Via noveldevice:



I'd like to take apart a scenario that often comes up in a "I don't really support torture, but..." context. It goes something like this.:

A large school has received a terrorist threat. At 1pm, when students are all in afternoon classes, a bomb will go off and the entire place will be blown to smithereens. It's 12:00pm now. Sitting in front of you is a member of the group that made the threat. You're sure that this person is a member of the group, sure that the group made the threat, and sure that this particular person knows how to find and disarm the bomb.

Do you use torture to find out what your subject knows?

It seems so simple at first. A school full of innocent children, a suspect you know is the bad guy, a race against time. Of course you use torture, right? Of course, in that special circumstance, it's a no-brainer, right?

Or is it? How often does this scenario really happen outside of action movies and TV shows? How sure are you that your subject really is the bad guy, and not someone who looks similar to the bad guy, or has the same last name, or just got swept in with some neighborhood roundup?

How sure are you that he'll crack under the torture and tell you the truth? Funny thing, people don't like feeling frightened and in pain. Professional interrogators report that subjects will make up whatever story will get the torture to stop, and as such, the quality of information gained under torture is generally quite poor. How sure are you that what your subject just blurted out in the throws of agony is really true?

Maybe he has a high tolerance for pain and didn't crack when you pulled his fingernails out, but if you bring in his wife and young kids and start working on them, he might give you what you want. His wife and children haven't done anything wrong except be related to this guy, but suddenly you're thinking of subjecting them to the same cruel treatment. How do you get around that? Do you tell yourself that their lives, their dignity, are worth less than others' because of their guilt by assocation?

Or maybe it's not one hour before the bomb goes off but several, or a small office building instead of a big school, or you don't even have a bomb threat yet, just some hint that this guy and his group might be planning something like that? Do you torture him then? How far do you take this nasty calculus? How much do you let your once-clear line blur? How many people do you dehumanize in your quest for justice, forgetting that justice by way of dehumanization isn't really justice at all?

What happened? Everything seemed so certain. You were so sure.

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Let's be honest with ourselves. No doubt torture occasionally elicits credible information, but that isn't what it works best for. What it does do effectively is inspire feelings of fear, humiliation, and submission. Those are not noble motivations. Even so, even if the information you get out of torturing someone is good, consider that there are things decent people, and decent societies, ought not to engage in. Surely torture is one of them. Surely we can do better than this.