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Some months ago in this space I provoked indignation by raising the question of torture. Pondering where the war on terrorism might lead, I posed the following questions about the treatment of captured terrorist leaders: "If they have information that might reveal other terrorist cells and planned attacks, how far are we willing to go to pry information from them? Will we use torture?"
With the capture last week of Abu Zubaydah, a reputed senior leader of al-Qaeda, those questions are no longer hypothetical. FBI director Robert Mueller said Zubaydah's arrest "assists in helping prevent another terrorist attack," but he didn't say how. We can presume Zubaydah is not volunteering information. Does this mean we are coercing him? If we are doing so, is it wrong? Torture is, of course, reprehensible. It debases the torturer and any society that condones it. It would violate the U.S. Constitution, the Universal Declaration on Human Rights, and the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights. Decent people abhor it. It is evil. Being against torture is as easy as being in favor of chocolate cake. How simple the world would be if ethics were that clear-cut. Most uses of torture are clearly wrong. It is a tool of oppression, used to terrorize and control populations. It is also used to punish, or to exact vengeance. Zubaydah's is a much rarer case. With him, we are talking about using torture to extract valuable, lifesaving information. Here's how Michael Levin, a philosophy professor at City College in New York, makes the argument: Suppose a nuclear device is about to be detonated in a large city. A captured terrorist has information that can prevent this, but he refuses to divulge it. Can we torture him to learn what he knows? Levin argues that under these circumstances, it would be "morally mandatory." He writes: "Torturing the terrorist is unconstitutional? Probably. But millions of lives certainly outweigh unconstitutionality. Torture is barbaric? Mass murder is more barbaric. Indeed, letting millions of innocents die in deference to one who flaunts his guilt is moral cowardice, an unwillingness to dirty one's hands." This is a genuine moral dilemma. Is it acceptable to harm someone in order to prevent a greater harm? Are the rights of one who plots violence more important than the lives of his intended victims? Might the value of torture sometimes outweigh its iniquity? One who thinks it sometimes does is Arthur Kaplan, director of the University of Pennsylvania's Center for Bioethics. "I'm not an absolutist," he says. "Torture is wrong, but not always." The Rev. John Langan, a professor of philosophy at Georgetown University, likewise will not rule it out in extreme circumstances - "where the danger to innocents is real and imminent, and there is good reason to suspect that the person has information that could prevent it." What about Zubaydah? There's no question that al-Qaeda poses a real threat. It has already killed thousands. The group is probably careful enough to assume that whatever he knows is now compromised, which means many of the specifics of his knowledge - plots, locations of terrorist cells - are no longer useful. But as a senior leader he would know things like the numbers and names of personnel, and capabilities (whether, for instance, al-Qaeda possesses weapons of mass destruction, and, if so, what kind). This is information that could save thousands, perhaps hundreds of thousands, of lives. In this scenario, we begin to consider torture by degrees. "It would certainly be right to question someone like him intensely," says Father Langan. "You would structure his interrogation so that incentives for him to cooperate are very strong. It would not be out of place to threaten and pressure him. Short of physical harm, there are lots of ways of making his life pretty miserable if he refuses to talk." Kaplan would go further.
"I would torture someone like him to the point where the torture becomes ineffective," he says. "At a certain point, the quality of information you obtain is unreliable. You can get people to say anything, and they will say anything to make you stop. But I would be willing to get pretty rugged with this guy, and to employ psychological and pharmacological tools."
There is a cost. To employ torture means to abandon the high moral ground, to diminish the luster of your cause. It invites further erosion of human rights. If it's right in order to save a thousand lives, then why not a hundred, ten, or one? Why not in cases where the danger is less certain, or where the captive may or may not possess valuable information? When you make an exception to a rule, it becomes harder to enforce.
But real life is made of exceptions. Absolutes are for classrooms. We should find out what Zubaydah knows. |
