On torture: coldfury.com
"First, as some of Radley's commenters pointed out, this distinction between American citizens and non-citizens is completely spurious in my view: the issue is what we view as acceptable, and human, behavior under any circumstances, period. And what if an American citizen is working for the terrorists, and is part of their organization? Why shouldn't the same methods be used on him, if you're going down this road?
But here are the key questions, which Radley seems to have forgotten completely, although he remembers them in other contexts: Radley wants the "system ... packed with safeguards." But, Radley, the "safeguards" are going to be implemented and utilized -- and probably disregarded in a crisis situation -- by the very same government that you have nothing but contempt for with regard to any number of abuses of individual rights. But now suddenly, you're going to trust them to observe the niceties about how to properly go about torturing someone, after torture itself has been endorsed as an appropriate official policy?
And, to be blunt about it, forget this crap about restricting it to "limited circumstances." Libertarians in particular should remember this: if you grant government the power to do anything, such power has never, and will never, stay restricted for long. Any grant of power grows and grows; such is the pattern of every single grant of government power that you can name. And it will be precisely the same with government- sanctioned torture.
Moreover, forget the crap about its being restricted to non-Americans in times of war. Can't you hear the arguments now? "Oh, but look how well torture worked in that case. If it works that well, why shouldn't we use it to prevent domestic crime? If a criminal (and don't ask us for details, but we just know he's a criminal; trust us on this) knows about an awful crime that is about to take place, why shouldn't we use torture on him, too? It'll get results -- and all we care about is protecting life and property. And that's what you yourself think we should be doing, isn't it?" Again, this is the pattern of the growth of every single government power in the history of all mankind. What in the world makes you believe for one second it would be any different with torture?
Also, as Jim points out, any information gained from torture is largely speculative -- even if you think you know of an instance where it "worked." I can tell you that, as far as I'm concerned, if you start torturing me, I'll tell you everything you want to know (or at least everything I think you want to know, and that you want to hear), whether it's true or not. Anything to make you stop -- and I think the vast majority of mankind would react the same way.
But the much more important point is the general policy one: no grant of government power remains restricted for long, and it is the height of insanity to believe that any government will itself properly observe the "safeguards" that you think you've built into the system. And again, most hard-core libertarians would not accept this kind of argument for one moment on any other subject -- but suddenly, when we're confronted with this particular issue -- and we're (maybe) saving American lives, and we're dealing with "monsters" -- all those lessons go right out the window.
Yes, terrorists are indeed monsters -- but that is no excuse for us to grovel in the filth with them. And one last practical point: grow up, people. Don't you think that, in certain circumstances, torture is used now anyway? I think it probably is; in fact, I'm almost sure of it. I cannot believe for one moment that if some law enforcement people had someone in custody, they were absolutely sure he was a terrorist, and they were almost certain that he had critical information about a looming terrorist attack -- well, what do you think they would do in such a situation today, with or without official government "approval"?
But to sanction the use of torture as an official instrument of government information-gathering is to reduce ourselves to the level of barbarians. It probably won't work, at least not much of the time -- and if it did, that would be even worse, and the government would soon want to start using such methods more and more widely, precisely because of the "success" they had had.
Besides all of that, it is simply monstrous -- and it absolutely appalls me that anyone would contemplate it seriously for even a moment. And I view it as a deeper issue than even Jim Henley states. It's not only, as Jim says with a passion I greatly admire, "because we're the fucking United States of America."
To adopt Jim's style: it's because we're fucking human beings -- and we know the value of a single human life, even if the rest of those bastards don't, and never will." |
