Waterboarding-Torture and Morality

When it comes to issues of Morality gray areas are inevitable, as any student of philosophy can attest. Regardless of which theory of morality you adhere to, one can always imagine situations in which the general rules of the system cannot, and should not, apply, lest we be ready to accept immoral consequences. Theoretical matters and practical matters are usually at odds with each other. Someone once said that moral actions should be judged by their consequences! Such is the case with waterboarding.

Waterboarding has been on the news quite a bit lately. Attorney General Mukasey has been under attack regarding this issue. Waterboarding is a form of torture. No sensible person can argue with that. However, I am a little on the fence on this one, when it comes to the real question: " Is torture an allowable interrogation technique, under specific circumstances?" I do not know exactly, but I am inclined to say yes in very limited circumstances, even though all my human senses revolt at the very idea. Nevertheless, I would not want to be the person responsible for deciding what those limited circumstances would be.

Torture is undoubtedly a horrible violation of human rights. It is brutal and barbaric. I believe we as humans, have an innate moral sense, which doesn't come from the Bible by the way, which guides us in our lives. It is that moral sense that sends that shudder down my spine at the very mentioning of the word torture. That is true, and not being questioned in this post. But does that mean torture should never be used? I am afraid it does not!

Imagine the following situation:

A criminal has kidnapped a bus full of school children. He has been caught. You know that the children are locked up in some unknown location and that they only have 2 hours of air left. In 2 hours they will be dead. The criminal is not talking and every interrogation method has failed to get answers. You are running out of time. Would you torture this person if you had any hope at all that this may save the children?

I for one say without a shadow of a doubt. Of course, we would have to be almost certain that the person in question has possession of the info we need, and that is mighty hard. But that is a practical issue, which someone will have to address. At lease in theory, we were able to imagine a situation (not too far fetched) in which anyone with a sense of morals would judge torture necessary. We could come up with many more such scenarios. No matter how you look at it allowing the rights of lots of people to be violated in order to protect the rights of the one person doing the violating is immoral.

I would like to point out that my major unstated premise is that torture works as a means of extracting truthful information. I couldn't make any of the above arguments if I did not think that was the case. Obviously, if it were ineffective for purposes of extracting information, I would be all for banning it completely. There are people who argue that waterboarding is so scary that you cannot trust anything the tortured says. I simply take it at face value that this sort of psychological/physical pain will make one spill his stomachs contents out. The issue however remains, how do you know what you're being told is the truth? I do not know. All I am basing my post on is my own feeling, that if at some point a person breaks and tells everything.

I guess the bottom line is that some things are not black and white. Police must sometimes use fatal force and shoot people, and that is a bigger violation of human rights than waterboarding. But, we're not going to go around and take cop's guns away. The heart of the question is not if a practice is good, or if we'd like to have it performed on us. The real question is : Is it absolutely necessary? If everything else fails, are we justified to go to the next level? Now, the practical issues are enormous, and that is to be expected given the importance of the issue at hand. That is a portion I do not want to venture into. I do not think I have the knowledge or expertise to give an opinion on that. But one thing I can pretty much guarantee: If your kid was in that bus, you'd be the first one in line to pour water down this guy's face. It is a purely utilitarian view of morality, but who can argue with it. Now ask yourself one question:

Would you torture one criminal if it meant saving the lives of many children?

And that is a black and white issue. There are only two possible answers: YES and NO! I vote YES!

Links of Interest

• Mukasey accused of ducking torture issue
• US says it can use waterboarding
• CIA Director: Agency used waterboarding
• CIA Director: Waterboarding necessary, but potentially illegal
• CIA Chief doubts tactic to interrogate is still legal
• Wikipedia page on waterboarding (Use at your own discretion)
• HowStuffWorks on waterboarding