Comment Response: "On Torture"

Jason:

There have been publicly known instances where torture has elicited the intelligence requisite to preventing an act of terror. I would refer you to the Krauthammer piece I cited.

Beyond that, it would not at all be surprising if there were no publicly known instances given the classified umbrella that torture—or any other interrogation—would be performed under.

Even if there were no instance it in the past, I do not think anyone could argue that such a scenario is not a discreet possibility in this day and age. It certainly is, and we as a society should be prepared for such a contingency.

Regarding your point that people can be trained to withstand torture, America’s elite interrogators could also be trained to combat those resistance techniques. Just because someone may have been trained to withstand torture does not mean it will not ever be effective.

And if torture were not effective in some instances, then why has it been practiced for centuries by multitudinous individuals and entities? It surely is or can be effective, though it admittedly is not infallible.

There are certainly as many possible motivations to torture as there are stars in the sky, but for a moral people like us there is only one strictly-defined justification.

I agree with your point regarding the effective tool the threat of torture provides in interrogation.

I personally do not see much confusion in the definition of torture, though some of those with whom I disagree do. It is the infliction of intense, sustained, repetitive, and acute physical harm. Denying someone air conditioning on a hot day is not torture, nor is being forced to live in a tent. Torture certainly is not simply anything the detainee does not like.

Sean:

There is no way to make it right with someone who has been wrongly victimized by torture. But that point is hardly relevant. Because you cannot remedy the wrong created by falsely torturing an individual does not mean that torture should be proscribed in all instances no matter what. Instead it means that the rules governing torture must be strictly defined and strictly enforced so as to insure as much as possible that false torture does not occur. If the fact that there is no way to make it right when someone is falsely tortured dictates that torture must never be allowed, then under that same logic we can never prosecute and incarcerate an individual because there is always the chance it will turn out that they were done so wrongly.

Further, though it is certainly true that we could never make it right with an individual wrongly tortured, it is just as true that we could never make it right with the victims of an act of terror and their families and friends if we could have done more to prevent it. I am simply saying that sometimes one evil (torture) is less than another (multitudes of innocents dying). When placed in a predicament such as the one I described in my piece, we as a society have to error on the side of the lives of the innocent many, even though error is obviously a possibility in any human pursuit.