The Connection
It was only after reading Michael Kinsley’s “Torture for Dummies” that I finally got a handle on something that’s been bugging me for sometime: exactly how the pro-(this)war / anti-torture position is untenable. I admire the instincts of the PTW/AT people a great deal; at the same time I’ve been nagged by a sense that they can’t have what they want and an inability to explain why. Kinsley’s article isn’t about that problem, but it solves it nevertheless. Kinsley starts with the bloodlines of the “ticking bomb scenario”:
Questions like these have been pondered and disputed since the invention of the college dorm, but rarely, until the past couple of weeks, unstoned. Now the last of these golden oldies—about the terrorist who knows where the bomb is set to go off—is in the news.
The features of the dorm bull session ethics symposium are perfect knowledge of the present and the default future and perfect certainty of the results of your actions. If you know A, and B will cause C, then musn’t you B?
This is the “ticking bomb” case for torture (as opposed to the esoteric case: payback). It is also, on a moment’s reflection, the case for launching the Iraq War – cases, really:
* If you know Iraq plans to use banned weapons against the United States and that toppling Saddam Hussein will prevent that, musn’t the United States topple Saddam Hussein?
* If you know that Muslims commit terrorism against the United States because they live in unfree societies and democratizing Iraq by force will lead to Ummah-wide freedom and end terrorism, musn’t the United States democratize Iraq by force?
* If you know that Saddam Hussein is a tyrant and that overthrowing his regime will lead to freedom and internal peace, musn’t you overthrow his regime?
Spot the assumed certainties in the trains of logic and you can see the bad institutional furniture and soiled carpets on which they were conceived.
This is the sense in which the conquest of Iraq really is “part of the War on Terror” as conceived by the Bush Administration rather than, as we critics like to say, a “distraction” from the War on Terror we’d have preferred. It’s part of it in the same way that torture is – as an application of force on a field of certitude.
So why can’t you have one and not the other, preventive or “humanitarian” war without torture? Because of what Kinsley calls the salami-slicing problem, which he discusses at length with regard to torture itself. For our purposes, a brief quotation will suffice:
But where do Krauthammer’s rules come from? They have no obvious connection to the reasoning he uses to endorse torture in principle. They are just his opinion. This makes their careful limits more alarming than reassuring. There is no reason to suppose that if Krauthammer’s reasoning was accepted, the result would be Krauthammer’s rules. Once we are rid of the childish notion of an absolute ban on torture, there is no telling where adult minds may take us.
The trouble with salami-slicing is that it doesn’t stop just because you do.
As Kinsley hints, the real problem is just who gets to do the slicing. If you’re Charles Krauthammer presuming to posit official guidelines on torture or Andrew Sullivan hedging on the means to be employed in speculative war, you are gravely misunderstanding the central problem: you won’t be deciding. The ones with actual power to put your general principles into practice will be people who have gotten where they are by achieving a certain level of success in a ruthless business: politics. The fine grain of your own conscience is less likely to show in them – it’s not impossible, but circumstance tells against it.
The same hubris that says we can know the outcome of a large application of speculative force (prophylactic, humanitarian war) says we can know the outcome of a much smaller application (torture). Comfort with one will tend toward comfort with the other. If you are pro-war and anti-torture, it has not in your case, and that speaks well of you.
But look around you at people you used to consider your friends and allies. Compare their generalized anti-torture sentiments of a few years ago with their apologias and justifications now that they can no longer deny it is happening. That’s the tendency in action. You are immune so far, as some resist the zombie plague in a horror movie. But the point isn’t that you can’t want what you want. The point is that you can’t have what you want. I hope, on seeing that, you’ll join the most reliable anti-torture program going: peace.
Comment by steve duncan —
December 14, 2005 @ 10:12 am
If a terrorist goes to the extreme difficulty of secreting a nuclear weapon in Manhatten why would torture force him to reveal its location? He WANTS millions to die, the city reduced to rubble. So you have him in a chair, hot wires on his nuts. He tells you where its located. You go there. Guess what? Its not there, he was lying to you! Ha, ha, ha! Now, what do you do? Turn the juice back on his nuts? What if he lies again? How many times do you rinse and repeat? The guy wants the bomb to go off, he can lie repeatedly. Are you going to continue with the torture while your people are off searching for the newest hidden location, telling the terrorist you’re gonna keep it up til the call comes back confirming it’s been found. Fat lotta good it did him confessing if it doesn’t stop the torture. And wouldn’t a terrorist organization make sure anyone caught involved in the plot was so dedicated, so fanatical in their hatred of the U.S. torture was a moot tactic? This regime is nuts.
Comment by Jim Henley —
December 14, 2005 @ 10:17 am
Steve, yeah, that was my argument three years ago. (See an old item called ”Clever Hans and Doctor Jeste.”) As my other old argument goes, the true function of the ticking bomb scenario is the same as setup in the ”Would you sleep with me for a million dollars” joke – get to the haggling over the price. The ticking bomb scenario isn’t interesting as an argument, but as a meta-argument, I think.
Comment by Rich Puchalsky —
December 14, 2005 @ 11:13 am
Since you like Hitherby, I should point out that there just was a ticking-bomb torture story there as well. I think that it captures the essentials quite well.
Comment by matthew hogan —
December 14, 2005 @ 11:33 am
Prophylatic war? You mean we have a War on Condoms too?
Comment by rilkefan —
December 14, 2005 @ 12:49 pm
Doesn’t Kinsley’s argument prove too much? Pro-choice for the first two trimesters – you’re salami-slicing. Want to take any action that might have negative consequences for someone – you’re salami-slicing. Either you have to live your life subsisting off synthetic food as a 100% ahimsa Buddhist or you’re on that slippery salami to fascist cannibalism.
I take some absolutist positions – no death penalty, for example – and some realist – I’m in favor of liberal interventionism, for example in the next Rwanada, but I opposed the Iraq war. Kinsley’s practical point that Krauthammer’s line won’t be respected is fine – I don’t know about the philosophical framework though.
Comment by Mr. Obscura —
December 14, 2005 @ 1:47 pm
”We’re no better than they are” is not much of a rallying cry, but it seems to be all the pro-torture (or torture-neutral) folks seem to have.
In my dorm-like discussions (I spent six years as a policy analyst, which is as close to the same thing as you can get and get paid for it), I always preferred the ”we don’t do that (torture, annihilating villages, etc) because we’re the good guys.” It may be naive, but at least I don’t feel like I need to wash my hands after talking about it, unlike how I feel after hearing about ”black sites” or why torture is OK.
Comment by Gene —
December 14, 2005 @ 2:04 pm
I agree that peace is the best anti-torture policy, but wouldn’t we have had torture with or without the Iraq war? Seems pretty clear to me that we would. The first OLC memo is from August 2002. The black sites predate Iraq, don’t they?
Comment by Jim Henley —
December 14, 2005 @ 2:18 pm
Gene, we’d have it because we’d have people in charge with the mindset that gave us both. This is where I think Matt Y. has it exactly right in his entry this morning. It’s not that ”The Iraq War causes torture” but that ”the ideology that produces the one inevitably produces the other.” Your piece today was excellent, btw.
Comment by Jeremy Osner —
December 14, 2005 @ 3:16 pm
Thanks for the Hitherby link, Rich — this is by far the clearest argument I have seen in favor of torture. Just think! We will be able to solve NP-complete problems in polynomial time! I reckon such an omelet is worth a few broken eggs.
Comment by Gene —
December 14, 2005 @ 3:31 pm
Thanks, Jim. Glad to see you’re back to providing free ice cream again…
Comment by Tom Scudder —
December 14, 2005 @ 6:50 pm
Damn, I wanted to be the one with the hitherby link. Oh well.
Comment by Bill —
December 14, 2005 @ 10:51 pm
TM Lutas is arguing that in order to enforce the customary laws of war we have to torture the other side. Or something like that. So by his reasoning if you get involved in a war like the present one, you are going to end up torturing people, by principle.
He also asks the important question of what do you do with a uniformed combatant who is caught secreting a nuclear device in NYC. That has to be the ultimate dorm room argument.
http://www.snappingturtle.net/jmc/tmblog/
Comment by T. Paine —
December 15, 2005 @ 12:58 pm
Let’s not forget that the ”ticking bomb scenario” assumes that we know EVERYTHING except the actual location of the bomb. It’s a scenario that tells us more about the person suggesting it than it tells us about the danger it assumes.
Comment by Jaybird —
December 15, 2005 @ 1:44 pm
My good friends, for the second time in our history, a British Prime Minister has returned from Germany bringing peace with honor. I believe it is peace for our time… Go home and get a nice quiet sleep.
Comment by Nell —
December 15, 2005 @ 4:31 pm
Very like the argument that got Josh Marshall off the pro-war train. He’d have supported an invasion run by liberal interventionists, but couldn’t evade the implications of the reality that the actual war on offer was going to be run by right-wing ideologues with objectives of their own.
McCain has just made a deal with the White House that appears to me to provide functional impunity for CIA torturers. So we’re back to the 1970s-1980s, only with a more accurate reading on public opinion on U.S. torture — about 30% fine with it.
Pingback by Positive Liberty » Blog Archive » A Few Replies on the War —
December 15, 2005 @ 8:20 pm
[...] here is an important sense in which the pro-war argument rests on insufficient knowledge. As Jim Henley wrote in a sprawling but insightful post yesterday, The features of th [...]
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December 15, 2005 @ 11:03 pm
[...] here is an important sense in which the pro-war argument rests on insufficient knowledge. As Jim Henley wrote in a sprawling but insightful post yesterday, The features of th [...]
Comment by Hesiod —
December 16, 2005 @ 8:27 am
You know, in the entiore history of the world, and torture, I’d like the pro-torture folks to provide just ONE example of the ”ticking time-bomb scenario” where torture actually made a fdifference. Not in a work of fiction, like a tv show. But in reality.
Just one.
If they can come up with one, then maybe I’ll conceede than in extremis, this type of thing may be necessary. But, I find it rather telling that they never have and probably never will.
Comment by T. J. Madison —
December 16, 2005 @ 8:51 am
>>Just one.
Sure. Mossad apparently used torture to foil a Black September plot to shoot down Golda Meir’s 747 when she travelled to visit the Pope in 1973.
Reference: ”Gideon’s Spies — The Secret History of the Mossad” by Gordon Thomas” page 231
Comment by buermann —
December 18, 2005 @ 5:33 am
Two words: fuck yeah. Fine post, Mr. Henley.
Comment by Johnathan Pearce —
December 19, 2005 @ 10:43 am
Hesiod, I have wracked my brain and I cannot think of ANY example of torture getting the vital info on the ticking bomb. Not one example.