Torture
(Setting aside the moral arguments, while admitting their significance.)
Torture
So you put a large number of low-level educated people with few alternative job options in a military force in the middle of a hostile country on the opposite side of the globe. And they mostly feel comfortable with the idea of torturing the enemy, or at least that it might be expedient. What do you expect? I can hardly blame them. If I was stuck out there in the heat on patrol I would not care that torture is wrong and an ineffective method of information gathering, I would only care about the slight chance that it might save my life, or the life of the person next to me. It might help keep ME alive.
I would (and I hope they might care) that acting on poor information, some no doubt obtained through torture, was the basis for me being there and at risk in the first place. I might care that the risky mission I was doing next week was planned using (or even because of) dubious information from such a source, and I hope I really would care that the increasing hostility of the terrified local population meant more attacks on my unit by more people and fewer friendly tip-offs.
The survey results published in the Economist ‘Contaminated’ article (page 52 of the May 12th-18th edition) were disturbing. What disturbed me was the question phrasing ‘if it would save the life of’ - all you ever really know is that there is a chance, often slim, that it might. Torture, while morally repugnant, would be a pragmatic necessity if you knew it would always get you useful information which would save lives. The thing is it doesn’t.
I worked in market research surveying and you get training in why you don’t deviate from the script - it’s because the questions are very carefully gauged - changes in delivery can prompt specific answers and skew results.
Almost as many (36% of soldiers and 39% of marines) said torture should be allowed to extract important information about Iraqi insurgents.'
Well that’s pretty much the same question - the insurgents are the ones threatening your, better information about them similarly might save your life and frankly that is your number one personal priority. Saving your colleagues comes close. This might save your life, thwart sabotage and could shorten the conflict. The problem with torture is you don’t know you’re going to get important information, a lot of the time you don’t.
What you often get is a lot of garbage information and outright lies. If you’re very very lucky, there will be a nugget of valuable information and if you’re even luckier you'll be in a position to correctly identify that useful iota. Assessing the results of torture takes time, expertise and luck. As Professor Henry Shue (who has studied and written on the subject since the 70's) points out, in order to get good information through torture and to be able to assess when you are being told the truth, you need considerable expertise in torturing. He used to have a position that torture should always be illegal but it might be justifiable for it to be used exceptionally. He now contends that it is never justifiable because in any situation (even some sort of Jack Bauer position where you know definitely that the person you are with has the information you need, that there is no other way in the time frame of extracting it ,and that you will definitely save civilian lives by having it) where it would be necessary you would not have anyone with the skills to do so. You are then left with either saying it is never acceptable or with establishing a system for training torturers (at home or abroad, government sanctioned or privately commissioned) so a suitable practitioner is on hand when the need arises.
I would more upset if they had the same answers on asking "Is it acceptable to torture 50 Iraqis if valuable information is extracted from one of them?" They should also have asked at what point the proportion yielding good information for a set number of people tortured became unacceptable. (From where I’m sitting there is no healthy proportion, in the field it would undoubtedly look different.) They should be asked questions reminding or helping those at the sharp end see the complexity of the issues, instead of embedding prevalent myths about torture as a highly-effective but disallowed method. These questions would at least help them realize that, unlike in the movies, torture is not merely far from infallible but a very unreliable method of obtaining good intelligence.
'Less than half (47% of soldiers and 38% of marines) felt that non-combatants should be treated with dignity and respect, as required by the Geneva Conventions.’
This actually concerns me more. Combatants and non-combatants alike should be treated with dignity and respect. Apart from anything else, you need this to increase the chances you’ll be treated OK if captured (there or in any other conflict). Torture is morally unacceptable; it is also inefficient, costly (the volume of dubious information needs assessment and rigorous and checking) and utterly inappropriate when trying gain the support of the population in rebuilding a shattered country. However inexpensive this may look compared to the high tech options, it has many costs, each of them too high.
'More worrying,only around half said they would be willing to report a member of their unit for killing or injuring an innocent non-combatant; an even smaller number would report a comrade for lesser abuse.
'The more often and the longer that soldiers were deployed in Iraq, the more likely they were to suffer mental-health problems and to mistreat civilians. About one in five was found to be suffering from depression, anxiety or stress; 20% were planning divorce or separation; 72 American soldiers in Iraq have committed suicide since the invasion.'
This needs proof reading: I intend to add further links and polish the text at a later date, time allowing:
- Professor Henry Shue's reading list on the subject (downloadable jpg images of scanned pages)
- his recent work, cv (2001 version) and last role.
- sindark’s brief notes on Lowe, Vaughan. ‘Clear and Present Danger: Responses to Terrorism’ (in case you're interested but want a quick overview of the book, which is available through google scholar) and Professor Shue's lecture titles (with some reading lists jpgs)