Blog Against Torture

It’s sad that in the twenty-first century, in the supposedly civilized world, I’m blogging against torture. Sad because this shouldn’t be necessary. We should have gotten it through our collective skulls that it doesn’t work, and even if it did, it would be wrong because it presumes facts not in evidence and because, well, damn it, it’s wrong. And yet, here I am. Or rather, here we are, since this affects everyone.

It doesn’t work. That is to say, information obtained under torture is highly suspect. This should practically be common sense. If someone was mock-drowning you, or stripping you naked and implying that they were going to rape you, or keeping you awake for days on end, or causing you physical pain, or otherwise torturing you, wouldn’t you say just about anything to get them to stop? Maybe not right away, but eventually. Be honest. You would. I would. Anyone would. Mind you, I said “anything,” I didn’t say “the truth.”

People have confessed to strange and bizarre (and quite untrue) things under torture or even highly threatening police interrogations because they thought it was what their tormenters wanted to hear. They thought it would end the situation. Look at history, at the witch hunts, at the confessions of the Templars, look at the various people who’ve been exonerated after confessing to crimes. It doesn’t work.

But pretend for a moment that does. Would it be okay to use it then?

No, because it presumes facts not in evidence. Torture (supposing it worked) only makes sense if you have the right people in your torture chamber. And there is no way to know that for sure. None. You might think you have the right people, but you could be quite wrong. Even if you sort of have the right person, say a terrorist you just caught in a terrorist meeting room filled with bomb making materials and all that good evidence stuff, that terrorist still might not have the information you want. And that’s assuming you didn’t accidentally capture the pizza delivery guy by mistake.

That famous scenario that proponents of torture throw around? The one with the terrorist who knows the location of the bomb that threatens your family? It’s a fantasy. It’s the fantasy that the entire torture debate rests on. This is why people want to use torture – they believe this scenario is possible. And, of course, they believe torturing this theoretical terrorist who you somehow know is exactly the person to tell you where the bomb is or how to defuse it or whatever is going to result in their honest confession. The problem is, torture doesn’t work, and you never actually know for certain that you have the right person and they have the information you want. You would have to have telepathy to know that, and if you did, why the hell would you bother with torture when you could just take the information from their mind while you were at it? So the famous scenario goes poof.

Then, of course, there’s still the moral issue. This is something of a personal thing, as morals always are, but I say that torture is just plain wrong. We are supposed to be the good guys, yes? (Yes, of course, the real world is not black and white, good and evil, whatever our current administration may think, but we do, nonetheless consider ourselves the good guys.) Why would we then commit an act that most people consider evil? Even if torture worked and we had the right people, wouldn’t we have lost in winning? Honestly, what is torture if not individually aimed terrorism? Aren’t we becoming the very thing we’re supposedly waging a war on?

Of course, here in reality where torture doesn’t work and we can’t know for certain that they people we’re torturing are even terrorists, torture reaches an even greater level of immorality. It becomes the infliction of harm on people for no certain end and possibly the infliction of harm on those who are innocent of any wrongdoing. How can that not be wrong? We cannot abandon our morals for vengeance and we cannot abandon our morals if doing so could result in us harming innocent people. Torture is forbidden by the Geneva Convention for a reason, folks. Let’s try abiding by that, shall we?