On Torture?

A week ago, the Small Wars Journal (which is an excellent site, and an antidote to the ignorance of gung-ho bloggers everywhere) had an article by Malcolm Nance entitled Waterboarding is Torture… Period. The title sums up all you need to know about the article; Nance, a consultant with a bagful of experience in counter-intelligence relating to Our Favourite Enemy.

Nance wrote the article in response to the refusal by Judge Michael Mukasey, a nominee for the position of US Attorney General, to define waterboarding as torture, but with a wider audience in mind.

We live at a time where Americans, completely uninformed by an incurious media and enthralled by vengeance-based fantasy television shows like “24”, are actually cheering and encouraging such torture as justifiable revenge for the September 11 attacks.

He certainly found that wider audience, but the frightening thing is that there seems to be a huge number of people out there who support the practice. I’m writing this post mainly to clarify this issue for myself, in the face of the two main justifications that I’ve seen proposed in support of waterboarding as an approved method of interrogation for US forces intelligence services. I don’t have high hopes, frankly; far more intelligent and informed commentators have weighed in, but the pro-waterboarding lobby seems resistant to any logic other than that of 24.

Let’s remind ourselves of the definition of torture, shall we? Article 1 of the Convention against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment states

For the purposes of this Convention, the term “torture” means any act by which severe pain or suffering, whether physical or mental, is intentionally inflicted on a person for such purposes as obtaining from him or a third person information or a confession, punishing him for an act he or a third person has committed or is suspected of having committed, or intimidating or coercing him or a third person, or for any reason based on discrimination of any kind, when such pain or suffering is inflicted by or at the instigation of or with the consent or acquiescence of a public official or other person acting in an official capacity. It does not include pain or suffering arising only from, inherent in or incidental to lawful sanctions.

I include this definition only to give us a baseline for discussion; I subscribe to this definition, I oppose torture absolutely and I count waterboarding as torture. A large part of my opposition to torture comes from studying the Algerian Civil War, in which torture became a key part of French strategy, and the subsequent effects that it had on the tortured, the torturers and the military overall. The rest of it comes from working with and alongside people who have been victims of torture, particularly in a human rights context.

The arguments that support waterboarding fall into two camps. The first camp argues that “waterboarding isn’t really torture.” The justifications for this are generally that a) waterboarding doesn’t cause any permanent damage, and b) the US uses it to train their soldiers and spooks, therefore it can’t be that bad, can it? Neither of these are valid defenses.

Usually, this argument is based on the notion that waterboarding doesn’t inflict any permanent physical damage, but the definition of torture (as given above) doesn’t require it to cause permanent damage. In any case, waterboarding is near-drowning somebody without killing them - and if you think that drowning never causes physical damage (up to and including death), you really have no idea what you’re talking about.

Waterboarding is in essence similar to a mock execution - you’re making the victim think they’re going to die, and they have to believe that they will die in order for it to be effective. We don’t sanction mock executions, and we shouldn’t sanction waterboarding for the same reason - they do cause mental damage, which can last for years.

The argument that waterboarding can’t be that bad because the US uses it in training fails to recognise the difference between voluntarily submitting to the treatment and having it administered by people that you trust in a public environment that you control versus being forced into it by people who view you as an enemy as part of a prolonged interrogation process in a secret location . For those that don’t see the difference, here’s a clue: the first will cause you a limited amount of stress for a very short period, the second is likely to traumatise you for life.

The second argument is that “torture is a-okay!” and this is where it gets scary. There are a large number of people out there who feel that torture is justified if it saves lives. This is usually presented in the form of the ticking time bomb scenario, an argument which is fallacious in so many ways that it boggles the mind, and it’s exactly this mentality that Nance refers to as “enthralled by vengeance-based fantasy television shows” such as 24.

Firstly, the ticking time bomb scenario that is often used to support this argument is a thought experiment. It’s subject to the same caveats as any other thought experiment - it’s a simplified form that helps us to identify the key issues around a particular subject. It is not a legal precedent, it is not a normative statement and it is not the only way of approaching the issue; but unfortunately some people who lack a subtle turn of thought have latched on to it as all three of these things.

The biggest caveat about thought experiments is that they tend to fall apart as soon as they arrive at Reality Central. Ironically enough, the ticking time bomb scenario first appeared during the Algerian Civil War - in a novel called Les Centurions. In real life, of course, nobody seems able to actually find a single example - Bob Cochran, one of the creators of 24, has said that

Most terrorism experts will tell you that the ‘ticking time bomb’ situation never occurs in real life, or very rarely. But on our show it happens every week.

Real life is a lot more complicated than any thought experiment, and a lot of virtual ink has been spilled explaining this in explaining just how much more complicated. The key points are: information obtained under torture is no more reliable than information obtained without, and in some cases less reliable; if we allow torture of “bad guys”, we must necessarily allow torture of anybody who might have the information we require, guilty or not; the argument appears to require decisions to be based on arithmatic rather than morality; and so on and so forth.

I do find it strange that many of the people who favour the torture argument on the utilitarian grounds offered by the ticking time bomb scenario would be unlikely to accept utilitarian arguments in other areas of life. This makes me suspect two things; firstly, pro-torture advocates have very little direct experience of torture, either through perpetrators or victims; and second, the ticking time bomb argument is just a post hoc rationalisation for something that they agree with but feel uncomfortable admitting without justification.

This post hasn’t really added to the debate - there’s very little that I’ve written above that hasn’t appeared elsewhere. All I can say is, read Malcolm Nance’s post, make up your own mind and, no matter whether you are pro- or anti-, I hope you never have to suffer waterboarding or any other form of torture.