Thought Experiments, ctd.

Damon Linker has up a response (check the second update) to my latest post at the Scene, in which he grants the importance of “hard-nosed analysis of whether the Bush administration was justified in torturing terrorist suspects in the specific, concrete circumstances it faced after 9/11”, but then objects:

… I think thought experiments like the one I lay out above also have their place, not because we should be open to torture (and other nastiness) in the abstract, but rather because such experiments might help us to understand and empathize with the moral complexity of statesmanship in times of genuine crisis (as opposed to during bouts of media-driven hysteria). And this understanding and empathy just might lead some to temper a bit of their indignation-fueled self-righteousness when they set out to judge the decisions of those who acted (and yes, perhaps erred in acting) to defend the common good.

I think we can read what Linker is saying here in two ways, neither of which seems to me to constitute an especially forceful objection. On the one hand, he might be saying that the mere fact that there are some situations in which a given behavior is permissible or obligatory shows that in any situation, whether such a behavior is permissible or obligatory is a complex question. But of course that’s false: having sex, for example, is sometimes okay, sometimes not, and sometimes in a morally gray area. But that there are situations in which it’s actually or questionably okay doesn’t show anything at all about the range of situations in which it demonstrably isn’t.

The other way to read Linker is as saying that awareness of the possibility of an agent’s misdiagnosing an actual situation – i.e., of mistaking, say, a situation in which torture is unjustified for one in which it is or might be – should be enough to bring us to sympathize with people who did something that we regard as unjust. But this is only plausible if the misdiagnosis in question was itself an understandable one, and so once again it seems that it’s the particulars of the actual case that really need to do the work: we need to look at the specifics and see, for example, whether the relevant actors in the CIA or the Bush administration could really have reasonably believed, say, that they faced anything like a ticking time-bomb scenario. It’s true enough that the question of why someone acted unjustly is relevant to determining the exact way in which he’s culpable – but there can be culpable ignorance, too, and even “honest” stupidity isn’t usually regarded as an exculpation.

Filed under: morality, philosophy, torture

“Against Thought-Experiments”

At the Scene, I explain why thinking clearly about torture means thinking clearly about real circumstances, rather than imaginary ones.

Filed under: morality, personal, philosophy, torture

Torture and Bad Faith, ctd.

A lengthy e-mail exchange with a reader who took issue with the tone of this post and some others made it clear to me that I ought to state my position on the relevant issues a bit more clearly (and calmly). In no particular order, then:

(1) I do think it’s possible for people of good faith to have reasonable disagreements over whether the legal advice provided in the OLC memos could have been offered in good faith, and indeed over whether it was as shoddy as many have claimed.

(2) I also think it’s similarly possible for such people to have such disagreements over whether the specific tactics approved in those memos, carried out as the memos stipulated, constituted torture. The same does not go, though, for the question of whether the tactics constituted cruel, inhumane, or degrading treatment, at least in the moral sense – it may be, though I would be surprised to find out, that these latter terms have a much narrower definition under the relevant national and international laws.

(3) I find it much harder, though, to think that there can be reasonable and good-faith disagreements over whether the sorts of tactics that the OLC memos approved were ones that would have a tendency to encourage torture and otherwise abusive and illegal behaviors down the line. There perhaps can, however, be some such disagreements over whether the right response to this tendency would be an outright banning of the tactics in question (which is my position), as opposed to the imposition of careful oversight of and clear legal consequences for those who were employing them.

(4) I absolutely don’t think it’s possible for people of good faith to have reasonable disagreements over whether what was in fact done by agents of the US government to significant numbers of detainees amounted to torture. It was really this point that I was driving at in the post in question, where I was trying to argue for the disjunction: either you have looked at the accounts of what we did and concluded it wasn’t torture, in which case you’re arguing in bad faith; or you’ve ignored the accounts, in which case your ignorance is culpable. Or, of course, you may have looked at the accounts and concluded that we did torture, in which case nothing short of head-splitting outrage is appropriate. And it’s only against the background of such outrage, I was further suggesting, that debates about the niceties of (1)-(3) above and (4)-(6) below can seriously be carried out, as opposed to functioning – as I think they often do – as attempts to keep people distracted from the underlying moral horrors.

(5) Granting (4), and granting the systematic and widespread nature of the abuses that have been revealed, I find it very hard to see how people of good faith can reasonably believe that responsibility for those abuses lies only with low-level agents and officers; it seems clear that a broader policy of torture was coordinated, even if – as seems unlikely to me, but see (1) and (2) above – the OLC memos weren’t intended to provide legal cover for it.

(6) Granting (5), I find it similarly hard to see how there can be reasonable and good-faith disagreements over whether there should be an investigation aimed at uncovering the relevant sources of authority and then punishing them as the law permits. And just as the Nuremburg Defense does not exempt the torturers themselves for responsibility from what they did, so appeals to legal cover or the circumstances they face does not exempt those who gave or ordered the giving of the orders.

(7) I do, however, think it is possible for there to be such disagreements over exactly what form such an investigation should take: whether a special prosecutor, or a truth commission, or a congressional committee, etc. The truth needs to be uncovered and the responsible parties prosecuted, but not without unnecessarily destroying innocent reputations or careers along the way.

Finally: It’s worth emphasizing that, as Mark Thompson has movingly written, all of this is about love for this country, and not – as so many have absurdly suggested – any sort of “hatred” for it. While I wouldn’t style myself an exceptionalist in the vein that Mark describes, it remains that I’m an American, and have as such a great love for this country. And it is precisely this love that leaves me so sickened by what we have done, and so committed to bringing to justice those who have committed such evil in our name. Sometimes it’s only by really, truly hating the sin that one can really, truly love the sinner.

* Edited to insert the new point (3) above – JS.

Filed under: government/law, morality, patriotism, torture

Condi Rice on Torture

First, from her infamous remarks at Stanford last (?) week:

… by definition, if it was authorized by the president, it did not violate our obligations under the Convention Against Torture.

Next up, from a Q-and-A with some elementary schoolers over the weekend:

… the president was only willing to authorize policies that were legal in order to protect the country.

I’m trying to think of a philosopher’s stock example that shares this structure, but so far I’m stumped. Any takers?

Filed under: government/law, torture

Torture, Bad Faith, and Culpable Ignorance

Via Andrew, Matthew Schmitz of Plumb Lines doesn’t think we should be imputing bad motives to torture advocates:

… when we do so we cease to do the important work of figuring out how so many well-intentioned people ended up supporting an abominable practice. As recent debates have shown, torture advocates used the ends to justify the means. But this justification was only part of the story, because the advocates never full acknowledged the moral reality, the evil, of what they were doing. They didn’t say, “I will do a profoundly evil thing to avert a massive loss of life.” They still felt the need to find a difference between what they were doing and torture. They said, “This isn’t torture, it’s just advanced interrogation.” Had they been unable to falsely describe what they were doing, the argument would have fallen apart.

I think that this is right, but only up to a point. Yes, a presumption of good faith is always an appropriate place to begin from; and yes, many defenders of torture are ignorant of the true nature of what it is that they’re defending and so unable to recognize that defense for what it really is. But eventually, such ignorance is no longer well-intentioned; as Schmitz rightly puts it, the supposed differences between torture and what it is that “we” do are not just found, but rather need to be found, are sought out and constructed from whole cloth and then upheld only by purposefully averting one’s from the facts on the ground.

Hence we hear about ticking time-bomb scenarios, even though there were no such things; how “just” playing loud music or interrupting a detainee’s sleep isn’t torture, even though it was never “just” such things that we did; how we didn’t really waterboard anyone 183 times, even though we plainly did; how what we did can’t be torture because it’s not nearly as bad as what they do; and so on. And yes, the insistence upon such pretend differences can indeed stand in the way of full acknowledgment of our own evil, but they can only do this for those who manage to remain in a world that consists solely of such justifications, a world that is kept hermetically sealed to the harsh light of truth.

At some point, the unwillingness to let in that light becomes as grave an evil as the inability to be moved by what it reveals. At some point, we can only say of those who continue to dwell in darkness that they do so of their own willing . At some point, ignorance passes into deliberate self-deception, naïveté into apologetics, good intentions into a willing blindness to the harsh reality of sin.

For a great number of torture apologists, that is a point that has long since been passed.

Filed under: torture

Reductio ad Historiam

How would history have judged a man who could have saved thousands of American lives but chose instead to adhere to some misplaced and misguided sense of idealism? – Michael Goldfarb

I’m sure that there are others who could do a better job of this than I, but for the time being how about: likely by way of the same morally repugnant rubric through which “history” “judges” as courageous and heroic a man who ordered the slaughter of thousands of innocent Japanese? Which is to say, only by ignoring those judgments which mark as “a crime against God and man” any act of war “directed to the indiscriminate destruction of whole cities or vast areas with their inhabitants”, or as a crime of war the “attack or bombardment, by whatever means, of towns, villages, dwellings, or buildings which are undefended”. Such judgments, however, have no purchase on the verdict of History, which moves undaunted toward the exculpation of the victors with the sort of disregard for elementary principles “idealism” that appeals to such empty abstractions are invariably intended to effect.

If the basic standards of ius in bello governing conduct toward civilians and prisoners of war do not apply to us, then they do not apply to anyone – and this is true no matter the cramp such standards may put on our desired modes of operation, or the corrective they may be to our typically congratulatory self-assessments. Sometimes it’s only by overturning the myths of our past nobility that we can face up to the sins of the present.

Addendum: Sorry, but while I’m on the subject:

I have not fully formed my thoughts on torture, yet. I think I am against it but with this one exception: if I have a choice between saving say, 5 million lives in a nuke-contaminated Chicago or being able to say, “but at least we didn’t waterboard that guy,” I am inclined to think I would go for torture. The 5 million might still die, it’s true, but at least I won’t have to answer for standing idly by and watching it so that my morals might remain intact. I will take the chance that my moral failing in that instance will simply join my other moral failings in life, and then God and I will work that stuff out.

Actually, you have to work out your moral failing, in either case, don’t you? If you torture, you have to work it out. If you allow millions to die because you’re “too good” to torture, that’s another moral failing you have to work out. And what is the moral failing? Not trusting that God will help you work that out.

Maybe when you don’t have an idea that you and God can work out your moral failings, you have a tougher time dealing with them? I don’t know. But “who saves a life saves the world, entire” may come into play here. I don’t want to kill the guy I’m torturing. But I want to save 5 million lives.

(This from a prominent Catholic blogger, mind you.) So far as I can make it out, the “reasoning” – such as it is – goes like so:

1. People who refuse to violate inviolable moral principles are really being selfish, by keeping themselves all pure just so that they can brag about it; so
2. It’s okay to violate inviolable moral principles; and furthermore
3. Even not violating an inviolable moral principle is a moral failing, both because of (1) above and also because
4. Really trusting God means trusting that he won’t hold you to account for violating inviolable moral principles; so
5. Torture away, the Church’s categorical proclamations to the contrary notwithstanding; since after all
6. The best way to “form your thoughts” on moral matters is just to ignore the relevant Christian doctrines and agree instead with your Republican friends.
   

Which, in short, is how we end up with this. Casuistry would be too kind, really.

Filed under: morality, religion, torture, war

Crimes of War, Now As Then

Via Will, Julian Sanchez tries to explain to Michael Goldfarb that the fact that Harry Truman was a war criminal does not mean that Bush and Cheney weren’t. Here’s key graf:

I realize it’s probably not a position taken often at the offices of the Weekly Standard, but the suggestion that the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki were war crimes is not, in fact, crazy or rare.  A Japanese legal review concluded as much two decades after the fact, Albert Einstein claimed before the fact (in a letter to Roosevelt) that the use of an atomic bomb would be a war crime, and indeed, the Wikipedia article devoted to the debate serious people have been having for 60 years contains a lengthy section titled “the bombings as war crimes.” To the extent it’s a controversial claim, it’s controversial because we don’t like calling U.S. presidents war criminals, not because it’s a difficult question whether obliterating entire areas inhabited by large civilian populations with the flimsiest of military targets as a pretext should now be regarded as a war crime.

Anyway, read the whole thing, and see this post for a first-hand account of what Truman wrought. I addressed the dangers of mythologizing the past at some length in this post, too.

Filed under: morality, torture, war

Christians, Conservatives, and Torture

Rod pronounces the Pew Forum’s finding that Christians – and Catholic, Evangelical, and frequently churchgoing ones in particular – are more supportive of torture than non-Christians to be “shocking”, but of course it’s not that at all. There are plenty of data showing that Christians’ attitudes toward abortion, contraception, and the rest don’t differ very significantly from those of the rest of society; the real factor, of course, lies in political affiliations, and I have little doubt that most of the relevant findings can be explained in terms of the fact that frequently churchgoing Catholics and Evangelicals are especially likely to identify as Republicans.

“What on earth are these Christians hearing at church?!” asks Rod. Perhaps it’s had something to do with there being a moral obligation to support the GOP in the face of the Democratic menace.

Update: Razib’s got the data. He concludes:

Politics & religion matter [in] shaping opinions. But to me it looks like religion has a much stronger independent effect on abortion than the death penalty. If I had to bet, I think torture would be more like death penalty.

Filed under: morality, politics, religion, torture

A Conservative Against Waterboarding

Manzi steps forward.

Filed under: conservatism, morality, torture

Torture and Secrecy

Reflecting on Ross’s debut from his new perch at – yes, them again – First Things, my friend and former colleague James Poulos is at his best:

The issue is not whether torture is capable of producing results, or even the quality of those results. A million monkeys at a million waterboards will eventually produce a confessional masterpiece. Under existential threat, the argument about torture poses the question of whether to start, not when to finish. And the justification of the decision to start has been that this decision had been kept secret. For Cheney to defend his record, he must not only, like a Soloflex salesman, harp on ‘results’; he must defend the secrecy of the methods that obtained them. Secrecy was essential to results.

This reveals an uncomfortable but important truth about how our argument against our torture differs from ‘the’ argument ‘against torture’ — the ethical or theoretical argument. That latter argument can be resolved in reference to the suffering of the victim or the corruption of the perpetrator. Ours, on the other hand, is not. Even someone who justifies the suffering of our victims or the corruption of our perpetrators cannot yet be finished. They must defend the secrecy; in so doing, they must defend trusting the government of a free and equal people to violate the terms of that people’s law, custom, and mores on terms which only the government is to set and know.

Filed under: civil liberties, government/law, torture