To Torture Or Not To Torture?

Nobody questions that there are pretty bad people out there who want to hurt Americans. But a lot of people disagree about what to do with these bad people once we capture them. There are, of course, the two extremes: on the one hand, you have the Nazi model of breaking bones, burning limbs, breaking more bones, removing eye balls, and breaking all remaining bones in the attempt to get information and confessions from their enemies; on the other hand, you have the ACLU model of reading captured terrorists their Miranda rights, putting them in a well-furnished room which is kept somewhere between 68 and 72 degrees Fahrenheit, and giving them full access to the American legal system while subjecting them to absolutely no physical, mental, emotional, or any other conceivable form of discomfort. Between the Heinrich Himmler and Dr. Phil models lies the appropriate course of action, but coming to a sensible and reasonable middle ground seems to torture the consciences of policy makers and voters alike.

Before I get to what I believe is the sensible bottom line, I need to say a word about some of the techniques used by the CIA and other intelligence operatives working under the guidance and authority of the Bush Administration over the past six or seven years. The one that seems to get the most attention is waterboarding. Almost everyone on the left end of the political spectrum calls this torture. Some on the right agree, but many conservatives call it something less than torture. Anyone with any level of honesty, however, has to admit that it is definitely NOT torture in the Nazi sense of the word. Nazi torture caused permanent injury, excruciating physical pain, and, in many cases, death. Waterboarding causes none of these. People of some celebrity have recently volunteered to be waterboarded, either to prove that they can take it or to "discover for themselves" if it is indeed torture. But the very fact they are willing to endure it, even with some level of trepidation, is proof that it is not torture. How many people have volunteered to have a finger chopped off, just to see if it is really torture? How about acid in the eye? Anybody up for being hanged by their wrists as their feet dangle over an open flame, just to see what it's like? C'mon, now, we all know there is a significant difference between these forms of cruel, excruciating inflictions of pain and using techniques like waterboarding, however uncomfortable or frightening it may be. To simply say, "Torture is torture," to equate sleep deprivation, cold room temperatures, forced uncomfortable postures, and even waterboarding with the Saddam Hussein, Joseph Stalin, Adolf Hitler, and Mao Tse-Tung forms of abuse, is to rob the word "torture" of any real meaning.

Now I come to the hardest question: Is it o.k. to torture, and I mean really torture, dangerous terrorists who we know to have knowledge about ongoing threats to the safety and very lives of our citizens? Well, it depends. Yeah, that's right, IT DEPENDS. Nobody seems to have the guts to say that, but sometimes it depends on the situation. Some situations in life offer no simple, formulaic solutions. The idea that it is NEVER right to torture flies in the face of common sense, and, indeed, morality. An example should make this clear. Imagine that the U.S. military has captured a terrorist who has knowledge about the time and place of a series of terrorist attacks on American malls. Fellow terrorists with machine guns and grenades will be initiating mass murder at 50 malls throughout the country, but we do not know when and where this will occur. Tens of thousands of lives are at risk. Our captured terrorist is asking for his lawyer, not volunteering any information. Shockingly, asking him politely to tell us the information needed to stop the attacks isn't working. I would argue that it is the moral obligation of our intelligence agents to sleep deprive, waterboard, and, if nothing else works, torture this person to get the information needed to save American lives. And I do mean torture. We shoot the person in the knee, plunge the knife into his shoulder, and stuff his head under water if that is the only way to save innocent lives. If the person needs to have a little Jack Bauer (of 24 television fame) time, a little Mitch Rapp (CIA agent in Vince Flynn novels) session, to save American lives, then so be it. If not, we then condemn tens of thousands of people to torture by terrorists who will kill, injure, and brutalize the innocent. I would argue that those who condemn the use of torture on captured terrorists in every situation are, in effect, in favor of torturing the innocent who will be maimed and killed because of our inaction. That seems like a position lacking moral clarity.

A final note: I hate torture. I wish we never had to use it. We should NEVER engage in torture, or even enhanced interrogation techniques, to obtain confessions from terrorists. The Nazis, and especially the Stalinist and Maoist Communists, were specialists in torturing confessions out of their victims for political purposes. This serves no purpose beyond the political, and does not save lives. And I also believe that the use of enhanced interrogations, and, in extreme cases, torture, should only be initiated by a direct order from the President in situations where lives are at stake, not as the normal course of action. Unfortunately, in the real world, horribly difficult decisions have to be made, and it is up to our government to make these decisions. Some say that if we treat terrorists badly, subject them to discomfort, and in some cases use torture, that we are just a bad as the terrorists. But if we fail to act to save innocent lives, then we enable the terrorists to torture us. Allowing such evil to succeed is wrong and must not be permitted.