A couple of weeks ago a US senate committee released a report confirming what has already been old news for a while: the CIA tortured terrorist suspects in its (on-going) attempt to win the “war on terror” and protect American lives from terrorist attacks. On this side of the pond, at least, the news of that report has already moved off of the front page. It only took a couple of days for the Christmas portraits of Prince George to bump it off the BBC’s list of headlines. The fact that the CIA tortured prisoners is already drifting off the radar.
Maybe it was because it was already old news and maybe it was because everyone in the Western world (or at least the members of NATO nations) subconsciously wants to ignore the fact that it is our “freedoms” that the CIA was hoping to protect. Another reason, however, may be that in the current culture of ethical pragmatism we simply do not have the tools to articulate how the CIA went wrong, or to explain why our gut reaction (“Torture is always wrong.”) is actually justifiable. This is apparent in many of the analyses of the report that followed its publication.
Two points really stand out, both based on a pragmatic morality (that is, its right if it works), and neither can really get to the gut conclusion.
1. The CIA tortured because it would achieve the objective: save lives from terrorist attacks. It isn’t demonstrable that it achieved that objective so it was wrong to torture.
2. The CIA tortured because it thought the suspects were guilty. Some of the suspects were innocent, so it was wrong to torture.
The problem, of course, with both inferences is that the other conclusion that they lead to is this: Torture is permissible if it achieves the objective and those that are tortured are guilty.
Both of these points are clearly portrayed in Conor Friedersdorf’s analysis of Dick Cheney’s Meet the Press interview.
Friedersdorf takes Cheney to task for his support of the CIA’s actions. Cheney is unashamedly supportive of the CIA’s actions. Torture was necessary to achieve the objective of saving lives from terrorist attacks. Many of the suspects were guilty, if not of plotting acts of terrorism, then at least of being willing to attack American troops on the battlefield. The CIA’s program stopped these attacks from happening and kept enemy combatants away from the battlefield. Friedersdorf is also clear about why he thinks this is problematic: some of the suspects were innocent and there is not sufficient evidence that the torture program that actually achieved its objectives. The fact that Friedersdorf simply does not have the tools available to adequately critique Cheney’s position is glaringly obvious, and I think this is true of any critique flowing out from the culture of ethical pragmatism that dominates contemporary debate. The end result is that both sides of the issue demonstrate a shocking, sharp, and brutally evil hypocrisy.
Would torture have been wrong if had achieved the objective? In light of the history of the twentieth century I think that most people would end up saying no. Achieving the objective has always come first. How many history books remember the bombings of Dresden, Tokyo, Nagasaki, and Hiroshima as heinous acts of terrorism? If given the chance, should Berlin have been nuked if it meant killing Hitler? I imagine most people, even those who think Dick Cheney is an inhuman monster, would eventually nod the affirmative. Were more innocents tortured by those acts, or by the CIA in recent history?
Would torture have been wrong if everyone was guilty? Again, the pragmatist answer is no. Maybe do it quietly, maybe with a bit of shame, maybe with the insistence that it all remain tactfully out of sight. But no, if necessary, let them be tortured. Again it comes back to the pragmatic end: get the job done.
Maybe I am wrong about those assumptions. Hopefully I am. But I think that the lines along which the dialogue has run leave very little hope. Writing as a Christian, I have to say that it is therefore high time that we jettisoned once-and-for-all the ethical pragmatism that elevates the objectives dictated by our secular governments (yes, I mean life, liberty, the pursuit of happiness, and all the rest) in favour of the demands of our true King.
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