I haven't done any research on this yet, but I've noticed we needed a new topic. Over New Years, Thomas said, "The next topic is going to be torture." Now, I don't know if he meant that figuratively, propheticly, or simply informatively.
It did get me thinking about what I knew about the torture debate. One thing has stuck out in my mind. A while ago, John McCain was on the Daily Show around the time of his anti-torture legislation. He said that even the Israelis, with their constant need for the kind of intelligence that administration is talking about, that they have rejected the use of physical torture. They use "psychological techniques."
So here's the topic: Is psychological torture as bad as physical torture? What techniques is he referring to? Are they more effective? How can one draw the line between imprisonment and psychological torture? Is pain infliction without wounds physical or psychological torture?
As a baseline for comparing psychological vs. physiological torture, I gleaned the following passage from wiki's entry on "Psychology of torture" :
ReplyDelete"Physical torture uses well known methods to torment the body. In contrast, psychological torture is directed at the psyche with calculated violations of psychological needs, along with deep damage to psychological structures and the breakage of beliefs underpinning normal sanity."
Is this satisfactory, or does someone have an alternative set of definitions?
If we consider this an accurate distinction between the two types of torture, I would be inclined to believe that phsycological torture is actually much worse than the phsyiological variety. Certainly, with conventional phsyiological torture there will be a negative impact on the psyche, but the stated goal of psychological torture is to undermine a person's sanity.
This begs the question, "What quality of information can a person provide when their sanity has been undermined?" In fairness, regardless of the type of torture implemented, accuracy of any acquired information is dubious at best - If you don't know the information your torturers are inquiring about, but they think you do, eventually you'll probably start making things up to try to appease your tormentors. I do realize that attempts are made to corroborate information for the sake of determing usefulness.
Regardless of the issue of the quality of information attained by torturing, I think there's a deeper issue here - phsyical wounds will heal in a reasonable amount of time perhaps leaving some phsyical scarring, but having your sanity undermined is something that you're likely never to recover from. This is why I tend to believe that phsycological torture is worse than phsyiological torture.
I think we need to addres the affects on the torturer as well. I'd like to think that the majority of us are raised with the belief that torture is objectivelly morally wrong. When our government seeks out people to assign the task of torture, do they identify those who have no qualms about it, or do the force the jailer, whatever their beliefs may be, to be a torturer. If it is the latter, then I have to believe that there is a price to be paid in terms of sanity on the part of the torturer as well. At the least, we are ingraining in some of our citizens that causing human anguish is acceptable; at worst we are committing pshycological torture on the torturer as well, undermining their sanity. In fact, one form of psychological torture involves having the torturee torture others.
Finally, there is the issue of moral culpability of a populace that supports their government torturing people. For me the recent Bush administration fight against the anti-torture legislation was particularly upsetting. I found the lack of public outrage on this issue quite disgusting. It seems wrong to me that the populace can be so outraged about issues that do not harm anyone ( Such as the desire for two people of the same gender to express their love for eachother in the same way as normal married couples ), and at that same time apparently have no outrage that our President wants to be able to torture people, which effects everyone who doesn't stand against it, because we are morally culpable for the actions of our government unless we vocalize our displeasure. I realize some might point out that they believe gay marriage to be immoral and thus fall under the same argument, but the distinction I'm trying to make here is that one issue hurts no one, and the other one hurts both an individual person as well as the moral fiber of the populace that supports it. Perhaps this issue of moral culpability bears merit as a seperate discussion.
I was also quite disturbed by the varying responses I recieved when I shared my displeasure with the lack of outrage on the torture issue with others. There seem to be quite a few people with the impression that when it comes to staving off terrorist attacks, torture may be a necessary evil. Perhaps at one time I would have given the same response, but I've put alot of thought into this and I believe that to be an erroneous conclusion. The root of that argument is that it is acceptable to violate our moral code of conduct if it "might" save a life. This is a hypocritical argument because as a populace we fight tooth and nail against invasion of privacy from our own government, even though we know it limits our government in hunting down those who would murder. And I would be inclined to view privacy as more of a civil right than an issue of morality although that could be up for debate. Some might make a distinction between violating the rights of our own citizens versus those of other countries, perhaps using some derogatory term in referring to terrorists specifcally( or simply enemy combatant), but that would be unfortunate. When we consider ourselves a higher class of citizen with greater rights than the rest of humanity we are committing a grave injustice. There should be a set of rights that all people are entitled to regardless of their country of origin. Do we actually consider the rights we are afforded in this country as greater than the rights humanity is entitled to as a whole? Personally I believe, even as an atheist, that "Do unto others as you would have them do unto you", is a valuable adage and a good basis for a moral code of conduct( In the next couple of weeks I hope to post a lengthy discussion of this on my apathocracy blog ).
Well, I realize that this was a rather long winded response, but I do have a tendency to go off on tangents. Sometimes these tangents result in less attention to the main point than intended - if you notice this to be the case on something, please point it out so I can elabortate on it, if only for my own benefit in ironing out a cohesive belief system for myself.
At any rate, I hope you made it through everything and I'm eager to hear some responses as this is a very important topic to me.
Great comments (though long) uberfreki, but one section I had trouble understanding:
ReplyDeleteour President wants to be able to torture people, which effects everyone who doesn't stand against it, because we are morally culpable for the actions of our government unless we vocalize our displeasure.
Ok, that makes sense, but what about your previous argument, gay marriage couldn't be seen as a morality issue for some people?
I realize some might point out that they believe gay marriage to be immoral and thus fall under the same argument,
Ok good, then you understand that gay marriage could be identified as an argument for societal moral culpability too..
but the distinction I'm trying to make here is that one issue hurts no one, and the other one hurts both an individual person as well as the moral fiber of the populace that supports it.
Hurts no one? Let me restate your argument as I read it:
1. Those who do not stand against their government's immorality are morally culpable.
2. Some view gay marriage as an argument for moral culpability in society.
3. Gay marriage hurts no one if unopposed, but torture hurts individuals and the moral fiber of society if unopposed.
Wouldn't gay marriage (if morally wrong) hurt the moral fiber of society too?
PS-This is not an attempt to fuel a gay marriage debate. We should post on that separately.
Uberfreki can correct me if I'm wrong, but I think the logic went that since the motivation for outcry against gay marriage is to avoid moral culpability for the actions of government, the fact that there is no similar outcry against torture indicates that these people who are willing to speak out feel that allowing gay people to marry is worse than torture. (Because if it were, they would speak out on both issues.)
ReplyDeleteThere are other reasons they might not speak out: they may feel that their input isn't needed, that the situation will be resolved to their satisfaction without intervention.
This is, of course, false. The legislation may have passed, but the administration just found a way to redefine the terms -- kind of like Kansas and 'science.'
An outcry such as that against gay marriage would be quite powerful in convincing the administration to back down. Or at least, I hope it would.
All of the above assumes that torture is in fact morally repugnant, but of course not everyone believes that. In fact, with the number of "24" style hypothetical situatuation quotes from politicians and the media, I think there is an opinion that it is okay in certain circumstances.
ReplyDeleteAfter all, surely the guy being tortured is a bad guy, like a child molester or terrorist or something. They always are on TV. It actually goes directly to the death penalty and the 'punishment' vs 'restitution' debate of social justice. I'm afraid the prevailing political opinion is that it's okay to do bad things to people you're pretty sure are bad.
ep,
ReplyDeleteIn response to
"Wouldn't gay marriage (if morally wrong) hurt the moral fiber of society too?"
Yes, that is true and I meant to convey that point, but perhaps I worded my argument poorly. I noticed this to be an obvious critique of the argument I was making and wanted to address it, but in retrospect should have rewritten that entire paragraph at that point.
pl seems to have phrased my intended argument much better, although I will tweak what he said in one way. I'm not sure that the outcry against gay marriage is so well thought out that the prevailing argument against it is one of moral culpability. My original intent was to use the argument of moral culpability on the issue of torture but got somewhat sidetracked when I noticed its application to the gay marriage issue. My overall theme was that I was upset that as a populace we seem to treat gay marriage as worse than torture, but somehow my mind had not yet reduced it to such a straightforward statement.
pl,
On your first post I agreed with everything you said, but would add the following. Even if a public outcry on the issue did not affect the current administration, it could raise the issue's importance in future elections. Additionally it would serve to show the rest of the world that we do not agree with our leaders on this issue and are trying to do something to change it.
On the second post, you bring up an interseting point. It may be that the collective acceptance of doing bad things to bad people is okay is reinforced by our social justice system. Although offically physical torture of prisoners is deemed a criminal act, psychological torture is considered acceptable in the form of solitary confinement. I suppose one could consider imprisonment itself a form of psychological torture, but I'm not sure there is a lesser alternative to deal with the problem of criminals aside from isolating them from society.
It may be the case however that an evaluation of our prison system and the implications of torture would serve us well in reevaluating some of the acts that we condsider criminal such as drug usage. Perhaps a viewing of imprisonment as torture would make us more inclined to limit it to those individuals who are a clear danger to society.
It seems the issue of social justice makes it difficult to avoid an argument that doing bad things to bad people is okay. If that is the case, then we have a responsibility to make sure that our definition of "bad people" is sufficiently narrow and to limit what "bad things" are allowable and work towards creating better alternatives to those.
As I do some research into this, I am more and more surprised by McCain's reference to Israel. If asked, I would have bet that Israel did engage in torture, which is probably why the statement stuck with me.
ReplyDeleteIt seems that this impression is quite correct. In 1998/99, there was a lot of discussion about Israeli policy. In the mid '90s an Israeli court ruled that "moderate physical and psychological pressure" was fine to use on Palestinians. These techniques included hooding subjects in feces, violent shaking (has resulted in death), sleep deprevation, restraining in "very painful conditions," and a few others.
This policy was under fire and scrutiny for the last few years of the '90s. They back tracked with statements such as the following:
TORTURE IS ILLEGAL IN ISRAEL. THERE IS NO EXCUSE AND THERE IS NO WAY THAT ANYONE CAN EMPLOY TORTURE OR TACTICS WHICH INVOLVE TORTURE IN INTERROGATIONS, EVEN
WITH WANTED TERRORISTS. WHAT IS ALLOWED, IN CERTAIN UNIQUE, EXTREME CIRCUMSTANCES -- WHAT WE CALL "TICKING BOMB" SITUATIONS -- IS MODERATE PRESSURE. AND EVEN THEN, ONLY IN UNIQUE CIRCUMSTANCES.
Deja vu. Later (2000?) the Supreme Court in Israel ruled against the use of these practices, but this stance is widely believed to be lipservice and allowed for a loophole similar to Bush's designation of 'enemy combatants.' Torture was believed to be widely used by the Shin Bet.
Have things changed since then? There isn't much news since then, but from what I've read there's certainly no feeling that Israel's doing a great job.
So why mention Israel? McCain certainly knows more about this than my afternoon of websearches. Maybe they are doing a good job. Maybe he used it to show how low our standards really are.
Some Web references:
http://www.fas.org/irp/news/1999/01/990113-israel.htm
http://www.fas.org/sgp/crs/misc/RL32438.pdf
http://www.fas.org/irp/world/israel/shin_bet/
(facinating site with lots of good reading)
http://counterpunch.org/madsen05102004.html