Once again, the subject of torture has become the topic de jour, suitable for front page fodder. Now for me, listening to Joan Rivers for more than two minutes is cruel and unusual punishment, such that it makes one want to retire to the local sawmill to relax and avoid the nasal screeching. So biting analysis of current red carpet fashion trends aside, what can we say about torture?
First and foremost, there is substantial evidence that prolonged torture can produce whatever testimony is desired by the torturer. It is this argument that is used to establish that torture is a useless and misbegotten tool of interrogation and that the United States of America should never stoop to its utilization. Before proceeding along these lines, it is instructive to compare some methods of torture that have been well documented and in frequent use over the last few centuries of civilization. I might add that many of these were not taken to be cruel and unusal punishments, just standard fare.
One of my favorites, used in the nautical realm, is keel-hauling. In this instantiation, the subject is bound with separate ropes, one binding his ankles and another his hands. He is ‘turned off’ the bow of the ship with a rope on either side and dragged to the stern of the ship, passing his body under the keel of the ship. Not so bad one might say if the bloke was really good at holding his breath. An understandable misconception if you are envisioning smooth streamlined steel hulls. But during the epoch when this was prevalent, hulls were primarily wood, and wooden hulls became fouled by the tendency for small marine creatures (mollusks and barnacles) to attach themselves to the hull. A clean hull within three months would become totally encrusted dropping five to ten knots off of the hull speed. Barnacles are shellfish with particularly nasty sharp edges on their shells so keel-hauling a bloke is the equivalent of pulling him over a cabbage grater with very large teeth. Needless to say, the ability to hold one’s breath was not a significant determining factor. The survival rate was generally low enough that the threat of keel-hauling was sufficient to make the most recalcitrant subject open up like a book.
One favorite of the Middle Kingdom consisted of having the subject ingest the sprouts of small plants which would proceed to grow in the subject’s intestines causing extreme pain. And with all of that accumulated acupuncture knowledge, the location of ganglia clusters and accumulation of nerve endings provided ample opportunity for inventive interrogation techniques. Bamboo shoots under the fingernails is one example — the fingers are a very high nerve density area.
Ah — Merry Ole Englande. One interrogation technique extensively used was the drawing and quartering procedure. Granted that this method was somewhat terminal, useful only for extracting the last expression of truth before facing the final arbitrator. In this procedure, ropes were attached to each arm and each leg and then to horses. After the ropes were tensioned, the horses were prodded to walk forward with the result that the thighs and upper arms were dislocated from their joints, and I mean ‘hyper-extended’. Following this procedure, the quartering consisted of using a sharp axe to separate the already extended limbs. It should be noted that the head was allowed to remain attached so that the appropriate confession could be obtained (interspersed, we assume with screams). Again, perhaps cruel, but by no means unusual.
American Indians, those noble inhabitants of the southeast (before forceable relocation to the southwest), devised a plan where by the subject was buried to the neck. Confessions were a matter of timing — did the interrogator get his answer prior to the wild animals and crows getting their desserts. Once in the southwest where digging was difficult, the subject was tied to hills of fireants, sometimes with sweet sap from trees and plants rubbed into the hair.
As one can see, the list can go on and on in ever more graphic detail. We won’t even get started on the Spanish Inquisition. After all, anything done in the name of God, and with the moral authority of saving your immortal soul, simply can’t be cruel and unusal punishment.
The US Navy Seals utilize a Survival, Evasion, Resistance and Escape (SERE) program to harden special forces troops. This is a case where the training involves cruel and unusual procedures specifically because it is believed that the enemies of the US will use such methods on our forces. This training allows forces to know what to expect (and likely provides motivation for the ‘evasion’ portion of the training.) So the US certainly does use torture—specifically on its own troops as a training aide. This brings to light a minor point—if torture is of limited efficacy, why train people to resist? Why not just instruct forces to capitulate and tell the enemy what it wants to know? The answer is that once you provide information you are of no further use, and can be eliminated (read killed). So survival is, in part, an exercise of holding off sufficiently long to deny the enemy a reason to eliminate you.
The part that people seem to miss is that all of this is an exercise in psychological warfare. People want the United States to be viewed as that “shining beacon on the hill” and above such despicable behavior as actually torturing people. While we would like to engrave in a stone tablet the noble statement that the United States will never participate in cruel and unusual punishment or condone torture, the minute we do so puts the United States at a severe disadvantage. Yes, it might be policy that torture is never used, but as soon as that policy is made public, and the enemy becomes aware of it, captives will clam up and spout words like ‘Miranda’ or ‘Habeas Corpus’ knowing full well that they only have to wait. al Qaeda will have a training program in American criminal law faster than you can say IED.
By not enunciating a policy, the United States has the psychological advantage — the perpetrator doesn’t know for sure that he won’t be tortured. After all, it is likely that torture is the standard procedure in his home kingdom, so it would be prudent to assume that the United States would do it also. It is the thought of torture, not torture per se, that evokes the desired response. What the perpetrator needs to know is that if you mess with the US, bad things will happen. Period. End of Story.
Certain politicians are using the noble sentiment of the people of the United States, who by and large find torture abhorrent, to serve their narrow political ends. Most of them likely know better (or perhaps I give them too much credit), but the short term political gains outweigh the benefit to the United States at large. The techniques which have been shown to be effective, and have reportedly been used, don’t approach the barbarity of the techniques developed by the early Spanish (Inquisition), the Dutch (“keel-hauling”), native Americans (ant-hills), and even Genghis Khan or Pol Pot.
Pundits may debate the ethics of torture and presume to hold America to a higher standard, but when America plays by the rules, and the other side has no rules, has memorized your rulebook, and games the system, the game gets tiring rather quickly. We should hold ourselves to a higher standard, but it’s not necessarily in our interest to broadcast what that standard is.
October 12, 2007 at 1:44 pm
This is essentially a utilitarian view of the United States. It’s not a bad view, but it always leaves me feeling somewhat … blah.
If America is just another country, one of many, then my feelings towards her are going to be pretty weak, and the sacrifices I’d make pathetic.
But if America is a propositional country, a city on a hill, a country with a purpose, then things are a different.
I believe it is a mistake to view our struggle with Islam-o-facists-nut-jobs as a war or a police action. It’s better thought of as an idealogical struggle. In an idealogical struggle you should be willing to broadcast a standard on torture even if it makes your fight harder on a tactical level.
“For what is a man profited, if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own soul?”
October 14, 2007 at 4:27 pm
First of all, welcome back APO—it’s been a while.
Anyway, thought provoking but I’m going to disagree.
Torture, it seems to me, is very similar to cannibalism among domestic animals. Once the barnyard gets a taste for its own flesh, it spreads and is very, very hard to stop short of Farmer McDoodle wiping out the entire herd and starting over. Maybe a better metaphor is the now well-known “broken window” theory of crime. A little bit leads to more and soon things get out of control.
I don’t pretend that defeating Islamic radicalism—the 21st Century likes of the anarchist and other radicalized movements of the late 19th Century, out of which, given the essential crucible of World War I, came Communism, Nazism and Fascism—will be easy, cheap or without bloodshed. But going down the “action movie” trope that our fine Vice President seem to believe is just bad. I’m with AL on this: Losing the moral high ground is not good. Perhaps this is the sort of thing the high command can turn a blind eye to now and again, but making it a part of accepted policy at the highest level is a major mistake. John Yoo deserves a trip to the waterboard for what he did.
October 15, 2007 at 9:20 am
It depends. I agree with the other comments that moral superiority is key: it helps with the public opinion war both locally and globally (utilitarian) and it helps with the feel-good-about-ourselves war (moralistic, nationalistic). You pit Mills vs Kant and come out with a policy for both.
Now that’s what I say for policy and standards. Broadcast that to everyone in the universe and you don’t lose much.
It’s a different angle, as the question was posed in the last debate, when you know an individual knows something. Like: you’ve been intercepting radio communique for the last week about an impending biological attack on D.C., organized by Ralph Nader and carried out by Karl Rove (why else did he leave office?). Then you capture Nader. You *know* he knows about it. This is no longer a policy issue. This is no longer, “let’s see what we can get out of him.” As Bill Clinton said, “Would I beat it out of him? Yes.”
So have a policy exception when there’s a “clear and obvious reason,” which probably needs to be approved by a judge. Then you have a catch when there is a clear need. In addition, you can also have have your psychological interrogators have leverage by pretending they have a reason when they get a guy they know nothing about, which satisfies the desire of the post author (“it’s the threat of torture, not the torture itself”).
October 15, 2007 at 12:54 pm
morose noncoformist wrote:
###It’s a different angle, as the question was posed in the last debate, when you know an individual knows something. [snip]###
The problem with the “24” scenario is that real intelligence is almost never like this. The number of false positives where you the intel guy *think* that someone knows something urgent is way, way smaller than the number of times that someone actually *knows* something urgent.
###So have a policy exception when there’s a “clear and obvious reason,” which probably needs to be approved by a judge.###
Yeah, this is something that needs *outside* oversight. People on the inside just can’t be properly responsible to making such decisions. If you want a good example, read about what happened to Dr. Philip Zimbardo in the (in)famous Stanford Prison Experiment: http://www.prisonexp.org/ Then keep in mind this was a *simulation*.
The Bushies with their amazingly expansive view of executive power don’t like outside oversight at all and that, IMO, is where they screwed the pooch.
###(”it’s the threat of torture, not the torture itself”).###
The problem with this is that there’s a fine line and the temptation is to walk over it “just this once”… pretty soon you’re walking over it all the time. Hell, the *Gestapo* had rules against this, not because they were nice guys but because they recognized that if you beat the shit out of a guy he’ll tell you whatever he thinks you want to hear to make it stop. False positives overwhelm the system. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying this is wiffle ball, but the John Yoos of the world didn’t think things through on a lot of grounds.
October 15, 2007 at 1:00 pm
There was a really good book written by Orrin Deforest, a former Army CID and later CIA contract intel officer in Vietnam about this, Slow Burn. Here is a review:
http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9C0CE5DA1F38F931A15757C0A966958260
The short summary is: We never learn. The same stupid mistakes were made in Deforest’s day.
October 15, 2007 at 4:22 pm
There is no victory in a war of ideology if we compromise who we are to achieve it. It is preferable to lose the war than cheat to win. Truly if there ever was a situation best suited to the term “Death Before Dishonor” then this is it.
Every single time we waterboard a prisoner, we tarnish our nation a bit more. That stain on on integrity, on our collective soul, is a mark for eternity. Dirt like that does not wash off.
No outcome, not saving another life, not saving a hundred, a thousand, or ten thousand lives is worth it. Even saving the nation entirely is not worth betraying the precepts that we claim to hold dear, for if we do we are a nation of hypocrites and as such we do not deserve to be a nation at all…
October 16, 2007 at 8:56 am
“Death before Dishonor” is a warrior creed. Somehow I don’t think that it applies to a society or a nation.
October 16, 2007 at 5:27 pm
As a warrior ethos it is more to due with courage to fight a dangerous or hopeless conflict.
However one does not need to be a warrior to choose death over compromise of one’s ideals. An easy example would be countless religious figures over the course of history who chose to die rather than betray their beliefs.
The central concept is to never yield who you are in spirit to preserve who you are in physical form.
October 17, 2007 at 2:41 am
Is this gonna Kill You? No i Dont Think so !
December 21, 2007 at 12:30 pm
[…] Torture, I mean can we talk? […]
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