Drawing the Line Against Torture

The outrages committed by Americans at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq justly sparked worldwide protest. Never mind that much of the protest was motivated by opposition to American policy or generalized America-bashing. We handed them a bat with which to bash us. The pictures of what happened and the failure of policy that permitted what happened will long be cited as evidence against the claim that America is the champion of human rights and dignity. The damage is grave.

It is not a question of terrible things done by “a few bad apples.” Ruth Wedgwood of Johns Hopkins University and R. James Woolsey, former director of the CIA, write, “In a democratic country bounded by religious faith, there is no room for unbounded power over any human being.” Unbounded power and the repugnantly abusive use of unbounded power was on display at Abu Ghraib. Pinning responsibility may be difficult, but we know that the Office of Legal Counsel in the Justice Department was in 2002 producing memos on how, in the treatment of terrorists, the U.S. might get around solemn international agreements prohibiting torture. Wedgwood and Woolsey write:

The Office of Legal Counsel has traditionally claimed the last word, at least on constitutional law, within the Executive Branch. But even the most capable lawyers cannot countermand the President’s solemn promise of humane treatment for all persons captured in war. Nor can they override the President’s proclamation of June 26, 2003. President Bush declared that “the United States is committed to the world-wide elimination of torture” and called for all governments to join with America to prohibit “all acts of torture” and “prevent other cruel and unusual punishment.” The words of a President should not be lightly dismissed.

There is a temptation to place terrorists beyond the pale of humanity. But every human being, no matter how radically he has debased himself, is a child of God, created in His image and likeness. Liberals such as Alan Dershowitz have argued that, in extraordinary circumstances, we should get over our abhorrence of torture and establish rational rules for its use. Dershowitz’s argument is seconded by Andrew C. McCarthy in the July-August issue of Commentary in a jumbled article that compares torture to capital punishment, allowing abortions under restricted circumstances, the death of innocents in war, and government plea bargaining to obtain information. The gist of McCarthy’s case is that we should “create controlled, highly regulated, and responsibly accountable conditions” in which torture would be permitted. Torture happens anyway, he writes, and his proposal is “far superior to the current hypocrisy that turns a blind eye to that which it purports to forbid.” An even better proposal is not to turn a blind eye to the illegal and unconscionable.

The usual instance cited by proponents of legalized torture is that of the “ticking time bomb.” The scenario is that we have in custody a fourteen-year-old girl who, we have reason to believe, knows where a nuclear bomb is planted in the heart of a city, a bomb timed to explode within hours. Surely, it is argued, in such a circumstance torture is justified in order to get information that will save many thousands of lives. No, it isn’t. Leave aside the counter-arguments that maybe she does not know, or that information exacted by torture is unreliable. When it comes to defining circumstances justifying torture or to the regulating of torture, the course is slippery and steeply sloped. We dare not trust ourselves to torture.

Torture as defined in international agreements to which the U.S. is party—outrages against human dignity, humiliation, degradation, mutilation, the threat of death—is never morally permissible. Admittedly, a measure of coercion, both physical and mental, is inevitably involved in most interrogation. The very fact of being in custody and under threat of punishment is a form of coercion. The task is to draw as bright a line as possible between such coercion and torture, and to forbid the latter absolutely. The uncompromisable principle is that it is always wrong to do evil in order that good may result. This principle is taught in numerous foundational texts of our civilization and is magisterially elaborated in the 1993 encyclical of John Paul II, Veritatis Splendor. We cannot ask God’s blessing upon a course of action that entails the deliberate doing of evil. When something like Abu Ghraib happens, the appropriate response of patriotic Americans is one of deep sorrow, clear condemnation, and a firm resolution that it not happen again.