraint. What Crap. The easiest way to win a war is to not allow your enemey to compete.
Victory through superior firepower.
Indefensible, with a but…
I think it borders on immoral to sacrifice your own (or yourself) for another, particularly a sworn enemy. That said, if I were in a position where I had to, say, kill an enemy’s 2-year old daughter or die, I think I might choose to die. Living isn’t always worth it–especially if you have to do something so horrific that your life turns into a hell of regret. I might even choose death over severely and brutally maiming the enemy himself. (This is from my own selfish perspective, of course. I could easily inject a chemical that would cause the worst pain known to man. I would start to have problems at sticking a hand in a blender or something.)
This is why it’s probably good I was never in the military. I read a piece in the WSJ last year about a soldier having to shoot a 10-12 yr old boy in order to prevent him from recovering an RPG from the street. Sparing the details, I will tell you that the shooting was the only way to prevent the RPG from falling into enemy hands, but I’m not sure that I could ever do that. (And the soldier, the father of a 12-year old himself, clearly wasn’t happy that he had to do it either. But he did, and I’m glad we have people that courageous working on my behalf.)
Threaten my kids though, and I’ll do pretty much anything imaginable to you.
Very well put. Now here’s
Very well put. 🙂 Now here’s the follow-up: Why should the lives of our loved ones be worth more than the lives of someone else’s, even our enemy’s?
Not from a selfish perspective, mind you. It’s clear that if we chose our loved ones lives over someone else’s we’d go through a lot less pain.
But is there an overarching moral imperative to look after our own if doing so directly or indirectly harms someone else? And can it be put into logical terms?
Or, to put it another way, we all know, instinctively, that if a father took a baseball bat and went to town on someone who was trying to hurt his little girl he’d be totally justified. That’s very clearly morally *true.*
But is it morally *rational?* Since we tend to equate the two so much…
Morally rational? Hell yes
Of course it is morally rational to beat the bejesus out of someon who’s attacking your family.
I made a choice with my wife to bring my children into this world. That choice came with a responsibility for me to defend those children to the best of my ability, so that they would one day be able to enter the world as responsible adults capable of caring for their own children.
If someone attacks my children in any way, then it’s my responsibilty as a parent to defend them to whatever extent is necessary.
Plus, it’s biological imperative because propogation of the species is the primary reason for existence.
My $.02 Weed
How can something true be irrational?
Two scenarios can lead to the theoretical choice of loved one vs a stranger.
1. Accidental endagerment Scenario: Your daughter and a stranger are in a burning car. Which one do you save? Action: Save your daughter Logic: You are beholden to yourself before any other creature. If you choose to endanger yourself to save someone, who to save is your perogative. It would be immoral for someone else to force you to save either one in particular. Because you care about your daughter, and would be sad if she died, you save her. The stranger had no claim on your time (while, your daughter, if not yet at the age of majority, actually does.)
2. Purposeful endangerment Scenario: Terrorist threatens you with force (will kill your son) unless you torture him or kill him. Action: Kill him. Logic: Your son has not sacrificed his rights by threatening the terrorist, so the terrorist is the one who has introduced force. By introducing force, he has removed the constraints of reason from the interaction. It was his choice to change the interaction to one of force over logic. Ergo, his life is worthless–you may do with him as you please.
I can easily defend that position
If I truly believed in the Christian doctrine, then I would know that:
A) This life is just the proving grounds for the rapture in the next B) Vengence is the sole providence of the Lord
Ergo…everyone who would die in the radioactive blast would be going to heaven and a better life (or the other way, but I’m assuing my family is going upwards 😉 and God would punish the terrorist in worse ways than my mere mortal mind could imagine. Therefore, I forgive him of the sin he is about to commit and I let him go.
THAT’S the only way I could see to defend his position. By turning the other cheek.
My $.02 Weed
Too busy to argue too much..
But I’m keeping track..
I think the question must be asked “who is being tortured”?
A suspected terrorist.. and they’r ebeing tortured to find out if they are indeed a terrorist? No.. if it turns out they’re innocent, you’ve taken someone who was doing nothing wrong and delivered scarring punishment to them, and that kind of why we hate the terrorists so much – because they are indescriminate. Its a little too Kafkaesque for me.
That being said, a known terrorist.. with undeniable proof, an admitted, convicted, or a “yeah, he is definitely one” guy.. the rules change. This person is guilty of trying to hurt other people, and in doing so, he may have come accross knowledge that, if found, could save people.
I guess the fuzziness is the “Star Trek Insurrection” Question. Is it worth it to violate the rights of a few to save the lives of countless innocents. Could you look in the eyes of innocent people and kill or hurt them if you were absolutely sure it would save twice as many people? What about ten times… or more interestingly, what if the numbers were very close.
Thats a harder one, which innocent lives are more valuable.. either way, if faced with that decision it is important to be ABSOLUTELY sure your actions are preventing destruction (this is why Bush is in trouble now)