What I object to more than torture itself is the bureaucracy of torture. You can conjure up scenarios where I’d probably be willing to turn a blind eye to torture or forgive the torturer. But these situations will be extremely rare and far between. I don’t think you could conjure up scenarios where I would agree that torture needs a bureaucracy to support it.
The way it should work is to keep torture illegal and prosecutable. If someone finds themselves in one of those extraordinary situations where it is necessary to save the world or whatever other doomsday scenarios have been painted for its justification, then those brave, patriotic souls should go ahead and do what needs to be done. Then they should explain themselves and count on the safety-valves of the criminal justice system to do their thing — prosecutorial discretion, jury nullification, and/or a pardon. We count on our heroes to risk their lives in defense of the country but think they’ll balk when facing, not death, but potential prosecution?
There is no need to clutter up our anti-torture position with piles of red tape in order to deal with the exceptional, rare circumstances where torture may be justified. The bureaucracy is only necessary if we are seeking to make such procedures routine, unremarkable, and without consequences encouraging practitioners to be as certain as possible that it is necessary. That’s a Bad Idea.
I think it’s fair to say that given the definition of torture in the criminal law and in relevant treaties, there may well be a zone of reasonable uncertainty/disagreement as to what may or may not cross the line. In those instances perhaps the policy debate is whether or not one errs on the side of not crossing.
But what drives me up a wall is that so many people who spout platitudes about the rule of law, or who moralize about how a good end never justifies a bad means, dodge and weave when confronted with those principles. I detect from many an attitude that even of something clearly crosses the legal line, it somehow is nonetheless proper and even virtuous. They would never apply that concept in other areas.
I suspect you will get more than the usual number of comments on this thread, and would hope that at least a few would address the underlying “rule of law” and “ends justifying means” concepts. But I expect to be disappointed.
If someone did the same to us, what would they call it?
Unfortunately at this time they’d probably call it “Justice”. As a society we have a rather large blind-spot when it comes to what we “do” as opposed to what we “say”. Trust me, Bush isn’t the first President who was more than happy to let others (countries as well as individuals) do his dirty work and he certainly won’t be the last. We like to pretend that there are things that “we” don’t do, yet we’ve routinely done them through history and simply turned a blind eye. Abu Ghraib quickly comes to mind. You think the things we did there are bad, you should read some of the treatment we did to our own countrymen imprisoned during the civil war. In the end, laws are really a “performance level” that we ascribe to and those who fail to meet those levels are punished depending on the “level” of their failure. That’s why I can shoot you in the head in a crowded room and get the death penalty, while if I simply run over you with my car after drinking a bottle of vodka I get at most a few years in the clink (and many times not even that).