A possible solution to our torture problems.

[Jontg]

Let 'em do it.
...
No, bear with me here, and pardon me if I get any legal aspects wrong. Consider the concept of the "citizen's arrest." Those nutbags who tried to detain Dick Cheney aside, this is the legal construction that allows a citizen witnessing a crime to temporarily assume the power of arrest--that is, to act as an officer of the law with respect to apprehending and restraining a miscreant until actual police arrive. If the arrest is performed more or less by the book and it's proven that the citizen acted properly, he or she is granted legal immunity from the charges of assault, wrongful imprisonment and so forth that one would normally incur by leaping upon somebody and wrestling them to the ground. If, however, the arrest is unjustified, the citizen is not protected and remains fully liable for the fact that they just tackled and hog-tied some random dude. In other words, if you can prove you were justified after the fact, you have the right under the law to do some pretty metal stuff to a guy--as long as you don't mind the risk that you'll be prosecuted if you can't.
See where I'm going here? We should accept that sometimes (once in a few hundred cases, IIRC) a federal agent needs to take monstrously inhumane measures to save lives--but we should also make it very clear that they will not automatically be granted the leeway to do so. If you can definitively prove (for a pretty steep definition of of the word) that hooking a man's testicles up to a car battery saved an oil tanker full of orphaned puppies, fine, we'll pardon you after the fact. If, as in most cases, it turns out you just pried the fingernails off some Sikh cab driver whose closest brush with ammonium nitrate was during his stint as a gardener, then we take you into a little room somewhere and hit you with a brick until you stop twitching. And we make it clear by both word and deed that when in doubt, we'll go with the brick.
Sound fair?

 

[Praktik]

I thought the solution to the torture problem was to redefine torture so it really isn't torture any longer...

Or is that not working out anymore??

 

[theprestige]

I thought the solution to the torture problem was to redefine torture so it really isn't torture any longer...

Or is that not working out anymore??

That's funny. I thought the solution to the torture problem was to redefine all interrogation techniques to be torture, and then abolish the lot of them.

 

[Fiona]

I have a better solution: don't let 'em do it.

 

[theprestige]

Let 'em do it.
...
Sound fair?

Not even remotely. Choice of interrogation methods is a judgement call. Your solution amounts to telling interrogators to exercise their judgment, on the understanding that they'll be second-guessed after the fact, and if the ACLU or partisan granstander or other backseat driver manages to find a dissenting opinion, their judgement will be disregarded and they'll be beaten to death with a brick.

Might as well tell them not to bother, because that's the way they'll take it.

I could try to save lives. I could even torture to try to save lives. I could even live with myself if I tried to save lives by using torture, and failed, because it was worth the attempt. But if I try, and fail--or even if I succeed--and then the opposition faction comes into power in the next big elections, unseals the classified records of my work, puts me on trial, and decides to beat me to death with a brick, why bother?

Is that really the standard you want to apply: "Do everything in your power, no matter how heinous, to save lives. Don't worry--if we disagree with you, we'll beat you to death with a brick"?

I'd prefer to establish a clear policy, based on clearly-enunciated principles, ahead of time, and use that. Among other things, it gives interrogators a solid legal and ethical foundation to stand on, when the opposition faction comes to power and tries to score political brownie points by crucifying them for failing to save lives (or for torturing too many people, depending on their ideology and the mood of their constituency).

 

[theprestige]

I have a better solution: don't let 'em do it.

As much as I disagree with your solution, I still think it's better than the OP's.

 

[Ladewig]

.
Sound fair?

If I were innocent and were tortured before being discovered that I am innocent, how would killing my torturer make it fair to me?

 

[theprestige]

If I were innocent and were tortured before being discovered that I am innocent, how would killing my torturer make it fair to me?

Isn't your question just a specific instance of the general case of "how does punishing criminals help their victims"?

 

[Lord Muck oGentry]

Isn't your question just a specific instance of the general case of "how does punishing criminals help their victims"?

Punishing criminals.

Torturing suspects.

 

[theprestige]

Punishing criminals.

Torturing suspects.

Please re-read Ladewig's question, and my answer, again.

 

[Ladewig]

Isn't your question just a specific instance of the general case of "how does punishing criminals help their victims"?

No, because the criminal in this case is not a citizen who has committed a wrong against me, it is an agent of the federal government acting with the approval of the government. My question, in its entirety, is how is it fair to me if the government, albeit conditionally, approves of my torture and then later brutally executes one government official.

 

[Lord Muck oGentry]

Please re-read Ladewig's question, and my answer, again.

Very well.

Ladewig asked a question:

If I were innocent and were tortured before being discovered that I am innocent, how would killing my torturer make it fair to me?

You answered by asking a question:

Isn't your question just a specific instance of the general case of "how does punishing criminals help their victims"?

 

[leftysergeant]

Torture does not work. If it did, the Nazis would have known to have Rommel sitting on Omaha Beach instead of the Pas del Calais.

The only people I can see deserving to be tortured to extract information would be Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, Alberto Gonzalez and John Yoo.

They approve of the method.

 

[Alt+F4]

We should accept that sometimes (once in a few hundred cases, IIRC) a federal agent needs to take monstrously inhumane measures to save lives--

Where's the proof that torture produces any useful information that saves lives?

 

[Praktik]

That's funny. I thought the solution to the torture problem was to redefine all interrogation techniques to be torture, and then abolish the lot of them.

Interesting reversal. Is this an apt characterization of the anti-tortureenhanced interrogation crowd in your opinion?

 

[theprestige]

No, because the criminal in this case is not a citizen who has committed a wrong against me, it is an agent of the federal government acting with the approval of the government. My question, in its entirety, is how is it fair to me if the government, albeit conditionally, approves of my torture and then later brutally executes one government official.

The government condones behavior all the time, and then punishes people who engage in that behavior inappropriately.

How is it fair to you if a police officer, authorized by the government to shoot you any time he believes it necessary, shoots you and is subsequently punished for shooting you unnecessarily?

In fact, how, exactly, is being shot in the knee unfairly by an interrogator any different than being shot in the knee unfairly by a policeman, both in terms of government pre-approval for the shooting and the amount of fairness to you in punishing the shooter?

 

[Safe-Keeper]

I thought the solution to the torture problem was to redefine torture so it really isn't torture any longer...

Or is that not working out anymore??

Most people seem to have seen through it by now, yes.

I want some of what the OP has injected into himself, though.

 

[Praktik]

Ya... maybe you don't really....

lolz

 

[Peephole]

I have a solution to the torture problem: stop being a bunch of psychopaths.

 

[Dave Rogers]

The government condones behavior all the time, and then punishes people who engage in that behavior inappropriately.

How is it fair to you if a police officer, authorized by the government to shoot you any time he believes it necessary, shoots you and is subsequently punished for shooting you unnecessarily?

In fact, how, exactly, is being shot in the knee unfairly by an interrogator any different than being shot in the knee unfairly by a policeman, both in terms of government pre-approval for the shooting and the amount of fairness to you in punishing the shooter?

It's a question of justification before the fact versus justification after the fact. Let me suggest a couple of examples.

Suppose a policeman sees a man acting in a way that suggests he is about to do something dangerous with a weapon, issues a warning, and then shoots him, having complied with official guidelines as to when and how to go about the procedure of warning and shooting. When it turns out that the man was simply carrying a chair leg and was deaf, the policeman can still be judged to have acted correctly, because on the basis of the information available to him at the time, his actions were justified.

Suppose a second policeman sees a man acting suspiciously, and promptly shoots him dead, from behind, without warning. Even though it subsequently turns out that the suspect was about to carry out an armed robbery of a nearby shop, the policeman is found to have violated guidelines and is therefore put on trial for an unlawful killing.

The procedure analogous to the OP, however, is that the first policeman should be punished and the second exonerated on the basis of information that became available after the fact. That's not a good precedent to establish. It weakens the onus on a policeman to follow correct procedure, and allocates punishment largely on the basis of random, rather than controllable, factors. It's fundamentally anti-justice.

In the case of torture, it's morally perhaps an even worse situation. If we allow retrospective justification of torture, then there is more motivation for the torturer to extract a false confession that will serve as sufficient retroactive justification for his actions.

Dave