Guantanamo, and the milk of human kindness

I'm so far behind on posting this month, that I am just now getting to this subject. I saw that over at Tdaxp there was a pretty good discussion on the subject of torture. Eddie from Hidden Unities, argued that torture simply did not work, and that as such, having the US engaging in such practices was not only inefficient, but also counter-productive in the type of war we were fighting. Tdaxp took issue with Eddie's argument, mainly because as he saw it, it was falsifiable, meaning that once someone proved that a specific torture technique (say Water Boarding) worked, then Eddie's argument about the efficacy of the use of torture went out the window, allowing many forms of torture if they could be shown to be effective.

I didn't have time when the discussion occurred, so I didn't comment. This is my way of engaging that discussion (even if almost a week late). I tend to think that Eddie and.Tdaxp were talking about two distinct, but related things. Tdaxps focused on the weakness of the argument, and specifically about the efficacy of torture, whereas Eddie was reaching for a larger point about torture in general, mainly the drain it presents for our soft power.

The same day Tdaxp posted on this question, I also read this op-ed by Jackson Diehl, on his visit to Gitmo. In it, Diehl recounts his visit and his observation of an interrogation taking place at the time. Diehl described how the interrogation was so far away from the administration's own characterization of what went on, or could go on once a subject was in US custody. Diehl recounts that the interrogators in this particular instance were two young women, one a translator, the other the interrogator, wearing open toed sandals and short skirts sitting around a table with the man being interrogated. In addition to them, he also noticed that the man had with him, a bag of pistachios; a treat not otherwise available to him. Diehl explains that five years of experience, have taught these interrogators that "the most effective means of collecting intelligence from the "enemy combatants" captured in the fight against al-Qaeda...comes from the milk of human kindness."

GGiven the mismatch between the President's message on interrogation and the reality on the ground in Gitmo, I'm at once relieved and troubled by this. On the one hand, I'm glad that after five years, we've learned that harsh interrogation techniques are not as effective as friendly gestures and kindness. The reason, Diehl tells us is that most al Qaeda and other combatants expect the harsh treatment, and in fact, have survived worst at the hands of governments and warlords far more barbarous than we. What bothers me, is that the administration continues to argue that authority to use the harshest techniques is necessary to break combatants trained to resist them, knowing that our interrogators have learned otherwise. Even if used solely for propaganda purposes (as in, be afraid if you are captured) they knowingly undermine our image and standing in the world. In my view, what we gain from such pronouncements is little compared to what we loose in terms of moral authority and propaganda value.

That said, Tdaxp is right to note the weakness of an argument that relies solely on the efficacy of torture (for the reasons he outlines). However, Eddie also has a point, particularly if this argument is only part of a larger discussion on the subject. He and Tdaxp have been exchanging e-mails on this, and we’ve only been given a window to peek through, courtesy of Tdaxp. After all, efficacy is part of the argument against torture, but is by no means the only. As Tdaxp notes, there are also far more powerful arguments that relate to moral and strategic considerations. In some ways I agree with Tdaxp that the argument about efficacy should not be the first argument presented but one of the last, so that as you finish the argument on torture based on moral and strategic considerations, you end by saying, “besides, it doesn’t work!.”

That is part of the reason why I mention Diehl’s op-ed because it reports on what interrogators have learned, mainly that "approaching a subject in a friendly and businesslike manner, after having studied the subject thoroughly, over time earning his respect makes it harder for the subject to evade the answers to questions" that under duress he would likely resist. In other words, torture is counter-productive and does not really work.

As Diehl acknowledges the techniques he describes take time to work, and in some instances, time may be a luxury we don't have. It is in these instances that the question of torture creeps up again. After all, if we don’t torture, can we justify it if not doing so potentially allows a terrorist strike to proceed that would kill hundreds (if not thousands) of American civilians? For my part, I think the argument about efficacy is linked to the argument about the morality of the use of torture. After all, if it doesn’t work, can we legitimately justify the morality of such an action? But this gets into deeper philosophical territory since in deciding whether torture works or does not work, you have to first make the decision as to whether you can morally justify trying in the first place. This question is one of the hardest questions to address philosophically. If you have a duty to protect one hundred people, and you have ten suspects, one of whom will try to kill them, can you legitimately torture all ten just so that you can find the one? If not, what percentage is acceptable? Could it be legitimately justified if instead of 10, there were only 7, or 6, or 4, or just 2? Does the calculation change if instead of 10, you would have to torture 20, or 30, or more? Or if instead of protecting 100, you had to protect 1,000 or 100,000? At what point would the scale tip in favor of torture? Against? For my part, the efficacy of the action must be taken into account, because if torture does not work, and you are more likely to gain bad information than the information you actually seek, then torture can not be morally justified. In like manner, and as Tdaxp argues, if a technique can be shown to work, at which point do we decide that the action is morally justified? Can it be morally justified, ever? Dielh’s account of what interrogators have learned at Gitmo, seems to indicate that the action does not work. If that is the case, and we already know it to be the case, then torture can no longer be justified.