Why in
2006 are we engaged in a public discussion of torture? Why do prominent
lawyers and columnists promote torture? Why at this time are we reading memos
written by top U.S. officials that justify their power to torture? Why do
hear our Vice-President affirm that torturing by means of water is
justifiable? Why does our Congress pass laws to legalize heinous acts of
torture?
Why do
we learn that our military has been torturing captives? Why do we learn that
the CIA, continuing a long history of black deeds, has operated secret and
not-so-secret torture hideaways in foreign lands?
Our
officials simultaneously deny that torture is occurring under their command,
while they (A) seek and pass legislation that absolves them of culpability of
past crimes of torture, (B) seek and pass legislation that allows them to
torture captives, and (C) tell us that torture is necessary for the safety of
the American public.
Why
are all these events happening now? Didn’t nations agree to outlaw
torture? Why is the U.S. now (again) flouting the Geneva Convention? Is
torture necessary to save American lives and prevent another 9/11
catastrophe?
Why
now?
When
individual murderers or serial killers torture their victims before killing
them, sensational stories are published. These dreadful cases are so uncommon
that we learn the names of the killers. Isolated individuals rarely engage in
torture. We do not hear about torture murder being a systematic feature of
day-to-day life.
We
only begin to hear about systematic torture when conditions are ripe for it.
Torture becomes widespread when conditions exist that bring out bestial and
cruel behavior in human beings and break down the usual moral inhibitions.
What
are these conditions? (1) Torture typically arises when there are powerful
figures of authority like high priests, kings, emperors, generals,
bureaucrats, dictators, and presidents who possess the power to torture,
often without detection; (2) Torture will rise if there is greater public
indifference, sympathy, acquiescence, or even approval. Polls suggest that
about 58 percent of Americans are against torture and 36 percent would allow
some degree of torture. The world averages are 59 and 29 percent,
respectively. (3) Torture arises when there exists an enemy – real,
imagined, or exaggerated – such as religious heretics, Algerian
resistance fighters, terrorists, insurgents, or unlawful enemy combatants.
Even
at lower levels of authority, such as with police forces and prison
authorities, one-sided brutality, mistreatment, and sometimes torture arise.
The enemies in these cases are common criminals, hippies, rioters,
draft-dodgers, or simply unruly people who seem to threaten the police, the
prison, society and the social order. Again, cruelty and injustice are more
likely when the public goes along with it.
Usually
it is war or violent struggle against an enemy that give rise to state-run
and state-approved torture on a noticeable scale. Often the enemy is viewed
as a shadowy conspiracy against society and its authorities.
The
torturers may want confessions to scare off other heretics or insurgents or
to show they are doing their job. They may want information concerning the
conspiracy whose dim outlines they fear. They may be part of the
state’s control apparatus over their own population.
The
conspiracy or enemy is seen as a danger that must be stamped out by any
means, even immoral and evil means like torture. The moral element has to be
negated or overcome. It takes training or indoctrination to produce torturers
who overcome their compunctions and consciences. It takes a system. The U.S.
military has provided such training to the U.S. Army Special Forces in the past
with the involvement of the CIA. Between 1946 and 1984, the U.S. military
taught torture at the School for the Americas in Panama, later moved to Fort
Benning, Georgia. The CIA has been the main locus of U.S. torture
capabilities.
The
list of authorities, usually state and government authorities, that have
tortured is very long, covering many places, times, and forms of government.
There were four separate Inquisitions in the Middle Ages: French, Spanish,
Portuguese, and Roman. English kings have tortured. American soldiers
employed water torture in the Philippine-American War (1899–1902)
against natives. The CIA has used torture for decades. The British government
operated a secret torture center in London during World War II.
America’s South Vietnamese ally tortured. To this can be added Nazis,
Communists, Fascists, South American dictators, Middle Eastern countries
including Israel and Iraq, etc.
States
use torture to maintain control over their own populations, that is, to
suppress dissidents, rebels, or enemies within. And they use it to maintain
control over insurgents in distant territories or colonies.
Today
we face all the conditions that tend to generate torture. We have powerful
officials of state who want torture, long-established intelligence and
military bureaucracies that train for torture, a divided public whose
feelings do not run high against torture, and shadowy enemies.
The
torture bureaucracies
A good
many articles tell us that torture is ineffective and explain why it is not
effective. Interrogation along humane lines is said to produce better
results. These articles counter the impression left by U.S. officials that
torture has saved American lives.
There
is some truth to the theory that torture is ineffective, or at least that
it’s not as effective as one might believe. There’s enough
plausibility to this theory that it pays us to think through what such an
idea really means.
But at
the same time, torture surely accomplishes some of what it sets out to do,
even if it does so inefficiently. Didn’t Saddam Hussein hold his rule
partly through torture? Didn’t Stalin and Papa Doc Duvalier use such
methods? Didn’t Mao Zedong employ extensive torture in his 1968
Cleansing Class Ranks campaign?
Suppose
that torture is actually a poor way to achieve the results it’s aimed
at. Then why do we observe it cropping up again and again under the same
conditions? Is it an error? Quite possibly it is.
I’ve
argued in the past that reliance on the state is a longstanding error, in
part because the connection between the state’s actions and the effects
of its actions are hard for people to discern and disentangle from other
causes. Furthermore, the state propagandizes on its own behalf and its
accountability is diffuse. These factors make it hard for people at large to
develop an appropriate, reliable, and strongly-held folk wisdom that the
state actually harms rather than helps them.
Torture
presents a similar situation. In the U.S., the episodes of torture occur once
a generation or so, and society has no solid institutional memory of how well
or badly it works. It has been 35 years since the Vietnam episode.
The
authorities can spin the torture theme to their own ends and manipulate
public opinion. What works against their success in selling torture is the
strong moral inhibition against its use, so the authorities hammer away at
this by emphasizing the expediency of the torture. Since the public has no
strong experience or knowledge base about torture, a large fraction becomes
persuaded that the moral rules can be broken for the sake of saving lives.
If
torture is largely ineffective, why is it perpetuated? It’s like many
government programs that go on and on and on. First and foremost, torture is
not done by runaway individuals within the state. Torture is done via
bureaucratic or hierarchical methods within a state’s power structure.
One set of people orders it done. Another set of people sets it up. Another
set of people actually does it. The torture is veiled in secrecy. The
torturers are removed from the powers above them that endorse the torture.
All the parties involved feel a need to justify that what they are doing
works. But there is usually no systematic checking up that the torture is
effective.
Afterwards,
members of the bureaus and the public may possibly become aware of anecdotal
reports from disenchanted torturers, rival interrogators, and those tortured
that suggest that the torture didn’t achieve its aim. But such
spasmodic reports have little impact on the broad public or even on the torture
bureaucracies that always shy away from taking responsibility for anything
anyway.
In
government, few really know what is going on. Few know whether it’s
doing any good or not. Few care. Many are protecting themselves.
Whistleblowers are ignored or dealt with. Public outrage is deflected.
The
FBI, which may believe in benign interrogation, will have no strong interest
in promoting its views against the CIA, which may believe in brutality. The
higher-ups are disinterested, or interested only in knowing that there have
been some good results that they can trumpet in order to make themselves look
good. Even if there are no good results, there are always those officials who
want to show that they are doing something to protect the public.
The
whole situation is typical of the state and the state’s bureaucracies.
A
second set of factors has to do with the top officials. Like the public, most
of the higher-ups are also ignorant of whether torture is effective or not.
This means that most officials do not have strong feelings one way or
another. Furthermore, being men and women of power, these officials are less
likely to be as morally inhibited as the typical citizen is. In such a
situation, if there are a few officials who have strong pro-torture beliefs,
they can persuade the fence-sitters to activate or expand the torture
capabilities that already exist within some of the state’s bureaus.
The
bottom line is that while many citizens condemn torture and get sick to their
stomachs over it, and while many innocents and captives are being destroyed
by the torture apparatus of the state, the state’s cruelties grind on.
The
utilitarian fallacy
The
main argument in favor of the current round of torture is the utilitarian one
that it has saved or is saving American lives. We do not have enough
information to verify whether this statement is true or false, but neither do
those who make it and they can’t get such information. If the knowledge
that Americans torture captives hardens resistance against the U.S. and
creates more insurgents, then torture has cost American lives. Torture may
cost the lives or sanity of some torturers. It may teach Americans to ignore
other moral rules and generate further evils. Because the utilitarian cannot
measure or know the multiple negative effects of torture like these, he is
incapable of ever proving the statement that torture saves American lives.
There
are deeper objections to the utilitarian defense of torture. In the
utilitarian ethic, a bad act is allowable if its good consequences more than
outweigh the bad. This is supposed to provide a guiding rule by which people
live. But we must ask "Who is going to do the bad act, such as the
torturing?" Will it be each of us in our daily lives? Will we each make
judgments that we can do evil acts because we think the good coming from them
outweighs their evil? Without moral guidelines, how can we possibly make such
judgments, and won’t they lead to chaos? How can we judge amounts of
good and bad and the ramifications of our evil acts?
Suppose
anyone can commit an evil act if he believes that the good it generates
outweighs it. Won’t the moral distinction between good and evil simply
break down as everyone does what he pleases according to his own judgment?
Won’t the distinction between evil-doers and good-doers break down? How
can we distinguish a victim from an aggressor if the aggressor argues or
believes that he is doing good by some malicious act?
It is
clear that utilitarian rules can’t be used at an individual level as a
general way of life without creating chaos. Can they possibly be used at a
group or social level? This raises more questions. Who can oversee this
process? Who judges the amounts of good and evil? Who says it is all right to
euthanize old people so that the living will live better? Who draws the
lines? The state? Its employees? Will some authorities be allowed to commit
these crimes on behalf of everyone else? But then who monitors them and
decides whether what they are doing has a net benefit to everyone else? Who
controls them? Even if a group process is followed, the distinction between
good and evil, between evil-doer and good-doer breaks down.
Suppose,
however, that somehow standards of good and evil are maintained. The
utilitarian ethic leads to a few people, or some of the people, or even a
majority of the people making life and death decisions for the rest. But in
this process, whether it be done by individuals or by social groups, parties,
or the state, there are no fixed standards of good and evil. The
utilitarian standards, if they exist at all, are man-made. This means that
they are subjective, changeable, and biased. This means they are open to
abuse. Changing rules of good and evil must ultimately lead to confusion,
clashes, and social disorder.
Instead,
suppose that we have a fixed rule. Murder is forbidden, period, because it is
inherently evil. It’s evil because it violates God’s commandment.
We have a once-and-for-all judgment from above, from beyond mankind. We have
a clear line that avoids confusion. We have a moral law that everyone can
understand and implement. We have a stable and constant rule, an absolute
rule that prevents abuse. Such a law makes the human being inviolate. We
either have such a law or we do not. Without such a moral law, we have an unsettled
utilitarian ethic. We have chaos, bias, and injustice. With such a law, we
have order, freedom, and justice.
The
torture quiz
Take
the following quiz.
1. Does
the threat of death lie behind torture?
2. Is torture cruel?
3. Does
torture break the will?
4. Does
torture cause betrayal of honor?
5. Is it
permissible to wreck the body of a captive?
6. Is it
permissible to extract or steal information from a person’s head under
duress?
7. Is it permissible
to steal or injure a person’s mind? Health? Dignity? Peace of mind?
8. Is
torture a physical aggression against a defenseless person?
9. Is
torture of a captured enemy soldier the appropriate response to their
participation in their defense or aggression?
10. It is good to
relieve the pain and suffering of others. If one inflicts pain and suffering
on others, is this not then evil?
You
may grade the quiz yourself. If you think this quiz is biased or if you favor
torture, you may add an additional unanswerable question: Does torture save
lives?
Or
take the one-question quiz: Would you want to be tortured, to be treated
inhumanely and cruelly?
A few
religious words
In
Genesis 49, Jacob said of two of his sons: 5 "Simeon and Levi [are]
brothers; Instruments of cruelty [are in] their dwelling place. 6 Let not my
soul enter their council; Let not my honor be united to their assembly; For
in their anger they slew a man, And in their self-will they hamstrung an ox.
7 Cursed [be] their anger, for [it is] fierce; And their wrath, for it is
cruel! I will divide them in Jacob And scatter them in Israel."
Simeon
and Levi are condemned for harboring instruments of cruelty and using them in
their wrath against men and oxen.
Psalm
74 says: 20 "Have respect to the covenant; For the dark places of the
earth are full of the haunts of cruelty."
The
CIA’s covert prison facilities are termed "black sites" in
official documents. God’s covenant and laws are opposed to these places
of cruelty.
Ezekiel
34 speaks against the cruelties of the misbehaving shepherds of Israel: 4
"The weak you have not strengthened, nor have you healed those who were
sick, nor bound up the broken, nor brought back what was driven away, nor
sought what was lost; but with force and cruelty you have ruled them."
Leviticus
19 speaks of mistreating the deaf and blind: 14 "You shall not curse the
deaf, nor put a stumbling block before the blind, but shall fear your God: I
[am] the LORD."
Is it
coincidence that the U.S. military blindfolds and hoods its captives, or that
it deafens them and others with obnoxious sounds?
Pope
Paul VI promulgated Gaudium et Spes (December 7, 1965), in which was written:
"Furthermore, whatever is opposed to life itself, such as any type of
murder, genocide, abortion, euthanasia or wilful self-destruction, whatever
violates the integrity of the human person, such as mutilation, torments
inflicted on body or mind, attempts to coerce the will itself; whatever
insults human dignity, such as subhuman living conditions, arbitrary imprisonment,
deportation, slavery, prostitution, the selling of women and children; as
well as disgraceful working conditions, where men are treated as mere tools
for profit, rather than as free and responsible persons; all these things and
others of their like are infamies indeed. They poison human society, but they
do more harm to those who practice them than those who suffer from the
injury. Moreover, they are supreme dishonor to the Creator."
Later,
in Veritatis splendor, August 6, 1993, Pope Paul classified all of these acts
as "intrinsically evil."
Conclusion
Speaking
of torture is difficult when American soldiers are taught to behave
barbarously in wars such as Vietnam and Iraq. It is hard to speak of torture
when hundreds of thousands of innocent people are slain in and because of
American-style warfare, or when America sets off bloody civil wars such as in
Iraq.
Torture
is the next step beyond the harsh, hostile, brutal, trigger-happy, callous,
and demeaning behavior of American soldiers that is so often reported in the
press. If torture is counter-productive, so is this behavior. Both are
products of state bureaucracies.
The
American public is altogether too lenient with its purse and its sympathy for
any American military enterprise. It is altogether too tolerant of war-making
and war-supporting Congressmen.
Americans,
how great our wickedness on the earth has become!
Michael
S. Rozeff
Michael S. Rozeff is a retired Professor of Finance
living in East Amherst, New York. He publishes regularly his ideas and
analysis on www.LewRockwell.com .
Copyright © 2009 by LewRockwell.com. Permission
to reprint in whole or in part is gladly granted, provided full credit is
given.
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