I'll confess that this post is baiting, but I cannot resist, having just nearly finished another Peter Singer book. Given the love that many on the Far Left have for Peter Singer, I have taken it upon myself to read his books so that I might be better able to respond to Singer's arguments.
Singer is one of the most radical thinkers in academia. Among other incredible things, such as suggesting that two year olds aren't human, he has indicated that were it up to him, he would euthanize his own mother. (She suffers from advanced Alzheimer's.) And yes, in true progressive fashion, his latest book, titled, The Life You Can Save, purports to lecture the rest of us about how we need to be more generous to the global poor among us.
You'll remember that Charlie Sprague CMC '10 has called Singer's argument in favor of rationing health care, "bold and courageous." Mr. Sprague, as Singler has, has also written in favor of euthanasia and so we might also ask ourselves just how much more Sprague thinks is "bold and courageous," but I leave that for others to judge.
In one of his pontifications for The Forum, Mr. Sprague writes against torture, which he suggests is both widespread and immoral. Mr. Sprague, who fashions himself a civil libertarian, except apparently when it comes to matters of race, life, and health care choices, argues that Barack Obama ought to eliminate detention and "torture" of terrorists picked up on the battlefield. Sprague's steadfast opposition to the detention of these terrorists -- many of whom have been picked up on a battlefield later on -- is all the more alarming when we think about how he rides roughshod over the rights of students to be free from racial discrimination or the freedom to live at whatever cost of our oldest Americans. It seems that he's a civil libertarian that promotes liberty for would be terrorists rather than the least among us: students and old folks.
Rather than recognizing that perhaps good men must do evil to protect the people, which is why Obama and Bush have similar policies vis a vis the terrorist threat in Afghanistan and Iraq, Sprague dismisses them as somehow both bad for us to "flagrant[ly] violat[e] international law."
I disagree. In fact, I think that having a Gitmo actually saves lives by working against the incentives to kill terrorists on the battlefield, which I suspect would prolong the war and make it even more intractable. Using coercive intelligence techniques, such as waterboarding, may be tantamount to torture, but if the stories surrouding Khalik Sheikh Mohammed are correct, then I have no practical reservations against it. (Sprague, no doubt, has heard this argument as it was repeated often -- and at length, as per usual-- by CMC debate coach John Meany.)
In his most recent book, The Life You Can Save, on p. 152, even Sprague's hero, Peter Singer, justifies using torture in an (admittedly) "highly improbable scenario."
Take the basic argument that torture is always wrong. Given the well-documented tendency of police and guards to abuse prisoners, and the low probability that torture will yield useful information, that rule seems likely to have the best consequences. Yet, I would argue, if I find myself in the highly improbable scenario where only torturing a terrorist will enable me to stop a nuclear bomb from going off in the middle of New York City, I ought to torture the terrorist. What the individual ought to do, and what the best moral rule directs one to do, are not necessarily identical.
As much as I am personally discomforted by torture, I recognize that it has been shown to save lives and I dispute the notion that a scenario, elsewhere denoted as a "ticking time" bomb is really all that implausible. On the contrary, it seems to me to be all too common, as I have written elsewhere, and as I have learned when I worked for my mentor, Alan M. Dershowitz, if we take a generous sense of what it means to have a "ticking time" bomb scenario. Yes, I think that nuclear weapons in Midtown might be more than a bit far fetched -- thank God -- but torturing someone to stop a suicide bombing or a 744 slamming into a building.
I concede that it may be difficult to draw a line between torturing one person to save the lives of two, but the kind of utilitarianism that would ration the health care of the dying should certainly take it up, if only for the intellectual challenge its adherents purport to seek.
2 comments:
I think torture undermines American moral superiority which is our greatest strength. Regardless, my real opposition to torture comes from the simple fact that it does not work. My sister, who just graduated with a journalism degree from USC’s Annenberg school, did a case study on this and she shared the information with me; torture is just ineffective. When I have a chance to talk to her I’ll try and get the articles she shared with me at the time but here are a few I found:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A2302-2005Jan11.html
http://www.military.com/news/article/exinterrogator-torture-doesnt--work.html
It seems to me that if torture is incongruous with the principles of western liberal democracy, and we, the United States of America, has the stated objective of promoting western liberal ideals, we should not use torture, especially since it has been proven ineffective and unreliable. Just think economics; cost and benefits. From that perspective torture clearly does not make the cut.
Nico,
Most proponents of the anti-torture crowd oftentimes argue that "torture just doesn't work" but totally ignore the very real historical fact that it has.
Proponents of torture don't argue that torture need be used in a court room, but rather, on the battlefield as a means of gathering intelligence or preventing future attacks. It is to prevent, rather than to punish, an offense. If you torture someone into a false confession, which is what the Soviets did, it is of little use to preventing future crimes. But, if you torture someone into revealing details of an incoming plot, and then they give you false information, you can just return to torture them again.
But as I argued here, all I have to do is find one case to prove that torture works for this entire argument to fall down.
(Citing the military as a source on this is problematic because they have an incentive to say it doesn't work and yet still use it. If it becomes widely known that the U.S. uses torture for preventative purposes, it becomes diplomatically more difficult to argue that it doesn't work for punitive purposes.)
I have found at least one case where torture prevented future harm.http://www.claremontconservative.com/2009/01/what-would-winston-churchill-do-hackery.html
The economic cost-benefit ratio are quite clear. Else why would anyone do it?
Most recently historians have recognized that torture has worked in Algeria against terrorism there. http://www.salon.com/opinion/kamiya/2009/04/23/torture/
I also find little evidence of it having any effect on our standing in the world, -- how do you know it was torture and not say, the war in Iraq or U.S trade policies-- or to have any deleterious effects on our status as a liberal democracy.
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