Torture and Pragmatism

Today I took part in the Yale Adam’s Cup – I helped JE take first place last year and this year I broke to the semis and dropped there.  The resolution I ended up losing on was “Resolved: Even if effective, this house would never use torture“.  I was given the affirmative (“government”) position of supporting a complete ban on torture, even if it was guaranteed to be effective.

It was a bit strange to  me.  I’ve been thinking a lot recently about the tension between torture’s efficacy and the moral implications of it.  I think it’s much clearer to me after this debate that the torture question really comes down to a core question – is there room in government for extraordinaryism.  That is, can we say, “we won’t torture except in a ticking time bomb scenario?” or does that inevitably 1) corrupt the moral fabric of our nation and 2) lead to a slippery slope.

I was very happy from an intellectual standpoint – although a bit disappointed for the ground I had to cover on the resolution – that the resolution explicitly removed the question about the efficacy of torture.  In my opinion, it’s too often a trick of politics to argue the nonexistence of complicated ethical questions.

For instance, Obama announced at his inauguration that “We reject as false the choice between our safety and ideals”.  Mark Steyn calls the declaration of “false choice” as “one of [Obama's] favorite rhetorical tics”

There is genuine conflict between ideals when one must choose between a safe population and a free population.  Anarchy (a state of nature) not safe enough in the same way that trapping everyone safely in little glass bubbles is not free enough.  There is clearly a balancing point between freedom and safety, which indicates that there is naturally a real choice to be made between the two.

The ticking time-bomb scenario leads a serious thinker to a similar conclusion.  There is obviously something lost to society in the torture of anyone, even a terrorist.  But at the same time, torture CAN work.  There are some that claim torture has no utility to society; like Obama they seek to dismiss a legitimate debate as a “false choice”. After all, if torture doesn’t work, it should not be used.  But if it DOES work, there’s a much more complex debate to be had.  (On tax revenue, it’s the Republican Party’s turn to claim they can have and eat their cake.  With little evidence, they hold up the hypothetical Laffer Curve and proclaim there will be more revenue with lower rates.)

My ultimate conclusion, despite arguing to the contrary for a total of 12 minutes, was that although we can say that torture should never be allowed, in reality given the ticking-time bomb scenario, it is human instinct to save thousands or millions of lives at the expense of a bit of human dignity.  My feeling is that any government presented with the ticking time bomb scenario – even one led by Andrew Sullivan – would torture first and apologize later.