2008 Woodie Awards
Use of torture presents curious moral dilemma
Issue date: 10/16/07 Section: Editorials
Before we go further in the debate over terrorism and torture, could we get straight some basics?
Basically, inflicting either terror or torture on people is evil-so the initial question is whether it is ever justified to do evil that good might come of it, or, at least, to prevent a greater evil. Choosing the lesser of two (or several) evils is still choosing evil, but such a choice can be an ethical obligation.
Let me belabor the obvious for a moment. It is difficult to come up with an exact definition of terrorism, but George Orwell gives us as a hypothetical example throwing acid in the face
of a child. Certainly blowing up buildings in cities always and necessarily risks hurting children. Torture as a means to break people to get information-or just to break people-certainly includes torturing children in front of their parents. That inclusion is certain because Amnesty International had a campaign against a regime using precisely such torture.
If a terrorist says, "Yes, harming children is wrong, but I don't intend to murder children; these deaths are side-effects, collateral damage," the correct philosophical response is, "Bull! You bomb a building where children might be and those children are wounded, killed or maimed-then you are guilty of the evils inflicted upon them." If a torturer says, "I only torture the guilty-or those with guilty knowledge," the response is slightly more complex, beginning with the questions both real and rhetorical, "How can you know they're guilty, and who are you to judge and punish without due process?"
With this approach, we are in an old debate over ends and means and can look at the traditional argument and save a lot of time, energy and paper.
Hardheaded realists say it's a bad world and that refusing to do evil to fight evil may keep you pure but often renders you ineffective. Even more extreme is Niccolo Machiavelli's once-famous advice to a would-be ruler, in The Prince (end of ch. 18), "A prince must take care that nothing goes out of his mouth which is not full of mercy, faith, integrity, humanity and religion. And nothing is more necessary than to seem to have this last quality, for men in general judge more by the eyes than by the hands, for everyone can see, but very few feel what you are, and those few will not dare to oppose themselves to the many, who have the majesty of the state to defend them; and in the actions of men, and especially of princes, from which there is no appeal, the end justifies the means.
Basically, inflicting either terror or torture on people is evil-so the initial question is whether it is ever justified to do evil that good might come of it, or, at least, to prevent a greater evil. Choosing the lesser of two (or several) evils is still choosing evil, but such a choice can be an ethical obligation.
Let me belabor the obvious for a moment. It is difficult to come up with an exact definition of terrorism, but George Orwell gives us as a hypothetical example throwing acid in the face
of a child. Certainly blowing up buildings in cities always and necessarily risks hurting children. Torture as a means to break people to get information-or just to break people-certainly includes torturing children in front of their parents. That inclusion is certain because Amnesty International had a campaign against a regime using precisely such torture.
If a terrorist says, "Yes, harming children is wrong, but I don't intend to murder children; these deaths are side-effects, collateral damage," the correct philosophical response is, "Bull! You bomb a building where children might be and those children are wounded, killed or maimed-then you are guilty of the evils inflicted upon them." If a torturer says, "I only torture the guilty-or those with guilty knowledge," the response is slightly more complex, beginning with the questions both real and rhetorical, "How can you know they're guilty, and who are you to judge and punish without due process?"
With this approach, we are in an old debate over ends and means and can look at the traditional argument and save a lot of time, energy and paper.
Hardheaded realists say it's a bad world and that refusing to do evil to fight evil may keep you pure but often renders you ineffective. Even more extreme is Niccolo Machiavelli's once-famous advice to a would-be ruler, in The Prince (end of ch. 18), "A prince must take care that nothing goes out of his mouth which is not full of mercy, faith, integrity, humanity and religion. And nothing is more necessary than to seem to have this last quality, for men in general judge more by the eyes than by the hands, for everyone can see, but very few feel what you are, and those few will not dare to oppose themselves to the many, who have the majesty of the state to defend them; and in the actions of men, and especially of princes, from which there is no appeal, the end justifies the means.
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