Torture

Let’s apply a little common sense to the debate about use of torture by police, military and intelligence forces.

If we have a man or woman in custody, who we know for a fact has information on where a nuclear bomb was placed in a major city, and when it will detonate, we are justified in using ANY means to extract that information from them. Whatever they suffer, it is secondary to the thousands or millions of lives to be saved, and even larger numbers of lifelong painful burns and cancers to be averted.

Of course, we are hardly ever so lucky as that.

More likely, we have a few dozen people in custody, some frightened raw recruits, some innocent people who happened to be swept up, maybe a couple of hardened veterans, and even those may or may not know anything useful.

Torture will induce a man or woman who knows nothing to make up anything to stop the pain. We send our best forces off on a wild goose chase, put civilian populations through all kinds of annoying security measures, and accomplish nothing. We might even miss something that was really going on, because we were so confident of the lies we extracted by use of torture.

Torture will inspire an innocent man or woman to join whatever it is the torturers are fighting against, out of sheer personal hate for what they went through. It will also inspire their families, neighbors, even people who read about it in the newspaper, to fear and loathe whatever principles we thought we could offer to the world. Statements obtained through torture should never be admitted as evidence in any court: they are never reliable.

For those who have the luxury of considering pure spiritual concerns, freed from the gross material concerns of everyday life, it is true that to inflict torture dehumanizes the interrogator. They come back to civilian life someday, and they think its OK to treat their spouses, children, neighbors, coworkers, more or less the same way. There is no evidence that God calls us to torture, maim, or terrorize.

There are many good reasons not to torture prisoners, no matter what they have done or tried to do. There are exceptions to every rule. There are ways every rule, and every exception, can be abused. To forbid torture is a good policy. If we make an exception for a very good reason, we need to be sure we know exactly what we are doing and why. Then we need to have enough oversight to be sure it really was a good reason, and won’t ever be done again for any lesser reason.