The standard way to handle this is to have a face-to-face debate, but these confrontations never work because the two opponents either talk over each other, or one side hogs all the time.
I'd like to offer an ancient rhetorical device as an interesting alternative: the dialog. This time-honored technique permits an author to present his own arguments as well as the responses of his opponent. Now, a lousy author will put stupid words into the mouth of his opponent, and any reader can easily see through such inanities. However, a good author can use the dialog form to carry through his arguments in such a way as to expose the fundamental flaws in the opponent's reasoning.
A dialog is not meant to be even-handed; it is intended to make a case. Its value lies in the fact that, if well-written, it can demonstrate that the best honest rebuttal still fails to rebut the points being made. It does not address the counter-offensive of the other side; it only shows that the other side's defense doesn't work.
With that in mind, I would like to present a dialog about the use of torture. I have been surprised that conservatives have been defending this policy; it's a loser and they really should leave well enough alone. But by aggressively defending this policy, conservatives have made it an important discussion, and so I'd like to present an argument showing just how indefensible torture is as a policy.
My two advocates in this dialog are Libicus and Conicus.
Lib: So, Conicus, you support the use of torture, right?
Con: Indeed I do, Lib.
Lib: I assume that you do not support the arbitrary use of torture.
Con: You assume correctly.
Lib: So you require that torture be used only under a set of rules, correct?
Con: Indeed so.
Lib: What might those rules be? For example, do you have any rules about WHO can be tortured?
Con: Yes, of course.
Lib: Would you permit women to be tortured?
Con: Um... no, I don't think so.
Lib: So if al-Qaeda were to recruit women for its tasks, our nation would have no defense against them?
Con: You're right. I suppose we would have to permit the torture of women.
Lib: Would rape be an acceptable form of torture for women?
Con: No, of course not!
Lib: Why not?
Con: Because it's uncivilized!
Lib: I see. So you would permit only civilized forms of torture, correct?
Con: Yes, only civilized forms of torture.
Lib: And can you tell me what forms of torture are civilized?
Con: I'm not sure what you mean.
Lib: Is waterboarding civilized?
Con: I suppose so.
Lib: What is it about rape that makes it uncivilized while waterboarding is civilized?
Con: Well, rape is nasty...
Lib: So waterboarding isn't nasty?
Con: Rape is very ugly.
Lib: Waterboarding isn't ugly?
Con: OK, here's the answer: the rapist enjoys it, but the waterboarder doesn't.
Lib: So your rule is that torture is civilized when the torturer doesn't enjoy doing it?
Con: Yes, that's the rule.
Lib: So rape would be civilized if it were carried out by a gay man?
Con: Well, no, but that's because we can't be certain that the gay man won't enjoy raping a woman.
Lib: Can we be certain that a waterboarder isn't a sadist?
Con: We can have psychological tests to insure that sadists are not permitted to become torturers.
Lib: So couldn't we have psychological tests to insure that gay rapist-torturers don't enjoy raping women?
Con: I suppose so...
Lib: Ergo, rape is a civilized form of torture so long as we use rapists who are guaranteed not to enjoy the experience?
Con: That doesn't seem right...
Lib: If you find people who truly don't enjoy torturing other people, won't they refuse to do it?
Con: I suppose so...
Lib: Isn't this a Catch-22: the only people whom you can trust to torture in a civilized fashion are the people who refuse to do it?
Con: Yes, I suppose so. I think I need a different rule for keeping the torture civilized.
Lib: Can you think of any other possible rules?
Con: What if we make the distinction based on long-term harm to the victim?
Lib: So, if it doesn't permanently injure the victim, it's not torture?
Con: Yes, that was essentially the argument of Mr. Yoo.
Lib: So rape is back on the table because rape doesn't permanently harm the victim.
Con: No, not at all. Studies have shown that rape inflicts permanent psychological harm on its victims.
Lib: What have studies shown about the use of waterboarding?
Con: We don't have any scientific studies on waterboarding.
Lib: So we don't know if waterboarding inflicts permanent psychological harm.
Con: True.
Lib: So how can you say that waterboarding is civilized torture? You don't know!
Con: Well, OK, but surely there are techniques known not to cause long-term harm.
Lib: Can you name any?
Con: No, I can't.
Lib: So this rule doesn't solve your problem, does it?
Con: No, I suppose not.
Lib: So can you think of any other rules we might use?
Con: We could differentiate based on citizenship: you can't torture Americans, but you can torture foreigners.
Lib: Because foreigners don't enjoy the Constitutional protections afforded to Americans?
Con: Yes.
Lib: But the Constitution doesn't talk about citizens when listing rights. It doesn't say WHOM the government can't do things to, it says WHAT the government cannot do.
Con: But still, it's obvious that the Constitution applies only to Americans.
Lib: Really? So a foreigner on our soil has absolutely no rights? I can shoot any foreigner I please and nobody can do anything about it?
Con: No, that's ridiculous!
Lib: So do foreigners have rights?
Con: Of course they do! They just have different rights.
Lib: And where are the differences spelled out?
Con: I don't know.
Lib: Can we torture British citizens? Germans? French? Canadians? Australians?
Con: That would never happen!
Lib: Why not? What would prevent it from happening?
Con: Because they're not terrorists!
Lib: Some of the 9/11 hijackers came here from Germany.
Con: Yes, but they were still Arabs.
Lib: So the rule is that we can torture Arabs, but not Europeans?
Con: No, we can only torture terrorists.
Lib: How do we know who is a terrorist?
Con: The President decides.
Lib: You mean the people that the President appoints to do the job?
Con: Yes.
Lib: What if they're wrong?
Con: They won't be wrong.
Lib: How do you know?
Con: Because the President doesn't make mistakes.
Lib: But you said it's the people whom the President appoints.
Con: Yes, yes, it's the same thing.
Lib: Who are they?
Con: I don't know.
Lib: You don't know who they are but you're certain that they won't make mistakes?
Con: They won't make mistakes because they follow rules.
Lib: What rules?
Con: The rules that the President sets down.
Lib: Where are those rules?
Con: They're secret.
Lib: Why do they need to be secret?
Con: So the terrorists don't take advantage of them.
Lib: So it's possible to be a terrorist but not fit the rules?
Con: Yes.
Lib: But that would lead to mistakes, wouldn't it?
Con: Sometimes.
Lib: But you said that the President doesn't make mistakes.
Con: You're impossible!
15 comments:
But all your dialog points out is that several (and the suggestion is EVERY) metric for determining when it's appropriate is a slippery slope. And it's vaguely disingenuous of you to paint Con as being so dumb. I happen to think that we should ban torture period and be pretty liberal about how we define it -- this one isn't out of a moral sense but a pragmatic one. We're better off staking out the high ground for future uses.
But it's not stupid to imagine that under some circumstances, torture is appropriate. The TV show 24 did a decent job of poking at edge cases. The people like Con that I know would admit that sometimes the officials that make the call on when to execute a torture program *will* sometimes make mistakes. Ooops! So do military operatives. So do cops. So do judges and juries. We do our best and when we find systemic failures, we should patch them. Why doesn't Con take this stand in your dialog?
My attempt at a counter-dialog:
(Just so you know, as a Green european hippie and all, I'm so against your latest exploration into this practice, as well as such atrocities in general. But it's always interesting to look at things from a different perspective.)
Con: So, Libicus, you believe torture should never be used in any situation?
Lib: That's right.
Con: What if it's needed to prevent a terrorist attack?
Lib: It's never needed.
Con: Let's assume we have captured someone we believe knows about the time and place of a terrorist attack. Don't you think it would be needed to get him to tell us that information?
Lib: Of course it would.
Con: What means should we use?
Lib: Regular interrogation methods, of course. Psychological methods. Bargaining if we need to.
Con: Do these methods always work?
Lib: Of course not!
Con: So if these methods do not work, should we give up?
Lib: No!
Con: What methods should we use, then?
Lib: Why do you think torture works any better?
Con: Do you think fear makes someone more likely to cooperate?
Lib: Depends on the person.
Con: So, if this suspect is one of those persons, would greater fear make him more likely to cooperate than lesser fear?
Lib: I suppose so.
Con: Do you believe torture is scary?
Lib: Why, of course...
Con: Very scary?
Lib: Yes...
Con: So causing fear through torture would make him more likely to cooperate?
Lib: He'll just say what you want him to say!
Con: We're not looking for a confession here, we're looking for verifiable information. Certainly it would be in the suspect's best interest to tell the truth if he does know the answer.
Lib: There's always another way!
Con: What is the way?
Lib: ...
Lib: Okay, maybe we might, just some time, get the information we need through torture, but how can you be sure he even knows anything? He could be totally innocent!
Con: Agreed.
Lib: How can you torture someone who could be innocent?
Con: Do you accept war?
Lib: Only if it's defensive or to protect innocents.
Con: Do our actions cause suffering to innocents in such a war?
Lib: Yes, but it must be avoided whenever possible!
Con: What's the difference between suffering caused by war and suffering caused by torture?
Lib: Torture is uncivilized!
Con: Is dropping bombs on women and children civilized?
Lib: Of course not!
Con: Let's assume two situations: A: There's an enemy military unit that's about to go slaugher X number of innocents. We have the opportunity to destroy it with a missile but there's a risk - the missile could miss and hit a child instead. B: There's the aforementioned terrorist attack that would kill Y number of innocents. We have the opportunity to prevent it by torturing a suspect but there's a risk - the suspect might be innocent. For what minimum value of X and Y would you launch the missile or torture the suspect?
Lib: I would not commit torture!
Con: In other words, Y equals infinity. If the terrorists were using, say, a killer plague that would kill most of the world's population, you still would not commit to torture?
Lib: That's never going to happen!
Con: Perhaps.
Lib: It's against the constitution!
Con: Laws can be changed. Besides, we're talking ethics here.
Thanks for the comments. Let me explain something about the classic dialog format. On the one hand, it is acknowledged to be unfair in that the straight man is not expected to take the initiative. The point of the classic dialog is to show what would happen if one line of thought were pursued honestly and fully, without getting jerked around.
On the other hand, the dialog is expected to be fair to the straight man in that stupid words are not put into his mouth. He is expected to provide reasonable objections to the main line of thought. Thus, a dialog is a procedure for presenting a line of thought and addressing the direct objections to it, while excluding digressive material.
This is why your objection, Christopher, doesn't quite apply here. Yes, there are other considerations, such as the question as to whether other circumstances might justify the use of torture, but that's not what this dialog addresses. It addresses the single question of whether it is possible to define a set of rules to govern the use of torture that would insure that it is carried out in a fair and just manner, and it demonstrates that no such rules exist. Your argument, that there might be a pressing need for it, is not addressed in this dialog. It makes one point, and it makes that point firmly (if I do say so myself!): it is not possible to devise a set of rules under which torture can be used in any sense that a normal person would consider just and reasonable.
EuroHippie, you set out with your counterdialog to demonstrate that there are situations in which torture is appropriate. That's a proper goal to work towards, and I think it might be possible to write such a dialog that MIGHT work -- but your effort has some bad flaws.
You start off with a huge flaw when you set up the situation:
Let's assume we have captured someone we believe knows about the time and place of a terrorist attack.The obvious response from Lib should be to challenge the assumption that the captive knows about the time and place of a terrorist attack. In the situation Con has set up, we DO know that an attack is imminent, and we DO know that the captive knows the details of the attack, but we DON'T know the details of the attack ourselves. That is an wildly implausible situation, because it's unlikely that we would know the first two items without also knowing the third item. But you put stupid words into Lib's mouth, which greatly weakens the rhetorical strength of your dialog.
Further on, you repeat the mistake of putting stupid words into Lib's mouth:
Con: What means should we use?
Lib: Regular interrogation methods, of course. Psychological methods. Bargaining if we need to.
Con: Do these methods always work?
Lib: Of course not!
The proper response from Lib should have been "Cooperative methods have been shown time and time again to be the most effective methods, whereas torture has been shown to be largely ineffective."
The second half of your dialog does not address any single topic. It's a hodgepodge of random arguments and as such is useless. Remember, the dialog is most useful when it focuses on a clear topic, presents a single line of reasoning, and integrates the refutatio (the responses to the counterarguments) into the discussion. As such, it is rather like a two-person version of the classical form of the argumentative speech as developed by the Greeks and Romans.
I'm not arguing that your arguments are necessarily wrong (although I believe that most of them are). My point here is that your presentation of your arguments is muddled. I believe that, if you go to the trouble of hammering out a well-designed dialog, you'll end up watering down some of your claims.
I'll also point out that my own dialog was not worked out as carefully as it could have been. A really good dialog takes hours and hours to work out so that it is convincing to a fair-minded reader. Mine cuts a few corners, because I was too lazy to really get it perfect.
By the way, I think that there is a good dialog to be written regarding the question that you raise late in your dialog, EuroHippie, regarding the ethics of directly doing evil versus indirectly permitting evil. This is an old ethical conundrum for which no good answer has been developed in situations involving uncertainty. I think that there's plenty of room in this area for a useful dialog, and by focusing on this problem in the context of torture, you should be able to come up with something that works. The killer problem is the assumption that torture actually works. I don't know how you can get around that obstacle.
I admit I have little idea how well torture works. Intuitively I'd think it'd work wonders on me. (Then again, a police officer staring angrily at me would probably also work, so...)
I would have thought, though, that the rules against torture were based on more than such pragmatism. That if torture did work, people would still be opposed to it.
I guess what I was trying to do was to show how you can manipulate this by subtly making the opponent less clever than they should be. Apparently, I failed at the subtlecy part. I think you did so, maybe unintentionally, in a few points in your dialog:
Lib: If you find people who truly don't enjoy torturing other people, won't they refuse to do it?
Con: I suppose so...What Conicus should have said is: No. People often do things they don't enjoy as long as they believe it's necessary. Most soldiers in wars don't enjoy killing, for example.Of course, this part was not really necessary to begin with, since Libicus had already established that you can't rule out rape and keep waterboarding.
I also wonder if Conicus should have had a few more arguments against the use of rape. Something about it having unnecessary elements of humiliation and degregetion perhaps. Or about the message of disrespect towards women it would send... Not too waterproof, I admit, but...
But where Conicus really feels like an idiot to me is in the last two sections about citizenship. Firstly, I wonder if a half-reasonable conservative would outright suggest a rule based on ethnicity. That so obviously leads to ridiculous circumstances.
Then this:
Con: No, we can only torture terrorists.
Lib: How do we know who is a terrorist?
Con: The President decides.
Lib: You mean the people that the President appoints to do the job?
Con: Yes.
Lib: What if they're wrong?
Con: They won't be wrong.
Lib: How do you know?
Con: Because the President doesn't make mistakes.A more reasonable argument by Conicus would have been:
They could be wrong. Just like judges or police officers can be wrong. That's a possibility you can never eliminate in law enforcement. You need to weigh the benefits against the risk or possibly harming innocents. In the case of torture, the level of certainly must be very high, like for example in death penalty.A question, though: Was your aim to represent the views of concervatives as you feel they are, or to present the most reasonable arguments in favor of torture that you could think of?
There seems to be some strange logic when it comes to italics and line breaks...
"It addresses the single question of whether it is possible to define a set of rules to govern the use of torture that would insure that it is carried out in a fair and just manner, and it demonstrates that no such rules exist.
...
it is not possible to devise a set of rules under which torture can be used in any sense that a normal person would consider just and reasonable."
I don't think it does that at all. I think what it does is point out your frustration with the fact that lots of normal Americans *do* favor the use of torture. ("55% of Americans believe in retrospect that the use of the interrogation techniques was justified")
Lib: So, Conicus, you support the use of torture, right?
Con: Indeed I do, Lib.
Lib: I assume that you do not support the arbitrary use of torture.
Con: You assume correctly.
Lib: So you require that torture be used only under a set of rules, correct?
Con: Indeed so.
Lib: What might those rules be?
Con: Well Lib, it's a big subject, but it boils down to this: when an imminent threat is believed to exist and all reasonable attempts to verify the presumed threat have been undertaken and all other, more mild and reasonable attempts at gathering the needed intelligence have also been undertaken and the agents of the United States who find themselves in the position of having to decide whether to engage in torture have queried up the chain of command as possible and had their decision affirmed from above...then torture can be engaged in as an intelligence-gathering tool. The agents involved in this do need to understand they run a great risk of facing criminal action later where they will have the chance to prove that they were justified in this pursuit.
Lib: But that's all dealing with abstraction. Would that policy be applied to women? Children? Foreigners and citizens alike?
Con: Oh yes! Only by applying it across those kinds of boundaries do we have a hope of weilding this very dangerous tool justly. Also, note that there is at least one -- and hopefully (usually) more, human beings involved in making the decision.
Lib: But that's aweful! You would approve of torturing children?
Con: Only when many, many lives were probably in danger and that child was believed to have the capacity to alleviate the risk. While one child's right to protection of attrocity is great it is not infinite.
Lib: Even US citizens!?! They have rights!
Con: That's true. And I take those rights very seriously. I think everyone does. But each right of the citizens has limitations. The court applies (among other things) the "clear and present danger" test to cases where the government impedes the right of the citizens to speak freely. It's like that.
Lib: OK, so what about the particular techniques employed? Are there any limitations?
Con: The short answer is no. By the time you're discussing techniques, you're already passed the tests I outlined earlier and decided that, among other things, spending the prisoner's life to secure the greater good is worth doing. At that point, it's a matter of finding the techniques that work.
Lib: That makes me uncomfortable.
Con: Me too. War is hell.
Thanks for your comments; both of you made some telling points.
EuroHippo, I think you nailed me with the observation that many people do things they don't like doing because they consider it necessary. I can't think of a solid response to that, so I think we should consider my point there to be dead.
And yes, putting racist words into Conicus' mouth was a bad idea. It's not necessary and it serves only to slander conservatives. A mistake on my part.
Lastly, I think that you have a good -- but not ironclad argument that we get along just fine with flawed police and justice systems. We accept that our legal system gives only an approximation of justice, and the same principle could be applied to torture. However, this doesn't get Conicus home free because he still has to address the many safety mechanisms that are built into our legal system that are NOT built into the use of torture. On this point, I think we have to throw up our hands and declare this particular point unresolvable.
Lastly, you ask, "Was your aim to represent the views of concervatives as you feel they are, or to present the most reasonable arguments in favor of torture that you could think of?"
My aim was to present the best arguments against the line of thinking that Libicus was offering. It was not to present the best arguments in favor of torture. My aim was to show that this particular line of thinking is reliable.
Christopher, I'm not too concerned what the majority of Americans think, as regards scientific and ethical issues. What they think IS very important in consideration political likelihoods, but for this question the attitude of the average American is of no concern to me.
I think that your proposed dialog is seriously flawed. It doesn't have a clear topic. It certainly doesn't address the question of rules that I addressed, because the rule it presents is not subjected to serious criticisms. While the rule you propose seems reasonable to me, its application would preclude the use of torture in every situation in human history. But that's another argument...
You digress to cover a variety of different issues. For the most part, this is an exercise in making Conicus looking reasonable and Libicus looking stupid. It needs a tighter focus. As you can see, EuroHippie nailed me on some mistakes in my dialog -- writing a good tight dialog is really hard work!
Nicholas Kristoff asks "Would You Slap Your Father? If So, You’re a Liberal"
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/28/opinion/28kristof.html
I'm not too surprised about this phenomenon of the two sides feeling differently. I'm pretty sure that my centrism, to a significant extent, is a temperamental phenomenon.
I went over to the site mentioned in Kristof's article and tried out some of their tests. Weird results. One test showed me as more liberal than the average liberal. Another test showed me as more conservative than the average conservative. Just call me "Dr. Kennedy and Mr. Limbaugh"
Hey Chris this is EvilJon. It's been a while and I thought I would write something for this topic even though it's been dead for a few months. I actually came back here to see if you had done any blogging on what was going on with the conservatives and the current healthcare bill. Maybe you can write something interesting if you have some time.
Ok... I am against torture, but I do watch 24, and can see how it could be useful(at least in fiction.) So what would it take to make torture allowable for me.
How about the torturer has to sign a statement that they're going to use means that won't be considered lawful and they're guilty of the action and will submit to the will of a special court. If the torturer extracts information that is useful, and saves lifes that will be considered in there judgement. Only an agent who worked for several years and had the proper training would even be allowed to take the intiative.
If they permanently maim or kill someone and didn't produce any information the torturer would be executed by firing squad and half his assets would go to the family of the tortured.
If the torturer used a reletively light form of torturer then, the sentance would me much lighter, but still harsh enough were it would never be considered in a casual way.
more of a code of Hammurabi
I was inspired by a few things when I came up with this, one being "24" itself when Jack Bauer in season 7 realizes what he is doing is illegal and believes that he should face judgement but still commits the act to save lifes.
I am not sure I like the flirting with fiction for answers to serious questions the way I did, but I think there have been situations where someone has believed in a situation enough where they would chance sacrificing themselves for something akin to this.
Anyway, I'm not sure if that would be enough to make it allowable for me or not, but it's an idea.
Although I don't like some details of your proposal, I too would support a scheme that makes a torturer legally liable for his actions, with acknowledgement that obtaining valuable intelligence will be seen as a mitigating circumstance. Thus, a torturer would face assault charges in proportion to the magnitude of the torture he inflicts upon the victim, but if he does obtain information that he can show saved lives, then that factor would mitigate his actions.
I'm quite certain that under such rules no agent of the USA would ever torture anybody. It's too risky for no certainty of results.
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