Waterboarding: The draining of America’s decency
In a testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee on Tuesday, January 30th, Attorney General Michael B. Mukasey refused to clearly state whether waterboarding—a form of torture—is legal or illegal. As the head of the United States Department of Justice, the Attorney General has the important responsibility of representing the moral and legal standing of the United States. It is with this in mind that I believe the chilling indifference Mr. Mukasey demonstrated over the issue of waterboarding is an aberration of the moral and legal integrity of the United States.
Insofar as the United States is a civilized nation it should be common practice for United States officials to adhere to the most elementary forms of morality and human decency. Contrary to what Mr. Mukasey’s testimony would have you believe, defining the scope of elementary moral practice is not ambiguous over matters concerning the torturing of human beings. The famous 18th century philosopher Immanuel Kant, for example, very concisely outlined a conception of morality that essentially states the following: Moral behavior, with respect to humans, is such that a person always treat another human being as an end—never merely as a means to an end. Torture, since it is arguably the most flagrant instance of “mere means” treatment conceivable, clearly violates Kant’s simple moral maxim. On that basis alone the United States is obligated to refrain from considering the use of torture as a legal interrogation technique—that is, of course, assuming that the United States wishes to remain civilized.
Some may argue, however, that waterboarding is not clearly torture, and, therefore, that it may not compromise the moral standing of the United States if it were used. Now, I have no idea how one might make the case that waterboarding is not torture (it is a simulated execution after all), but even if such a claim were granted, Mukasey’s own testimony is sufficient to demonstrate how waterboarding violates Kant’s simple standard for evaluating moral behavior. In his testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee, Mukasey stated that the legality of the waterboarding technique depended on “the heinousness of doing it, the cruelty of doing it balanced against the value…of what information you might get.” This is quintessential means-end reasoning. Essentially, Mukasey is arguing here that the ends (information) justify the means (waterboarding)—precisely the antithesis of Kant’s moral maxim.
Even though the immorality of torture is the most important argument against its use, there is yet another convincing reason to remove it from the list of possible interrogation techniques: It doesn’t work.
According the Army’s own Field Manual on intelligence interrogation, “The use of force, mental torture… or exposure to unpleasant and inhumane treatment of any kind is prohibited by law and is neither authorized nor condoned by the US Government. Experience indicates that the use of force is not necessary to gain the cooperation of sources for interrogation. Therefore, the use of force is a poor technique, as it yields unreliable results, may damage subsequent collection efforts, and can induce the source to say whatever he thinks the interrogator wants to hear.”
For those who feel that special circumstances, like hypothetical “ticking time-bomb” scenarios, prevent the option of torture from being taken off the table completely, the burden is on you to demonstrate why. It is sickening enough to consider that torture—the abuse of the most basic of human rights—could be used as the means toward the end of “information gathering;” but, it is utterly monstrous to consider that torture could be used toward no further end whatsoever. Since it is well understood that torture yields “unreliable results,” it seems as though the latter scenario is inevitable wherever torture is used. In that sense then, torture becomes its own end—a completely intolerable possibility. In light of this, any country that condones torture, either by actively using it or considering its possible use, is entertaining a position that is so grotesque it has no business calling itself “civilized.”