Wow. Some of those analogies made my head hurt.
Wanna see an analogy that'll blow your head right off? Bush wants us to think we can station troops in Iraq for decades, because it's like South Korea.
Re: torture, see Marty Lederman's post on the NYT article that Hilzoy blogs.
I am very much struck by Zelikow's speech condemning the CIA interrogation program as "immoral," and I hope to see both a copy of it and some pointed questions to Condi Rice, his erstwhile boss.
Anderson, that bit you quote in the OW comments is spot on.
But a lot of [pro-torture folk] just know that "liberals" don't like torture. After all, who comes out against torture -- European governments (known to all be "liberal") and American liberals. And with a certain mentality, if a "liberal" doesn't like it, that means that to be a "true conservative" you have to like it just to spite the liberals.
I'm of the impression that any any culture or individual adopting "Whatever it takes" is taken down rather quickly (in historical time for the cultures). They're just too dangerous and unpredictable to leave standing, and if they're not destroyed from the outside (The Axis) they're taken apart from the inside (Soviet Union).
trouble is, if i were smarter and more serious, i still would be less than one tenth as smart and serious and insightful and sharp-witted and and wise and funny and generally admirable as hilzoy is.
ear hair. that's where i can beat her. i'm sure she can't grow that stuff the way i do--with the panache, and luxurious exuberance i display in my hairy pinnae.
otherwise, yeah, she's a national treasure.
There's some liberal spiting going on, but we also have to acknowledge that torture is pretty natural. In the real world (not that in which Unfogged commenters grew up) kids are forever twisting each other's arms to force compliance or get someone to tell them something. And this is normalized in just about every single action movie (seriously, watch for it; there's almost always one scene in which someone spills the beans in response to physical coercion).
We would have liked to think that everyone understands that what kids and movie characters do isn't the proper model for behavior and that torture is soul-destroying, but we're surrounded by people who don't instinctively believe that, and we need an anti-torture case that does more than assert that it's soul-destroying.
(It's also ineffective, but I hate to go down that road.)
One thing I really admire about her blogging is that she manages to remain calm and intensely angry at the same time. This bit about interrogation makes me fume unto incoherence, but she manages to be level-headed about it.
It's funny -- she stays so calm and coherent in the structure of her arguments that I'm always surprised when a rhetorical flourish indicates that she's as furious as the rest of us. Have I mentioned that I want to be Hilzoy when I grow up, except that I've probably missed the boat on that one.
Wait, what's ineffective, O-man? Torture?
This is what gets me about the issue. It's obviously an empirical question, and we could learn a lot about it-- much of which might be surprising. (I'm reminded of the counterintuitive unreliability of eyewitnesses and confessions.) Instead of being genuinely serious, we engage in serious posturing by manifesting a brave willingness to sacrifice others' interests. The empirical investigation might reveal that we face hard choices between effective interrogation and our core values, but then again it might not. There's something seriously wrong with a person who longs to be in moral dilemmas so much that he ignores obvious opportunities to avoid them.
Wait, what's ineffective, O-man? Torture?
Yeah.
It's my understanding that the empirical investigation has been done; that there are decades worth of data showing that you get more information with honey than you do with vinegar; that the Israelis moved away from abusive interrogation because it wasn't useful, and so on. And that this data comes from interrogation professionals, not wussy liberals.
But I agree with Ogged that the moral argument is the one I want to rely one -- the point is that someone who feels that the moral argument can be overcome when the need is great enough has to make the empirical argument that torture is useful before he can say the need is great enough, and there isn't good evidence for that.
A British newspaper had an interview last year with the Mossad chief interrogator. He claimed that his team, for which he claimed great success, never used violence or torture.* Not for any particular moral reason, but because they didn't believe it to be at all effective. That experience over 50 years had taught them that psychological pressure, and acquiring the interrogatee's trust was the key.
The paper later interviewed some of his interogatees -- released Palestinian detainees. They all confirmed that they hadn't been physical harmed, but several of them were quite sceptical about his claimed 'success' rate in 'turning' prisoners.
That's one data point.
* that claim is strongly disputed by Israeli human rights groups, however.
Hilzoy is just amazingly patient. I have no idea what work it would take me to get that patient.
12: If the need is great enough and the alternatives sparse enough then the actual success rate doesn't matter as long as it's presumed to be positive. There's lots of medical practice done on that basis.
The point is that there's a fair amount of historical evidence for alternatives, and not a lot of evidence of which I'm aware of a positive success rate for torture. And, you know, medical practice includes things like informed consent and all that, so the moral issues are different.
whether you must, absolutely must, eat your children to keep yourself from starving to death without first checking to see whether you have any other food available
Except that children are so much tastier than other food
13: Heh. Yeah, I just bet those released detainees all expressed skepticism. I doubt they're willing to say, "Yep, it worked on me, I spilled my guts!"
re: 19
That was my first thought, but the tone from the interviews was more one of amusement.
"He says he has a 100% success rate? Yeah, right"
They didn't sound particularly defensive. One of them went into quite a bit of detail about how she'd been interrogated.
And from what I understand about well-conducted interrogations, the subject may not know when they let something slip. You get them talking about things they don't think are sensitive, and ease them closer to important topics, and put together fragments of information that look individually unimportant.
I've seen little evidence that Gitmo, Abu Ghraib, or torture generally were oriented toward information gathering or toward bringing anyone to trial for their crimes. After about a week or two, maybe a few months, most knowledge prisoners have is useless, since conspiratorial organizations adapt. And it was known early on that a lot of the people in Gitmo, etc., were innocents or nobodies.
I'm convinced that it's mostly theater-of-cruelty for the base, convincing them that Bush is tough enough. Some of it is probably bureaucratic inertia and vengeful sadism. Some of it may be intended as deterrence, though I doubt that works.
One of the big arguments against torture is the degrading effect on the torturers and the torturing nation, but in this case that ill effect was probably the main motive. Even the Iraq War itself is as much aimed at changing America as it is at changing the middle east -- the neocon trial baloon people have already talked about censorship, suppression of dissenters, and a draft.
A good article in the Times yesterday about a group of Intelligence and National Security officials and veterans being critical of the push for torture. Maybe Hilzoy references this or someone here has? I will go fetch a link natheless.
yesterday
Er, ah, I mean today.
And indeed, Hilzoy linked it at the top of her post. Nemmine.
And as I've said in the past, the ticking time bomb is a TV image. I don't remember anyone ever giving actual historical examples.
23: ah, "natheless". lovely chaucerian word.
And to amplify the theater-of-cruelty for the base part, following what Anderson and Apo have said, our reaction is part of their reward.
As Rick Perlstein and Adam have pointed out, there is a Chicago talk radio station whose billboard ad simply says: "Liberals Hate It." 'nuff said.
26 -- picky, picky! If we didn't focus so much on distinguishing between history and fiction, our history could be far more palatable.
It's also about vengeance. As indeed is our precise-but-known-to-be-error-prone bombing of built-up areas. They killed a bunch of us. Let's make 'em pay. And this applies both on the personal level -- i.e., that of the torturer -- and the social level -- those of us who know the torturer is torturing.
The language around it is also very similar to the language of bombing civilians: we don't do it! Except, of course, when we do.
I found the Brazil-quoting interrogation scence in Shrek the Third disturbing.
Huh, I missed the reference. I was so bored I may not have been watching at that point. (It's a shame, I really enjoyed the first two movies. This one, if your kids don't drag you to it, I'd skip.)
Ogged: In the real world (not that in which Unfogged commenters grew up) kids are forever twisting each other's arms to force compliance or get someone to tell them something.
Which, recall, was not really about the compliance or the telling -- it was about the dominance. I do this to you, because I *can* do it, and because it spells out the power relations b/t us.
It's "pretty natural," sure, like theft, or rape, or murder. I don't think anyone's said that the impusle to torture is incomprehensible -- it's just appalling that the people running our country are morally depraved. [Analogy Police break in, seize Anderson, remove him to secret prison.]
When the Gingerbread Man, threatened with Captain Hook's hook, went deep into fantasy reverie, like Jonathan Pryce at the end of (the UK version of?) Brazil when tortured, or threatened with torture, by Michael Palin.
Got it -- for some reason it didn't click when I saw it.
(the UK version of?)
My memory is not totally clear on this but I thought both versions had the fantasy reverie, but the UK version made it a little more explicit that he had checked out.
Differing Moral Intuitions ...Haidt & Graham, Univ Virginia, 2/01/06
"Our thesis in this article is that there are five psychological foundations of morality,
which we label as harm, reciprocity, ingroup, hierarchy, and purity. Cultures vary on the degree
to which they build virtues on these five foundations. As a first approximation, political liberals value virtues based on the first two foundations, while political conservatives value virtues based
on all five. A consequence of this thesis is that justice and related virtues (based on the
reciprocity foundation) make up half of the moral world for liberals, while justice-related
concerns make up only one fifth of the moral world for conservatives."
While I recognize the long history and ubiquity of using "ingroup" considerations ("they are only Arabs, not Americans; different rules apply") in moral calculation, I am convinced that using such arguments to bridge moral divides are always in the long run, and usually in the short run, counterproductive.
The various identities reinforced by 9/11 (Americans, the world population of not-terrorists, "let's include moderate/secular Muslims" "yes, we moderate Muslims belong") umm, overstimulated those with strong ingroup tendencies, at home & abroad. This is not news to liberals, who focus on acts & behavior more than identities, but we all use a mix in calculations.
I like the paradigm of individuals, isolated even alienated, for or against abstractions. "I oppose torture and favor the post-WWII Conventions." Like a Quaker going to jail or an atheist refusing the Pledge, somehow I consider this a necessary & sufficient argument.
Shrek: the moral is that while seemingly ugly people are really beautiful, seemingly short people are really and truly short, and also awful and ridiculous. A heart-warming story of conditional acceptance of humanity in some of its diversity.
(Rudolph Giuliani thinks interrogators should be able to use whatever procedures they can think of. Not torture mind you; but whatever they can think of.)
11 17
I think the effectiveness of torture to obtain information is unclear. There is evidence that it works. For example the Norwegian court decision Sullivan linked to stated:
"... There was no doubt that the German methods were effective. Their investigations were solely based on betrayal and torture. But for these methods they would never have succeeded in interfering with the underground movement to the extent they did."
A heart-warming story of conditional acceptance of humanity in some of its diversity
A new submission for the banner's mouseover text?
35: The US version lacked the final shot of him in the torture chair that established that the preceding 20 minutes or so was a fantasy, IIRC. The fantasy sequence was still there, but not the return to reality.
"I"...recognizing no overriding allegiances or loyalties
"oppose"...in any and all circumstances
"torture"...as defined and determined by widest consensus available
"and"...as an explanation
"favor"...see "I"
etc
33, 35, 41: The first Universal release presented the fantasy as reality, for a happy ending with additional footage. The original UK version and the second Universal release make clear that it was fantasy, and that the Pryce character has been tortured.
I think the effectiveness of torture to obtain information is unclear.
Then you're not very up on the subject.
See, e.g., Philip Zelikow:
The administration cites examples of people who have been caught or operations that may have been stopped. It would be useful to have a professional, objective analysis of such successes in order to determine and illustrate the contributions of various forms of intelligence. In such an analysis, the elementary question would not be: Did you get information that proved useful? Instead it would be: Did you get information that could have been usefully gained only from these methods?
Sure, if I torture Shearer, he'll probably tell me something true. That does not, however, demonstrate that I wouldn't have gotten the same info from him without torture.
That is why professional interrogators, like the ones quoted in the Times article, say that torture is amateurish and inferior to proper interrogation. If you have some reason why we should prefer James B. Shearer's opinion to that of those who know what they're talking about, do share it, please.
44
The Norwegian Supreme Court felt differently.
For what it's worth I think the US should not be using torture because torture by idiots is counter-productive.
However I see no basis for confident assertions that torture never works.
I wouldn't characterize this:
Sure, if I torture Shearer, he'll probably tell me something true. That does not, however, demonstrate that I wouldn't have gotten the same info from him without torture.
as a confident assertion that torture never works. That there's no good evidence that it produces results superior to non-torture alternatives? That I'd agree with.
The argument that I understood Hilzoy to be making is that if you are arguing that necessity forces you to abandon your moral opposition to torture, the burden of making the empirical argument that the torture is necessary -- that it is superior to the alternatives for your purposes -- is on you. In the absence of such an empirical argument, you may not reasonably claim that torture is necessary.
This is a pretty good example of kabuki politics. The pro-torture people talk about fictional ticking bombs, and the anti-torture people say that torture never works.
What's at stake is making torture a publicly affirmed policy and broadcasting this policy to the whole world, especially to the 30% in the mentally-ill Republican core constituency. The recruitment of the American people to torture is what's at stake, and we have to be anti-torture for that reason. The transformation of America is the real goal.
46
"That there's no good evidence that it produces results superior to non-torture alternatives?"
I haven't seen much good evidence either way which is why I said the effectiveness was unclear.
I am not arguing and do not believe that torture is necessary or even a good idea for the US under present circumstances.
To repeat Hilzoy's argument again -- without evidence that torture is more effective than the alternatives, there's no argument that it's necessary. You (not JBS, but a hypothetical torture advocate) need to make an affirmative empirical argument for its necessity before you're entitled to begin the argument that it is necessary enough to overcome our moral qualms.
the anti-torture people say that torture never works
Emerson, are you being ironic? Who says "torture never works"?
A lot of them say that it produces as much bad information as good. "Torture is ineffective" is a major argument.
As I said, what's at stake in the public argument is far different than any actual argument about the most effective way of gathering information. But people do say that torture is ineffective.
I can't believe I agree with Emerson. I have been here too long. The whole game of defining torture, what is acceptable and what is not, etc. is the wrong question as policy. Look, there was a case of a Bn. CO who fired a warning shot into the ground after threatening to shoot a captive who allegedly knew where an ambush was about to take place. The CO was prosecuted for his actions, but he said he would do it again if need be. That stuff happens. But as policy, hanging people up by their arms is just wrong. My mind would turn to mush if I were the bureaucract asked whether technique A was allowed vs. technique B. I am afraid that this is all a revenge thing, pure and simple. The difference is, this time we are watching, and too many people are Ok with it.
If you're serious about war, you should ask yourself, at every juncture, what will best achieve your objectives
It's sad that the clarity of this statement makes me want to stand up and cheer because it needed to be said.
I can't believe I agree with T.L. Leech. This seems like the right attitude, and I think it's what Oggers has said repeatedly. Create hard and fast laws forbidding torture, including the torture that is currently encouraged by our policy. If it's truly an urgent situation, the laws will be violated, and those who violated them will believe they can prove that they averted the ticking-clock/ambush/whatever. That's how it's always worked in the past.
Okay, "torture is ineffective" -- not quite the same as its never working, but sure.
The whole game of defining torture, what is acceptable and what is not, etc. is the wrong question as policy.
That is what Zelikow says in the speech I linked, tho Marty Lederman (@ Balkinization) has some good comebacks. Basically, unless you're going to let torturers go scot-free, you've *got* to define it.
One thing this debacle shows is what a bad idea "secret torture memos" are. Yoo et al. wrote transparently idiotic arguments that a 2L could've dismembered, but they got away with it for quite a while, because the memos were secret and there couldn't be any public debate, hearings, whatever.
I do agree that the first consideration is that torture is immoral, period. But you've got to remember that Americans are fundamentally uncomfortable with the idea that something could be (1) advantageous, yet (2) immoral. Maybe that's people in general, but I think our pragmatic bent makes us particularly prone to cognitive dissonance there.
49
This seems a little disengenuous. How are you going make a convincing empirical argument that torture works without torturing people?
56: You look at the extensive historical record of what happens when other people torture, and what their success was with it as an interrogation technique, as with the Mossad interrogator mentioned earlier in the thread. This isn't rocket surgery.
How are you going make a convincing empirical argument that torture works without torturing people?
Okay, and I guess the only way to test my theory that testing cosmetics on babies rather than bunnies is to actually use real babies. Because how else could we possibly know?
Leaving aside, as LB points out, that history in general and the 20th century in particular are not exactly devoid of well-documented episodes of torture.
Alternately, you could resolve the issue with the old Soviet joke: Stalin remarks offhandedly to Beria that someone must've stolen Stalin's watch. The next day, Stalin sees Beria again & says he'd just mislaid the watch after all, it was by the sink.
Beria pales and says, "But, Comrade Marshal, 20 people have already confessed to stealing the watch!"
I think the intuitive truth there is enough for non-sociopaths, personally.
57
The extensive historical record is mixed (and much of it relies on dubious sources). Some people claim torture works, others that it doesn't. The Germans used torture in Norway. The Norwegian Supreme Court thought that it was effective stating:
"... There was no doubt that the German methods were effective. Their investigations were solely based on betrayal and torture. But for these methods they would never have succeeded in interfering with the underground movement to the extent they did."
I am unaware of any careful and convincing examination of the available empirical evidence. Do you have references? Ancedotal claims one way or the other are of course not terribly convincing.
57,59:The argument that torture is ineffective precisely parallels the argument about viability in abortion, and is wrongheaded and offensive for the same reasons.