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Saturday 21 November 2009

Torture: You Know It When You See It

Monday, 31st August 2009

I watched Tunes of Glory again last night. It's one of my favourite films*. During it, Basil Barrow, the newly-arrived Colonel of the battalion, played by John Mills, mentions his experiences in a Japanese prisoner of war camp during the Second World War:

Oh they gave me time, all right. Again and again. When I was in the prison camp, they nearly drowned me, then they brought me round. Then they put a wet cloth over my mouth and kept it wet until I nearly drowned again. And the only thing that pulled me through was the thought that one day I'd come back and sit in the middle of that table as colonel of this battalion, like my grandfather and his father before him. Only I was going to be the best of the lot.

In other words, he was waterboarded. You may complain that even though the Japanese did waterboard prisoners, this is a fictional example. Then again, many of the pro-waterboarding brigade these days seem to derive their moral compass from episodes of 24. The point is that, once upon a time, if you had said the United States would willingly, openly and proudly embrace techniques used by the Japanese and, later, the Khmer Rouge, people might have thought you were either barking mad or (and?) a member of some leftist cult.

That is, appallingly, no longer the case. The question of what is, and what is not, torture is pretty simple. If you would consider it torture if it were done to one of our guys then it's torture if we do it to one of theirs.

Some commenters responding to this post argue that they managed to survive "enhanced interrogation techniques" during their own military training. Therefore, they suggest, there can't be anything wrong with using the same techniques upon our own prisoners. This argument has been dealt with elsewhere many times, but we might as well have it out here too.

There is all the difference in the world between a training course and the real-life, no end in sight, experience of these "techniques". The former is a training exercise, the latter is not. More to the point: a SERE course, or its equivalents, is designed to help soldiers, in the event they are captured, cope with and survive being mistreated. Arguing that we should treat prisoners in the same way that we expect, or fear, our enemies will treat their prisoners is, pretty much by definition, to lower ourselves to their level and to abandon our own principles and the values that we're supposed to be fighting for.

Commenter Salamantis also weighs in, addressing the "ticking time-bomb" hypothetical. He (or she?) argues:

"Let me get this straight; if [1] Khalid Sheikh Muhammed had been captured on 9/10 and [if 2] we knew that a massive terrorist attack was in the very near offing and [if we knew 3] that he knew enough about it for us to be able to prevent it if [4] we got the information he had by the end of the day but [if we 5] didn't know enough to stop it WITHOUT that intelligence and the decision as to what to do about the situation was yours to make, you'd rather let thousands of innocents die than waterboard a single genocidal terrorist mastermind; right?

As you can see, the brackets number the hypotheticals piled on top of one another in this doomsday scenario. There are at least five. In other words, this combination of hypothetical events is so unlikely that it cannot possibly be a sensible basis upon which to base the ordinary, day-to-day regulations covering the interrogation and treatment of prisoners. The worst case scenario, as unlikely, improbable or unrealistic as it may be, cannot, or should not, be the default presumption governing how we organise these matters. Such a scenario is beyond extremely hypothetical. Satisfying it is extremely improbable.

In the all-but-vanishingly-unlikely circumstance that it were met, however, I think one may make a case for ill-treatment but that those responsible for dishing out that treatment would have to be held responsible for their actions and, quite probably, take their chances in a court of law. But you cannot give carte blanche to the CIA or army or whoever to treat any prisoner in such fashion just on the off-chance that a single one of these hypotheticals, let alone all five, might apply. The law is not designed for extreme cases, but for the general rule. And that's how it should be.

Because, in the end, this is a matter of civilisation. It is not good enough to say that well we don't cut people's heads off. Our bar must be higher than that, otherwise we are guilty of measuring ourselves by the standards of the enemy, not our own. Sadly, there seem to be plenty of people around who are quite happy to do so. But, again, if we use techniques favoured by the Japanese or the Khmer Rouge or the Gestapo or the KGB do we not reduce ourselves, in some rather important ways, to their level?

And are we not supposed to be better than that?

Of course I could be wrong and Salamantis might be correct to suppose that opposing the use of torture means I have "forfeited all claims to morality and human decency."

*Also one of my favourite novels. And one of Alec Guinness's greatest performances. One of the best from John Mills too. I don't know why it slipped my mind when I compiled a list of favourite movies.

Filed under: Cinema (14 more articles) , Torture (36 more articles)

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Fergus Pickering

August 31st, 2009 4:55am Report this comment

Enthusiasts for torture looking for literary examples should hie them to a second-hand bookshop and pick up some of the works of Sapper Featuring Bulldog Drummond. Mickey Spillane and Mike Hammer are also good. Very popular these chaps were too, so the taste is far from new. Those of you who know French might care to try the interminable works of the Divine Marquis. Doubtless the Harvard Professor of whom I spoke in a previous post was an aficionado. And Alex, though we may disagree about certain details of nomenclature regarding race and nationality, we are on the same side here. But you are flogging a dead horse if you will forgive the phrase. These guys ain't listening and I do hope you don't have to convince yourself. As johnson said, in another context, 'Don't cant about savages'. And the savages are always with us and, alas, on our own side.

cuffleyburgers

August 31st, 2009 8:13am Report this comment

Alex

I appreciate your point of view but I do not agree.

Of course I am opposed to the routine use of torture.

I also do not suppose for a second that it occurs except in the most extraodinary circumstances such as Abu Ghraib, and when it does it is rightly stamped on.

However, I would not excercise myself too much if, in an extreme scenario, one of our chaps, decided that the only way to obtain certain information timeously, was to waterboard a suspected terrorist warlord.

It should be a difficult decision for the man on the ground, and one that he should realise that he will be taken to task for and be expected to justify.

On the other hand of course, roasting over a slow fire, being eaten by rats or having their eyes put out and their lips sewn up would not under any circumstances be acceptable.

Tim Hedges

August 31st, 2009 9:00am Report this comment

The first thing the anti-torture brigade say is that it doesn't work, which is clearly nonsense, otherwise we wouldn't be having this debate. Given that, if lives can be saved, torture seems morally right. It needs to be brought out into the open. A High Court Judge needs to authorise it, and certain minimum safeguards applied, again brought out into the open.

I don't want to die because someone was too wimpy to deal firmly with a suspect, but I don't like these continual stories of unauthorised abuse, which I suspect are because politicians don't want to know.

Richard T

August 31st, 2009 9:15am Report this comment

Although it probably won't matter a jot to some of your US readers, I believe that our own public life has been corrupted by the USA's descent from its city on a hill. I doubt we will ever know quite how actively our government and intelligence agencies have been involved in it but there is more than a suspicion of active connivance at such matters as rendition flights, the use of British territory like Diego Garcia and the blind eye turned to direct and indirect torture by the CIA.

The whole tenor of Tony Blair's rhetoric about Iraq and the 'war against terror' was that ends justify the means and torture is one of the ends we have arrived at.

David

August 31st, 2009 9:36am Report this comment

Hear, hear, Alex. Many of those arguing against you claim we are fighting to save civilisation. If they have their way, it's already lost.

guy herbert

August 31st, 2009 12:25pm Report this comment

Proponents of the "ticking bomb" argument miss completely their chain of reasoning falls down at points [2],[3],[4]. Torture has only 'worked' as notional information gathering when it produces confirmation of what the torturer knows or thinks he knows. If he doesn't believe his victim, then he will carry on torturing until (perhaps by guessing) the victim gets the answer 'right' enough to stop the torture. It is not therefore much use as information at all.

Judicial torture in pre-modern Europe served the same function it does in Islamic countries today - to deal with rigid rules of evidence that required a confession for the disposal of a crime.

There is a way that torture works, however, and that is the reason it remains popular with dictators and gangsters, who torture those who cross them and let it be known that they do so. It is an instrument of terror. Its function is to suppress dissent and get fearful, unquestioning compliance - not least from those who are a part of the system, have blood on their hands and know it means their masters will stop at nothing.

I have no doubt that the last US administration knew all this. Its denied-but-open adoption of torture was counter-terror in the most literal sense. They wanted the world to fear American power a bit more.

Olaf Rye

August 31st, 2009 3:13pm Report this comment

It is important to remember that interrogation is not done as an exercise without extensive background information. Most often there is psychological pressure applied by the interrogators suggesting that they know a great deal--sometimes, this is true, for they have signals intelligence information and other assets at their disposal. The more stressful interrogation then begins when the prisoner is known to have a specific role and refuses to divulge more information.

In most military scenarios, the intelligence that you are privy to is useful for only between 24 and 48 hours, before your capture becomes known and missions are altered accordingly. After this, a controlled release of information can occur, where you mix truth with outright lies.

The higher up in the organisation you are, the longer your intelligence is useful. This is probably why the enhanced interrogation was done for a protracted period on some of those held in detention. The moral of the story, though, is not to get caught because you will have a most unpleasant time !

Kennybhoy

September 1st, 2009 2:13pm Report this comment

Do you have any weans Mr Massie? You must have some nieces and nephews surely......?

Imagine for a second that some very bad person has your child. A wee lassie say. He has had her to himself for several days. I will let your imagination fill in the details, the Speccie Techie in the Basement aka Peter Oborne's Number One Fan, will have kittens if I spell out them out. The police are fortunate and manage to capture the kidnapper, but they do not know the location of the wean and the kidnapper refuses to talk. Why should he? In a few days she will be dead and nobody will find her body. He will walk free to do the same again. What would you do in these circumstances? What would you have the police do?

And before you start prattling about "far fetched hypothetical scenarios" you wee moral poseur, Google "Jakob von Metzler".

“We sleep safe in our beds because rough men stand ready in the night to visit violence on those who would do us harm.”

PS To Speccie Techie in the Basement aka Peter Oborne's Number One fan. Please do not censor my posts....?