Tuesday, November 22, 2005

Defining torture

Over at ProteinWisdom, Jeff disagrees with me and Matt Welch on the subject of torture.

Jeff writes:

For my part, I have no trouble whatsoever with techniques like waterboarding, sleep deprivation, disorientation, extreme temperature change, etc—primarily because I don’t think promoting discomfort or fear constitute “torture.” But then this is precisely the point: when the definition of torture hinges on abstractions like “anguish” and “distress,” and on qualifications to those abstractions like “severe,” then the problem of defining torture effectively—and distinguishing it from other
techniques of active interrogation—becomes context and ethos-specific.

...

Cathy states her claim clearly: she is opposed to interrogation techniques that cause physical suffering. But as I’ve argued before, “suffering” is going to prove specific to the individual undergoing the interrogation, and if that is the benchmark for torture, then just about anything can come to count as torture, given the proper circumstances, and depending on the prevailing cultural attitudes ...

It seems to me that Jeff and some of his commenters are blurring the line between "physical discomfort" and "physical suffering" (the term I used). The use of the term "discomfort" to refer to such techniques as immersion in freezing water, exposure to extreme heat or extreme cold, or even being keept in stress positions for prolonged periods of time -- let alone inducing a sensation of drowning (waterboarding).

One of Jeff's commenters, Chris, may be on to something when he says that the definition of torutre is a bit like "the old, 'I can’t tell you what obscenity is, but I know it when I see it' kinda thing." Chris himself defines torture as "the attempt to extract information through the direct infliction of physical pain to break down barriers of resistance."

But here's a question: is there a clear line between "pain" and "discomfort"? I have memories of several occasions when a doctor or nurse told me just before a medical test, "You're not really going to feel any pain, just some discomfort," and a few moments later I found myself mentally assessing the accuracy of that statement in language that I generally prefer to avoid using on my blog.

Several of Jeff's commenters suggest this standard, with which I understand Jeff agrees as well:

Any form of physical or mental stress or abuse we routinely use on our own people going through boot camp, SEAL BUDS training, pilot S/E/R/E training, etc. shall be heretofore known as “not torture.”

First of all: do we know that these techniques (i.e. immersion in cold water) are used on prisoners in degrees no more extreme than they are used on our own trainees?

Second: if we use these techniques on our own trainees with the specific purpose of training them to withstand torture, does that mean it's not torture if we do it to prisoners?

Third: If the standard is "anything to which some people in our society are subjected with their consent is not torture," then why draw the line at military training? Not to be crude, but tens if not hundreds of thousands of Americans every year are subjected to a medical procedure that involves having a plastic tube inserted in their rectum. Would that be an acceptable thing to do to a prisoner?

Another poster writes:

I believe that the treshold of torture would be the threat or follow-thru of PERMENANT (sic) PHYSICAL HARM or the threat or follow-thru of DEATH. Any use of electricity is off the table.

Well, waterboarding does, in my opinion, involve the threat of death. Furthermore, "permanent physical harm" as a standard leaves room for a lot of things that would be considered torture even by most advocates of "coercive interrogation." If you apply a piece of red-hot metal to someone's skin, the burn will heal -- no permanent physical harm done. If you beat a man on the testicles with a rubber hose, no permanent physical harm there either. I'm sure one could think of many other examples.

A few more points:

As I said in my first post on the topic, legitimizing torture "creates the very real danger that at least some of the torturers will enjoy it, particularly if they have been primed to see the one being tortured as an evil person getting his just deserts." It seems to me that at least a couple of Jeff's posters clearly enjoy the prospect of terrorists being made to suffer. Call it "moral preening" or whatever you like, but I believe that this is a sentiment we simply can't condone. What are the chances that a U.S. soldier or special agent authorized to engage in "coercive interrogation" will take pleasure in the prisoner's suffering, and perhaps amp the "coercion" up a little beyond what is (supposedly) needed to extract the information? And when does this degrade us to a level most of us would find unacceptable?

Also: let's not forget that not all the prisoners are "terrorists." We could be inflicting this "discomfort" on an innocent person.

And finally, one of Jeff's posters asks:

Why take prisoners? If they cannot be squeezed for information they are not worth the effort to keep them. Just humanely shoot them at the front and save all the trouble.

I think it's a misconception that information can be extracted from prisoners only through interrogation techniques that include the infliction of physical suffering. Psychological manipulation can be quite effective in this regard.

18 comments:

Revenant said...

It seems to me that at least a couple of Jeff's posters clearly enjoy the prospect of terrorists being made to suffer. Call it "moral preening" or whatever you like, but I believe that this is a sentiment we simply can't condone.

I don't see what distinguishes "enjoying the prospect of terrorists suffering" from "enjoying the prospect of a serial killer spending his life in prison". They're both the same thing -- enjoyment at the prospect of a drastic and dehumanizing (but entirely appropriate) punishment being applied to the richly-deserving. There is nothing morally wrong about feeling joy when justice is fairly and deservingly administered.

And when does this degrade us to a level most of us would find unacceptable?

I would say that it doesn't degrade us at all if an individual soldier gets overzealous. What matters to us as a group is what we as a group decide to condone, not what individuals decide to do on their own. For example, I support drug legalization, but I draw the line at legalizing DUI. Should drugs be legalized, should I then feel shame when some pothead plows into a schoolbus full of kids? I would say "no", because I never approved of driving while high.

Anonymous said...

Re: Subjecting people to what we subject certain military trainees

Not only is something like SEAL training voluntary, but people undergoing that training can quit at any time.

On one side we have people who train themselves for the experience, ask for the experience, know that their trainers won't push them past a certain line, can quit at any time, and fully believe that the experience will make them a better person.

On the other side we have people that, well, may have trained themselves for the experience if that is possible, but probably don't ask for it, don't know how far their interrogators will go (part of the point), can't exactly walk away at will, and probably don't think that being treated this way is, golly gee, going to make them a better person.

Apples. Oranges.

Anonymous said...

Revenent: I don't see what distinguishes "enjoying the prospect of terrorists suffering" from "enjoying the prospect of a serial killer spending his life in prison". They're both the same thing -- enjoyment at the prospect of a drastic and dehumanizing (but entirely appropriate) punishment being applied to the richly-deserving. There is nothing morally wrong about feeling joy when justice is fairly and deservingly administered.

What distinguishes the two is the different between
(a) a person who has been found guilty of a specific crime via a criminal justice system being appropriately punished, and
(b) a person who has not been shown to have done anything wrong being inappropriately punished.

There are actually four boxes here, formed by
- found guilty through the rule of law, or not
- appropriately vs. not appropriately punished

(Actually, actually, there are nine: the third dimension is punishment vs. coercion for informational gain. But Revenant didn't seem to feel that was relevent, so I'll ignore that complication.)

Dean Esmay: Distinctions matter. The more nebulous we are, the more we disagree.

I do agree with this notion. And I agree that the best way to deal with the unlikely ("This one goes to 11") ticking-bomb game is to illegalize the act, and allow pardons in extreme cases.

As a nation that strives to be moral, we should draw a bright line. I know where I would put it (which I don't think, for the purposes of this post, is useful to relate); the important thing at this (early) point in the debate is that we should have a bright line. In order to advance that goal, I suggest one component must be oversight. How best should that happen? There are inherent problems with the concept of oversight in a civilian military. The consequences of the existence of digital cameras caught the military estabilishment by surprise with Abu Ghraib, but I'm sure there's policy about that now. What sort of better oversight can we use for whatever bright line we develop?

Anonymous said...

Here's a real simple definition, one that I've alluded to in previous threads -

If the practice in question would cause intense indignation and outrage in the US if it was applied by an enemy to American prisoners, it's torture, period.

Waterboarding would be considered an absolutely unacceptable technique if used on Americans, as would induced hypothermia, psychological abuse, etc., etc. Endless attempts to rationalize away these techniques, simply because it's Americans administering them, are profoundly noxious to anyone who's examined the widespread use of the same techniques by the Chinese, North Koreans, North Vietnamese, etc. throughout the last half of the 20th Century.

There is nothing morally wrong about feeling joy when justice is fairly and deservingly administered.

The problem with applying this view to torture is that you have no idea if justice is "fairly and deservingly administered," or for that matter administered at all. As Dean Esmay points out, serial killers are tried in public court, with defence, open testimony, and evidence - torturers work in secrecy, on the basis of murky charges and with no right to appeal. There's plenty of evidence that the vast majority of prisoners held at Abu Guarib could not be proven to be terrorists or even as harboring terrorist sympathies, but they all got lumped into the same mass accusation. What's been happening with the Army Intelligence Service and the CIA are not instances of "an individual soldier getting overzealous" - these were systemic abuses, rationalized and authorized right up the chain of command.

thecobrasnose said...

mark b. said:

Waterboarding would be considered an absolutely unacceptable technique if used on Americans, as would induced hypothermia, psychological abuse, etc., etc. Endless attempts to rationalize away these techniques, simply because it's Americans administering them, are profoundly noxious to anyone who's examined the widespread use of the same techniques by the Chinese, North Koreans, North Vietnamese, etc. throughout the last half of the 20th Century.

If our enemy in this fight would agree to take beheading off the table and put waterboarding at the far end of their torture of captives, I think Americans would be rather pleased.

Cathy Young said...

Jeff, thanks for the post (I'm goign to repost this on your site, as well).

Obviously, there are different degrees of torture. I don't think that exposure to extreme heat or extreme cold are the same as dropping people off rooftops, cutting off their tongues or breaking their kneecaps. But that doesn't make it "not torture."

That's a bit like saying that chronic bronchitis shouldn't be called an illness because to call it an illness would be to equate it with lung cancer.

In response to revenant:

I don't see what distinguishes "enjoying the prospect of terrorists suffering" from "enjoying the prospect of a serial killer spending his life in prison". They're both the same thing -- enjoyment at the prospect of a drastic and dehumanizing (but entirely appropriate) punishment being applied to the richly-deserving.

I agree that one of the purposes of criminal punishment is retribution. But there is a good reason we put serial killers in prison (or even execute them) rather than slowly torture them to death. For one thing, in the post-Enlightenment culture, we have come (laudably, I think) to place a very high priority on bodily integrity. I'm sure that quite a few criminals, if given a choice between (a) spending 25 years in prison, (b) a few hours of torture that leaves no permanent injuries, or (c) having a finger hacked off, would probably choose (b) or even (c). Yet we would consider (b) and (c) far more abhorrent than (a). Also, I think that punishment through loss of liberty penalizes the wrongdoer as a human being -- a moral agent who loses certain things that human beings value greatly (above all, autonomy). Punishment through physical pain reduces a human being to an animalistic level. Finally, I think there is a very slippery slope from enjoying someone's physical suffering because it's "justice," and enjoying it in a sadistic manner. Imprisonment or even execution, I think, offers no such sadistic temptation.

Revenant said...

What distinguishes the two is the different between
(a) a person who has been found guilty of a specific crime via a criminal justice system being appropriately punished, and
(b) a person who has not been shown to have done anything wrong being inappropriately punished.


First of all, that's a legal argument, not a moral one. Secondly, you don't need a trial to know that someone has done something wrong -- you need a trial to satisfy the COURT that someone has done something wrong. At the risk of Godwinizing this thread, Adolf Hitler was never convicted of anything. Anyone here prepared to agree with the sentence "it has never been shown that Adolf Hitler did anything wrong"?

I didn't think so.

Thirdly, the implication of your argument is that torture is fine and dandy so long as it takes place after a trial and gets OK'd by a court. I'm not sure that's really the argument you meant to make.

Finally, whether or not torture is legal is irrelevant to my point; I was responding to Cathy's assertion that there's something wrong with wanting terrorists to suffer. The question of innocence of guilt is a separate one -- the issue at hand is, once you're satisfied they are, in fact, terrorists, is wanting them to suffer ok?

Anonymous said...

No takers over at Jeff's place so I'll cross comment here:

Cathy concludes:
I think it’s a misconception that information can be extracted from prisoners only through interrogation techniques that include the infliction of physical suffering. Psychological manipulation can be quite effective in this regard.


Psychological manipulation is really only effective when the subject is tired, disoriented, etc. i.e. after the subject has been “softened up” – exposed to physical discomfort in the form of keeping them awake for extended periods of time, stress positions, extremes of heat/cold, etc.

Psychological manipulation is useless on a subject who is comfortably warm and rested, with a full belly, and with full knowledge of the limits his interrogators can go to.

Let’s take the question of guilt or innocence off the table. Assume there is no question about guilt. Then let’s make it even more interesting by using a real life example and make the subject a woman to really liven things up.

Saijida Mubarak Atrous al-Rishawi – the woman who failed to blow herself up in Jordan. Should she have been tortured to get information about the rest of her cell? (I have little doubt that she was.) She was: A) absolutely guilty of being a terrorist; B) certainly may have had worthwhile information like the identity of the bomb maker, others in the cell that did not participate that day, future plans.

So where do you stand? I say that in her case, methods beyond physical discomfort would be perfectly acceptable.

Revenant said...

Cathy,

Also, I think that punishment through loss of liberty penalizes the wrongdoer as a human being -- a moral agent who loses certain things that human beings value greatly (above all, autonomy). Punishment through physical pain reduces a human being to an animalistic level.

That's actually the best argument I've seen so far, in this forum, for why torture is wrong and jailing people isn't. I don't think I agree with it, though.

With all due respect to the Founders, our rights aren't really inalienable and never have been; we can lose our liberty, and even our lives, if we commit egregious violations of our unspoken contract with humanity. If we determine, for example, that a man has been raping, killing, and eating children, we put him down in the same manner we would a rabid dog. I have a very difficult time with the idea that a person who delights in the killing of innocents deserves to be treated like a human being. He has already forfeited his rights to life and liberty; I have no problem with stripping him of his dignity, too. There are some crimes for which no punishment we are physically capable of administering could come close to matching the original act.

I think that the real reason for the Constitutional prohibition on cruel and unusual punishment isn't the recognition that torture is immoral, but the recognition that while in some cases it IS moral it is best that the government not get involved in it. It serves the same purpose as the second and third amendments -- placing limits on government action that CAN be undertaken for good reasons, but which are frequently used by tyrants.

A final note -- I'm not really arguing that we ought to be torturing people. There are pragmatic reasons for not doing so (not the least of which is that it is illegal to torture foreigners and unconstitutional to torture Americans). I am just unconvinced that torture is morally wrong in the current context, and particularly unconvinced that extremely unpleasant non-torture (such as waterboarding) is morally wrong. My concern is with what provides the greatest net benefit to America with the least risk to American rights. If waterboarding doesn't work and enrages the Arab world, it is a dumb idea; if it gets us valid information on terrorists and only makes the Arab world somewhat more cynical, maybe it's not a bad idea at all. As to which of those two scenarios is true, I have no idea. I've yet to see an unbiased information source that dealt with the matter.

Revenant said...

The presumption of innocence implies that we must treat the Delighter like a human being until it's been ascertained he's been correctly classified.

That's a separate issue. The question here is what's to be done with him after he's been so classified.

Also, the presumption of innocence only applies in court settings. If I catch someone in the act of attempting to rape and kill a child, I have the legal and moral right to kill him. In a battlefield setting, I have the legal and moral right to shoot at the enemy, even though individual enemy soldiers might be entirely innocent of any wrongdoing. Presumption of innocence is not a universal standard. Actually, even in courts it is by no means universal -- much of the EU doesn't use it, for instance.

And the reason we execute prisoners painlessly is to get around the Constitutional ban on cruel punishment. The polls I've seen suggest that most Americans have no real problem with people being executed painfully (e.g. by electrocution). Look at how many jokes there are about prison rape; the well-being of criminals isn't a high priority for us. The reason we stopped frying people is that the courts took a dim view of it.

Revenant said...

So we are to live in a society where those who think they've caught me in the act are authorized to punish me as they see fit?

No, we live in a society where the use of lethal force in self-defense, or in the defense of another's life, is allowed. And we always have; the legal principle is older than America is.

Anonymous said...

If red ink, having dogs bark at prisoners from on a leash, and draping of the Israeli flag over shoulders of detainees are torture, then "torture" certainly should be allowed.

When the "anti-torture" movement disassociates itself from those who have such a broad definition of torture and present legislation worded such that the above acts would not get called torture, then we can ban it.

In the meantime, I am opposed to any legislation that could get American soldiers imprisoned for offending Andrew Sullivan's squeamishness over simulated women's bodily fluids.

Cathy Young said...

anonymous: like you, I have doubts about some of the definitions of torture that have been used in this debate, but why must Andrew Sullivan's sexual orientation be dragged into this discussion as the supposed reason for his revulsion at the idea of a detainee being smeared with fake menstrual blood? (Which, in his eyes, rendered him "unclean" and unfit to pray.) Boston Globe columnist Jeff Jacoby, a heterosexual conservative who supports the war in Iraq, has also expressed revulsion at the practice. Now, Sullivan and Jacoby may both be wrong, but why turn this into a "gay" issue? You're not doing your argument any favor that way.

Peter Hoh said...

I like the definition proposed by mark b. -- it's torture if we'd consider it torture when done to our personnel.

The problem is that we're dealing with an enemy who is working among people who look just like him. And those are the people whose hearts and minds we are trying to win.

Makes it tough on our troops. But that's the way it is, unless we abandon the idea of winning the hearts and minds of those in the middle.

Look, if we catch a guy transporting IEDs, I'm not all that upset if he's worked over. But if we're doing random sweeps for potential suspects, that's different. Our standards have to be very high for handling that group.

There's a thin line between "I don't care what happens to the people who are trying to kill us" and "I don't care about those people who look like the people who are trying to kill us."

I think once we allow torture for those who are clearly enemy combatants, we set the stage for torturing those who just look suspicious.

Call it moral preening if you will.

Anonymous said...

I don't believe I said anything about Andrew Sullivan's orientation, or even suggested it's the case of his squeamishness.

[reads back]

Nope, didn't think so. And, frankly, I don't think that's a fair inference.

Look at, say, the Dr. Pepper ads where the boyfriend is buying tampons for his girlfriend as an examle of doing "anything for love". Men tend to be squeamish about menstruation, regardless of orientation.

(Er, it isn't improper for me to suggest Sullivan has the foibles of a typical American man, is it?)

Andrew Sullivan was named because he's both one of the prominent "anti-torture" people and he has repeatedly treated a mere prop-backed lie as if it were the rack and thumbscrews. I don't see what his being gay has to do with anything I said unless one starts from the premise that any slighting reference to Mr. Sullivan contains a disguised reference to his orientation.

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Darren Demers said...

Well, waterboarding does, in my opinion, involve the threat of death. Furthermore, "permanent physical harm" as a standard leaves room for a lot of things that would be considered torture even by most advocates of "coercive interrogation." If you apply a piece of red-hot metal to someone's skin, the burn will heal -- no permanent physical harm done. If you beat a man on the testicles with a rubber hose, no permanent physical harm there either. I'm sure one could think of many other examples. online asian clothes shopping uk , asian salwar kameez online uk , asian bridal dresses uk , asian suits online uk , mens short kurta uk , ready made pakistani clothes uk , salwar suits online usa , white chikankari suit designs , pink chikankari kurti , chikan suits online , chikankari work kurti