The Pragmatic Case Against Torture (UPDATED)

There's been a lot of discussion about torture lately, since it seems Dick Cheney wants to inflict pain and suffering on more than just America's wildlands. At times, it does make you wonder what happened to him as a child to make him so interested in inflicting pain on others against their will in secret.

But that's neither here nor there.

What strikes me as interesting in this debate is that some liberals have expressed reservations about making the pragmatic case against torture. But it's the pragmatic case that is truly the most effective. Article after article from experts indicate that torture gets us bad information.

If the safety word in Cheney's torture dungeon is "Al Qaeda worked closely with Saddam" then some poor soul is going to confess that when the S&M gets a little too heinous. That's what a safety word is for and it is precisely why torture fails.

So what's the problem with making this pragmatic case?

Ostensibly, it's that doing so is selling short on our values, because even if torture did work, it would be morally wrong. Personally, I'm not so sure I buy that. If someone really has planted a nuclear devide in New York City and we can reasonably believe that torturing the suspect will tell us where this bomb is so we can defuse it, I think that it would actually be immoral to not do anything we could to extract the relevant information from this person. Call me a utilitarian. Fine, whatever. I just don't think that we should value the terrorist's desire to be free of bodily harm more than we value the millions of New Yorkers' desire to live.

And, again, I don't think that's an immoral stance. I think it's a widely held view among Americans. In fact, one of the reasons I'm really not bothered by McCain's torture amendment is that I truly believe that if an example as egregious as the one I laid out ever occured, an honest President could tell the American people precisely how he instructed the law to be broken in order to prevent the deaths of millions and tell the Congress that if they believe it to be necessary that they may impeach him or her.

Of course, that would hardly be necessary and I think most Americans would be grateful for the action. But the other fact of the matter is that the extreme hypothetical is merely that. It's fertile ground for philosophizing about ethics, but it's such an unlikely scenario that it is a poor basis for public policy.

America should outlaw torture, not because it's unethical for our government to inflict pain on bad people, but because it is unethical to do so when it doesn't work and because, in the long run, it does virtually nothing to strengthen our security and may actually undermine it.

UPDATE: As Phillipe Sands makes clear in a piece in the San Francisco Chronicle, architects of America's torture policy should also be concerned about the Pinochet precedent. Pinochet was arrested overseas for ignoring international law. Theoretically, Americans who did the same could be treated similarly. Just because John Yoo gives little regard to the Geneva Accords does not mean that international judges and prosecutors will similarly take such moves with a grain of salt.

--Matt Singer

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