Deceit Culture 4by Uriel Wittenberg (uw@urielw.com)December 17, 2005
"[O]ur identity and sense of selves as the good guys" — which is the "true basis" of America's power — is being lost as the nation equivocates about torture, comments Jane Stitelman in a letter to the editor in today's New York Times. Another letter today, by John Schmierer, says:
[H]ow did we as a nation ever get to the point of having a debate over the use of torture? I feel the same way. It disgusts me that this abomination is being seriously discussed. It should be unthinkable, in a society claiming decent values, for such immorality and obscenity to be legally sanctioned in any situation. But it is not unthinkable, these days. In an age when popular movies feature torture, our culture has entered a zone of smuttiness and degradation from which I doubt it will ever again emerge. Few children now will grow up "believing without question that the United States would never torture anyone under any circumstances." Many will be unmoved by the practice. They will consider it just and appropriate. Such thinking is backed by the likes of Charles Krauthammer, a public intellectual who ridicules the idea of not using every means of coercion imaginable to extract information from a terrorist[1]:
What are we supposed to do? Give him a nice cell in a warm Manhattan prison, complete with Miranda rights, a mellifluent lawyer, and his own website? Krauthammer scoffs at the antipathy to torture expressed in Washington:
The McCain amendment that would ban "cruel, inhuman, or degrading" treatment of any prisoner by any agent of the United States sailed through the Senate by a vote of 90-9. The Washington establishment remains stunned that nine such retrograde, morally inert persons—let alone senators—could be found in this noble capital. Krauthammer also scorns the concerns of the Council of Europe over America's secret detention centers:
The Council of Europe demands an investigation, calling the claims "extremely worrying." Its human rights commissioner declares "such practices" to constitute "a serious human rights violation, and further proof of the crisis of values" that has engulfed the war on terror. The gnashing of teeth and rending of garments has been considerable. In fact, I think teeth-gnashing is exactly what right-wingers like Krauthammer do habitually. The stupid sarcasm is an escape valve for the right-winger's characteristic rage and apoplexy, the thirst to enact suffering, the seething lust to deliver punishment:
Anyone who blows up a car bomb in a market deserves to spend the rest of his life roasting on a spit over an open fire. At times, as the maniacal morality reaches a point of lip-smacking grimness, one almost senses the onset of uncontrollable hysteria:
We do not [torture for reasons of justice or revenge.] We should not do that. Ever. [...] Vengeance is mine, sayeth the Lord. His, not ours.... If Khalid Sheikh Mohammed knew nothing, ... I'd be perfectly prepared to throw him into a nice, comfortable Manhattan cell.... But as long as he had useful information, things would be different. Very different. A profile of Krauthammer in the Times[2] says "he has arguably articulated the administration's stance [in the torture debate] better than President Bush or his cabinet secretaries." The Times, less revolted by the entire subject than some of its readers, includes wry humor in its discussion. Mentioning that Krauthammer proposed the public rationale later used by the White House in dropping its nomination of Harriet Miers to the Supreme Court, the article concludes:
Mr. Krauthammer has subsequently gotten credit for giving [the administration] a plan. And therein, he says, is a unifying theme of his recent writings. Referring to Ms. Miers, he said with a twinkle: "I didn't want to see her tortured."
Why — since it appears not to be self-evident — is torture wrong? The case for torture is based on simpleton logic — the idea that it can deliver great benefits for the forces of good. The standard illustration is the "ticking bomb" case in which information must urgently be extracted from an evildoer. Numerous torture opponents assert that torture is not an effective means of extracting information. This wishful but implausible thinking is the wrong counter-argument. Among the right counter-arguments is the observation of the abundant evidence, all around us in the world, that institutions are highly imperfect. Established rules are not scrupulously upheld. Communication fails. Nuance is lost. Errors are made. Beyond the inadvertent errors, we also know well that bureaucracies deviate from their nominal objectives, their functionaries' motives are impure, and the purposes and ideals of organizations of all kinds are often ill served. Krauthammer paints a nincompoop's fantasy — a regime that would breach the last frontier of barbarity and inhumanity rationally, applying the ultimate ghoulish, nightmarish methods to advance the interests of morality and good:
The principle would be that the level of inhumanity of the measures used (moral honesty is essential here—we would be using measures that are by definition inhumane) would be proportional to the need and value of the information. Interrogators would be constrained to use the least inhumane treatment necessary relative to the magnitude and imminence of the evil being prevented and the importance of the knowledge being obtained.... This mystical degree of faith in authority represents a staggering, grotesque level of naiveté and folly. The powers Krauthammer proposes to delegate are powers that cannot be entrusted to anyone. It is a certainty, in any system of fallible human beings and institutions, that errors and abuses would occur, and that the tortured would include innocent victims. But when simpleton logic is applied, that's a price worth paying. To illustrate, suppose we apprehend someone who's in the wrong place at the wrong time. It's a fair guess he's guilty but we're not sure. A faceless operative puts the odds of guilt at 90%. The ticking nuke would vaporize half a million. What to do? Well, in a "rational" bureaucracy, the technicians would dispassionately do the math. If the fellow is left unmolested, they'd find, the expected loss could be gauged as
(where one "point" is one lost life for the good guys). Next to such a defeat for the forces of good, how seriously could arguments about a single person's well-being be taken? This is where Krauthammer's infantile "rational moral calculus" leads: A nightmarish future, ruled by opaque algebraic formulas, in which innocent people can be legitimately snatched off the streets or out of their homes and consigned to fates worse than death. The right-wingers love force, deterrence, domination, subjugation, punishment. But if we put real rationality in the service of moral goals, it leads to moral methods: less fierce moralism, less greed, less hatred; more honesty, understanding and tolerance; improved justice, education, and opportunity; and a more enlightened appreciation for the good things in life. As for the ticking bombs — well, there is death and carnage ahead. We know that. But let at least one side of the battle represent morality and sanity. No one can calculate accumulated effects into the distant future. But we are unlikely to be better off if all parties to the struggle embrace evil.
Continued: Deceit Culture 5.
Notes(Use your browser's BACK function to return to endnote reference above.)[1] Krauthammer quotes excerpted from The Truth about Torture, by Charles Krauthammer, The Weekly Standard, December 5, 2005. [2] "He Says Yes to Legalized Torture," New York Times, December 11, 2005.
Home > Deceit Culture INDEX |