The Debate on Torture: War Against Virtual States: Responses
Shue, Henry
AMORALLY SERIOUS person does not pre tend to an absolute objection to torture that he or she cannot support. Too much is at stake to indulge in extreme but indefensible positions that...
...DISSENT / Summer 2003 n 91...
...government currently subcontracts the most awful torture to its supposedly less civilized allies, such as the governments of Morocco and Saudi Arabia...
...I am not a brave man, but I couldn't take my little airport thought-experiment very seriously...
...If I had had the London police on the phone ready to do my bidding, I honestly believe that I would have said, "Let's risk it—let's gamble that we can honor our principles and that the children (and old men) will not only not die but will live in civilized countries...
...If the world's superpower, with all its high technology weapons, cannot defend itself without using torture, how can incomparably weaker and poorer groups like us manage without torturing captured fighters who might provide valuable life-saving information...
...Perhaps the pitiful U.S...
...HENRY SHUE is a senior research fellow at Merton College, Oxford...
...It is as easy to imagine the perfect torture as it is the perfect murder...
...The Washington Post documented on December 26, 2002, that the U.S...
...Any sane defense of torture attempts to justify only the exceptional act in the extreme emergency...
...Conceivably, they would live, not die, but they would live in a world in which even the strong had abandoned restraint and sunk further into barbarity...
...and British invasion of Iraq had been captured, my first thought was, "I hope they are not tortured...
...One could have a nice philosophical argument about whether it is more contemptible to arrange for third parties to do the dirty work or to act on one's supposed 'convictions and dirty one's own hands...
...We imagine that the person we hold knows exactly what we need to know—not outofdate information overtaken by events...
...But torture falls beneath the minimal standards of civilization, and there are powerful reasons to protest any advance permission for such degrading actions...
...At most, we should consider retrospective forgiveness for someone so convinced that he confronted the rare exceptional case that he was willing to risk severe punishment if decent people were not later persuaded that he had been right...
...Wouldn't you endorse torture just this once, great moralist...
...We imagine that the information that will be revealed will be sufficient to prevent the terrible catastrophe—not that the catastrophe will simply be re-scheduled for a different time or place...
...When you would simply be following the leader, the precedent is irresistible...
...What if today is the day of the follow-up to 9/11, and in some London basement is a man who knows that there is a bomb on AA155...
...But what about "selective terrorists" for whom this cause is noble, this situation desperate, and this possible payoff enormous...
...How many U.S...
...We imagine we have exactly the person we need—not some poor devil who looks like him to agents who have parachuted in from another culture...
...military personnel 90 n DISSENT / Summer 2003 bravely and professionally performing their duties in the U.S...
...Looking into the faces of the families around me innocently waiting for their trip to Boston, I reflected on the fact that this was not only or mostly about me...
...When I heard that U.S...
...Justifications for torture thrive in fantasy...
...Too much is at stake to indulge in extreme but indefensible positions that collapse under the weight of reality...
...Of course...
...Mainly, I thought that a dedicated terrorist would insist to the police that the bomb was on the later United flight to Dulles, until the American flight to Logan had already exploded...
...Having already suffered so much, why shouldn't he try at least to accomplish his goal...
...I I SN'T THERE a cost to insisting on minimal civilization...
...Either way, ultimate responsibility lies with those who give the order, even if they can only bring themselves to whisper and wink...
...No doubt there have been perfect murders, possibly also perfect tortures in which only some temporary degrading treatment of only a few people yielded spectacularly valuable information that prevented horrific catastrophes...
...invasion of Iraq...
...If these mothers and children died from terrorism because I would not endorse torture, it would be terrible...
...We have no guarantee that a precedent of refraining from torture will be followed by others, but we can be sure that a precedent of engaging in torture will be followed...
...We imagine that the person will reveal exactly what we need—not simply vomit and die, or descend into a psychotic state (of course torturers become better at it when they have more practice...
...But the question is whether public policy should presume the likelihood of these imagined neat cost/benefit bonanzas or the greater likelihood of snafu, excess, and metastasizing degradation...
...How could we condemn all terrorism while permitting some torture...
...An initial reason why the United States should never engage in torture is precedent...
...But what kind of world would these children live in if I added torture to the terrorism while imagining that I was saving their lives...
...I first read Levinson's essay in the departure lounge at Heathrow airport, waiting for American Airlines flight 155 to Logan in the first week of the U.S.-U.K...
...More frightening than the permissive power of precedent is that for the United States to use torture would undermine its logic in condemning terrorism...
...Formal exceptions invite widespread abuse, especially where a judicial system is under the degree of intimidation inflicted by the Bush administration since 9/11...
...Sanford Levinson is morally serious and intellectually honest and judges it necessary to offer a reluctant kind word for torture that might contribute to the avoidance of disaster...
...For some terrorists, extremity is not necessary...
...The question is, what guidance do such imaginings provide for the real world in which things tend to go awry and to have unexpected consequences...
...judges have so far shown the wisdom and courage to resist less extreme assaults on civil and human rights...
...For the ultimate reason not to inflict agony upon other human beings is that it is degrading to all involved: all become less human...
...If those circumstances justify "selective torture" (by the most powerful state in human history), why don't they justify "selective terrorism" by profoundly threatened true believers...
...terror is a way of life, just as torture is ARGUMENTS a way of life for some torturers, and it is easy to explain why neither terrorism nor torture should be a way of life...
...AMORALLY SERIOUS person does not pre tend to an absolute objection to torture that he or she cannot support...
...Torture seems to be the ultimate in efficiency, the shortcut to end all shortcuts...
...efforts at "deniability" are a tiny, hopeful sign of surviving conscience...
...It is difficult enough to resist when you would be the exception if you gave in...
Vol. 50 • July 2003 • No. 3
