Why torture is sometimes good

Imagine we had someone in our custody on September 10 who we knew could tell us how to prevent the murder and destruction of the next day. Now, I think it would be unpleasant, but hardly morally impermissible, to take a cheese grater to his face or make him watch Caddyshack II until he gave up the information we needed.

This seems like a no-brainer to me. But it doesn't to a lot of readers who chastised me for condoning torture. So I thought I would use this opportunity to offer my grand theory of democracy and explain why I don't think guilty people should have rights.

First, let me clarify. Guilty people do have rights in our system, and that is necessary and good. But it isn't necessary and good for the reasons most people think. Guilty people (by which I mean murderers, rapists, practitioners of mopery) have rights only because we aren't sure they're guilty. If we were sure, they would have no rights.

Take this torture thing. Now, I am not "pro-torture." I agree with numerous readers when they say torture is morally corrupting. Even when we torture those who deserve it — pedophile rapists or the "comedy" troupe "The Capital Steps" come to mind — torture demeans the torturer, and the whole society that condones it.

But let's keep in mind that there are all sorts of things which are similarly demeaning. Cops have to do things everyday, including kill people, which they find personally degrading. Nobody wants to wake up a homeless veteran and tell him that he can't sleep on a grate. But sometimes cops have to do that. Occasionally, prison guards are forced to treat grown men with families like animals. But we still need prison guards. And soldiers are sometimes ordered to do horrific things which cause them trauma for years, even decades — but sometimes those horrific things are necessary (and sometimes they're not). Torture isn't all that different.

Torture is against the law in Israel (we can't say the same about most, if not all, of her neighbors). But Israel's Supreme Court grants an exception, the so-called "ticking bomb" excuse. If Israeli authorities are positive there's a bomb about to go off somewhere which will kill untold numbers of innocents, they can use "physical pressure" — or some other sanitized euphemism for torture — on someone in their custody, if he has information about how to prevent it.

Imagine if the FBI announced that we were in a similar position on September 10, but we declined to whack the guy around "because torture is always wrong." Six thousand people die; the country loses billions of dollars which could have been spent more productively. Hundreds of thousands of people lose their jobs, and hundreds of millions live in fear. Do you think the guy who made the decision not to fill a pillow case with a bunch of oranges and make like Barry Bonds would come out a national hero? Do you think the gang at an NYPD funeral would say, "Hey there goes the conscience of the nation!"?

Torture needs to be against the written law, but — like police brutality — it is recognized by the hidden law (see "Restoring the Hidden Law") as a sometimes necessary tool for protecting society.

Still, we must remember that the written law should forbid torture not because some people don't deserve it, but because it's so difficult to figure out who those people are.

This is part of a general misperception — advanced by universities, courts, and Hollywood — that it's always wrong to be unfair to guilty people. Shows like Law & Order tell us that if a cop uses racial profiling or an illegal search, that means that maybe the murderer should go free. A host of Warren Court rulings (Mapp v. Ohio, Gideon v. Wainwright, and of course Miranda v. Arizona, to name just three) established the notion that if you didn't catch guilty people according to the rules, they were, in effect, not guilty — or not punishable, which is essentially the same thing.

(Teenagers have a similar philosophy which says that if parents "invade your privacy" to find your stash of pot and dirty magazines, it's unfair when they punish you because they had "no right" to snoop around the back of your sock drawer. America's most famous teenager, former president Bill Clinton, subscribed to a similar argument by asserting that he was unfairly caught "mentoring" an intern.)

As dissenters noted, the Court could have punished the cop for breaking the rules, rather than rewarding the criminal. But that's a topic for another day. The point here is that we give all these procedural rights to guilty people because it's the only way we've come up with to guarantee the rights of innocent people.

Look at it this way: If we discovered that all career criminals had earlobes shaped like human thumbs and that absolutely no innocent people do, it would be entirely just and fair to "profile" all people with thumb-lobes. Cops could stop cars for "driving while thumb-lobed," and there would be nothing wrong with it whatsoever. Similarly, if cops were psychics and could discern with absolute clarity the guilt of perpetrators, it would be silly to read them their rights.

The problem is that criminals don't have recognizable birthmarks, and cops aren't psychics. Which is why we have arguments about which procedures are fair and just, and which aren't. To the extent that it's wrong to racially profile, it's wrong because we shouldn't hassle innocent people because of their race — not because we shouldn't hassle the guilty. The guilty are, well, guilty. We give the guilty lengthy and expensive trials only because we want innocent people to have a chance to avoid being unfairly punished. If innocent people were never arrested, there would be no reason to give guilt people trials. We'd move straight to sentencing.

Nothing in this article comes remotely close to justifying deliberate torture. Nothing that happened in the last 5 weeks justifies it either. We have truth serum, which creates a state of mind in which individuals beecome candid; I suggest we use that in cases where national security and lives are at stake. Torture is pure, repugnant nonsense.

Torture is never good, but is sometimes necessary. Killing and maiming people is never glorious, even when it is done to protect your country. But there are times when it must be done.

I like the National Review, but this writer knows nothing about war or participating in it. It makes you dirty, but you go on because you must. In quieter moments, you ask for God's pardon and earnestly hope that your deeds will make it unnecessary for your son or daughter to do the same.

With 20/20 hindsight, if Mohammed Atta were in custody on Sept 10th and we knew an even was planned for the 11th we would be irresponsible not to "torture" him for info

Cops often need to inflict some pain to get criminals to comply with orders, drop a weapon, etc. Happens all the time. Interrogators regularly inflict a small amount of psychological pressure with long hours, lack of sleep, bright lights, etc. The only question is the limits.

In this case we need to review those limits, just like we did the stupid limits on assasination. I don't think anyone is talking about boiling their skin off and plucking out eyeballs and fingernails. But I for one am glad the FBI is looking at our methods for ways around the law. Modern non-lethal non-harmful technology could be employed in creative ways I'm sure.

That would be just like us, humanitarian torture -- followed by food and bomb drops.

I read the whole thing, and clicked through to Restoring the "Hidden Law"

Author states:

A black cop can administer justice in a black neighborhood without making the "victim" a racial martyr or flunky to be exploited by the likes of Al Sharpton.

Not true. Black cops are labeled Uncle Toms, and Sharpie exploits even them.

He might be right that we should torture the guilty; but he gives no support other than emotional.

His non-emotional logic is here:

"...Israel's Supreme Court grants an exception, the so-called "ticking bomb" excuse. If Israeli authorities are positive there's a bomb about to go off somewhere which will kill untold numbers of innocents, they can use "physical pressure" — or some other sanitized euphemism for torture — on someone in their custody, if he has information about how to prevent it.

So it's simply a matter of being a lesser evil, just like assassinating terrorists. But why assasinate or execute someone when they have critical info that can save countless lives? What if that info concerns a nuclear or smallpox weapon in an unknown building in NYC? The guy is sitting there smiling and laughing about the coming annihilation of millions of people. At that point there should be no hesitation. Legal issues aside, all bets are off in a chemical/biological/nuclear war scenario.

You don't know how desperately I want to agree with you. Yet I'm sure you know that necessity creates its own rules. The wolf chews off his leg to escape the trap; the survivors of an airplane crash eat the corpses of their fellow passengers to survive.

Torture is ALWAYS morally indefensible. You can never claim it is good. Yet there will be situations in which great agony will be inflicted either way, by action or inaction. Your freedom will be as real as the couple who chose to jump from the World Trade Center, rather than burn to death. In a way, we all stand condemned on this planet. Our only hope is the existence of a merciful God who will understand and forgive what we cannot.

I agree that it may lead down a slippery slope, but we may also walk off a cliff if we don't do it. Maybe we should put procedures in place for investigators to obtain federal warrants for extracting information from a person in certain specific cases - like WMD threats or ticking bombs. I don't think federal judges would ever stoop to approving warrants for torturing kids who steal car stereos.

Wait, maybe we should bring paddling back for the kids while we're at it. Darn, it causes pain so I guess not.

Excellent post and analogy. We're like an animal fighting for our survival, and may need to bite off a finger to save our body. The "finger" in this case may even grow back over time. That's what is so great about our Constitution.

Torture doesn't have to be physical to be effective.

Heck, some of these guys have been incarcerated for 5 weeks now. That's time enough to hear 840 hours worth of "God Bless America." And just for fun, when their beady eyes get droopy, the volume should go up...not gradually, of course...just some instantaneous 200 decibel outbursts to keep them on edge, and keep them from sleeping.

I'm sorry, but we need to get inside the heads of these terrorists, for the safety of the entire country. The FBI can't be tiptoeing around worrying that the ACLU is going to file suit against them. They've got a job to do.

I smell BS. Mr one_particular_harbour suggests we would all be afraid of doing the "dirty work" (Oh yeah, right, if lined up around the block means afraid) and that it would stain our reputation and inflame others. Yet he of course wants to beat the crap out of someone for daring to practice freedom of speech! Do we hand out awards here for most hypocritical post?

Unfortunately the world, like all liberals, despises and resents America no matter how much we feed the world and coddle our criminals. And Israel is hated but respected by the Arabs for their survival instinct. If they didn't play hardball they wouldn't exist. At least Israel doesn't chop off hands and beat the hell out of people for entertainment like some Arab countries.

One of the reasons I am, and always have been, so proud to be an American is the fact that we are indeed different from any other nation. We DO NOT use torture as a means to extract information and we treat POWs well and with dignity. We are better than that.

Also, torture has many times proven to be a less than reliable means of obtaining information. By the time information has been extracted, it is usually out of date and of little value. Also, after enough torture, most victims will say anything to make it stop--whether or not they have knowledge of any value. Thus, the results are often misleading and a waste of time.

From what I understand, we have, over time, developed more effective ways of getting information from POWs, etc. than torture.

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