When Is Torture Acceptable? 

I've actually had a note to myself to write about this for a while... but never got around to it. With the Gonzales appointment before the Senate, the whole issue is now back in the news, so I've decided to take a crack at it. I know it's a terrible subject. Who wants to think about these things? It immediately brings up very strong emotions for almost anyone. I know it certainly does for me. I suppose that's why I've never written on the subject before, since I try to bring a certain level of calm and objectiveness to my posts. I will preface this post with a warning. Not only do I talk about torture here, but the post is kind of long. I promise to post about something happy very soon.

With all that said, I'll start with my conclusion. I have absolutely no idea what is the right thing to do in this regard. Believe me when I say I've thought about it a lot. Part of the problem is that lack of definition in "What is Torture?" The other part of the problem is that no matter what people say, there is no black and white when it comes to this subject. In the end, if I had to make a solid decision right now, I would have to go with my gut and say no. However, engineers rarely go with their gut, so this post is going to be me playing devils advocate with myself, trying to present both sides.

First things first. What is torture? Let me throw out some examples and my gut idea of whether it is or not. I want to go through this list and explain what I think is and isn't, simply because many people throw all these things together, and claim that they're all exactly equivalent. I don't think they are.

Beating/Caning/Breaking of Anything: Torture. This is a no brainer.
Anything Involving Shocking Anywhere on The Body: Also torture. Excuse me while I think about Kirsten Dunst in an attempt to fill my head with happy thoughts for a moment.
Threatening Someone With Either of the Above Two: This is greyer to me, and I find it less troubling. However I wonder how much this would work. Threatening someone with an action rarely works unless you demonstrate your resolve to actually do it.
Sleep/Food Deprivation: This seems like an acceptable means to break down mental defenses in order to get information. But as I'll explain more later, would you find this an acceptable thing to do to a suspect held by the police in some American city?
Uncomfortable Positions: Making someone stand for long periods of time in uncomfortable positions doesn't seem like torture to me either. It seems like another good way to break mental defenses. But then, the same argument applies as with sleep or food deprivation.

Alright, so we've gotten that out of the way. Should we do any of these things? Lets go over some of the classic arguments for and against torture:

The Geneva Convention Forbids Torture: The convention forbids torture on lawful combatants (and there is a pretty strict definition of what this is too). It also forbids torture on the same as long as they are signatories of the convention. Terrorists fit neither category. The Geneva Conventions also strictly forbid beheading, setting up shop and firing from mosques and hospitals, and the terrorists don't seem to have an issue with doing those things now do they?

The most common argument I hear about this is that we should follow them anyway, so that if we're in another war with another enemy who is a signatory, they will abide by those rules because they've seen that we've always abided by them. The problem is that you can also make the reverse argument. If we always follow them even when the enemy doesn't, then a future enemy may look and say, "Great! We don't have follow the rules, because they'll follow the rules anyway." Torture in this regard is a way of saying - hey... if you follow the rules, so will we. If you don't, then the gloves come off.

It's Immoral, No Matter What Information We Get: On it's face this seems to be a fairly simple argument, and one I never found too much issue with, given my extreme distaste for the whole idea. However, does the morality argument stand up when looked at from the perspective of the innocent people who die because we didn't get the information we needed to prevent a bomb from exploding, or some other attack? The terrorists we're interrogating are not innocent... but the people who will suffer as a result of those terrorists are. Where is the morality in letting those innocent people die?

It's a Slippery Slope from Terrorists to Other People: If we start doing these things to terrorists, then who is next? Saying that we should not use any torture-like interrogation techniques in Iraq for instance, as if police will start doing it in Atlanta tomorrow, seems disingenuous to me. But I still find this to be the most valid point if you believe not letting innocent people die because you didn't torture a terrorist is immoral (from the previous argument). After all, if some American citizen plants a bomb in New York that will kill hundreds... how different is that from a terrorist doing it in Iraq to kill Iraqi civilians? If we're willing to interrogate the terrorist, and not the American, where is the morality? It definitely places the idea in a different light when you think about this sort of thing happening in America as opposed to Iraq or Afghanistan.

I also hear this argument framed in terms of the event we're try to prevent. Today we may use torture to prevent a bombing, or some other large scale terrorist attack. When this seems acceptable to us, how long before we start using it to prevent a simple murder, or a rape? Many people dismiss this argument on its face as preposterous. We'll never go that far they say. I'm not so sure. I've seen that slippery slope in action too many times. Once you make the decision to make one thing acceptable, making the decision for the next item down the road becomes that much easier. It may be hard to leap 20 feet at once, but it's easy to walk one foot at a time. You get to the same place all the same, it just takes a little longer.

Torture Doesn't Work: People will say anything when under the duress of torture just to make it stop. If you're trying to beat a confession out of someone then I would agree. But we're not talking about making someone confess to a crime. We're talking about getting actionable (and verifiable) intelligence from someone. If under duress they tell you that there is a bomb underneath a school... you can go to that school and find a bomb and diffuse it. If you go there, and there is no bomb, you can go back to interrogating them because they lied, and they know that's what will happen.

We'll Only Torture to Save a Thousand People: I hear this one a lot. Sometimes the number changes, but there is always some large number. One hundred, one thousand, ten thousand... what number makes torture justifiable? The whole argument actually seems pretty contrived to me. After all, if you know how many people will die because of an attack, you probably have enough information to stop those people from dying without having to torture someone. But lets go a little deeper. Lets say that the number you pick is one thousand. What happens if you find out about an attack that will kill 999 people? What do you do then? Do you make an exception? And if you do, what about 998, and then 997? For every number you come up with, you will always have to decide whether one less life lost will change your mind. So the real argument has to be, is torture justified in order to save the life of one person? That's a much harder question to answer isn't it?

If your stomach isn't churning by now over this kind of stuff, then I would strongly suggest reading these two posts (here and here) by Eugene Volokh. They are also very good and objective looks at some of the same classic arguments I talked about, and some others I haven't. I wish this was a black and white subject. It would be so much easier to say no way, no how... which is what I really want to say. How do you justify something so awful?