The Discerning Texan
All that is necessary for evil to triumph, is for good men to do nothing.
-- Edmund Burke
-- Edmund Burke
Sunday, November 27, 2005
The Debate on Torture: Krauthammer and the "grey areas"
Jeff Goldstein of Protein Wisdom once again strikes gold with his analysis of Charles Krauthammer's essay on the "torture" debate. Highlights:
[...]
Krauthammer then distinguishes between three classes of prisonor: 1) the battlefield capture 2) the captured terrorist, and 3) the captured terrorist presumed to have information useful to those who captured him (or her).
Of the first of these, Krauthammer writes:
There is no question that he is entitled to humane treatment. Indeed, we have no right to disturb a hair on his head. His detention has but a single purpose: to keep him hors de combat. The proof of that proposition is that if there were a better way to keep him off the battlefield that did not require his detention, we would let him go.
Because the only purpose of detention in these circumstances is to prevent the prisoner from becoming a combatant again, he is entitled to all the protections and dignity of an ordinary domestic prisoner--indeed, more privileges, because, unlike the domestic prisoner, he has committed no crime. He merely had the misfortune to enlist on the other side of a legitimate war.
Of the second group, captured terrorists, Krauthammer argues:
A terrorist is by profession, indeed by definition, an unlawful combatant: He lives outside the laws of war because he does not wear a uniform, he hides among civilians, and he deliberately targets innocents. He is entitled to no protections whatsoever. People seem to think that the postwar Geneva Conventions were written only to protect detainees. In fact, their deeper purpose was to provide a deterrent to the kind of barbaric treatment of civilians that had become so horribly apparent during the first half of the 20th century, and in particular, during the Second World War. The idea was to deter the abuse of civilians by promising combatants who treated noncombatants well that they themselves would be treated according to a code of dignity if captured--and, crucially, that they would be denied the protections of that code if they broke the laws of war and abused civilians themselves.
Breaking the laws of war and abusing civilians are what, to understate the matter vastly, terrorists do for a living. They are entitled, therefore, to nothing [...] Even though terrorists are entitled to no humane treatment, we give it to them because it is in our nature as a moral and humane people. And when on rare occasions we fail to do that, as has occurred in several of the fronts of the war on terror, we are duly disgraced.
...Which brings us, finally, to the third class of detainee: the terrorist with information. Krauthammer trots out the familiar hypothetical of the nuclear device and only five minutes to find where it is to be detonated. But he puts a philosophical spin on what proceeds from the premise that it is important to underscore:
even if the example I gave were entirely hypothetical, the conclusion--yes, in this case even torture is permissible--is telling because it establishes the principle: Torture is not always impermissible. However rare the cases, there are circumstances in which, by any rational moral calculus, torture not only would be permissible but would be required (to acquire life-saving information). And once you’ve established the principle, to paraphrase George Bernard Shaw, all that’s left to haggle about is the price. In the case of torture, that means that the argument is not whether torture is ever permissible, but when--i.e., under what obviously stringent circumstances: how big, how imminent, how preventable the ticking time bomb.
That is why the McCain amendment, which by mandating “torture never” refuses even to recognize the legitimacy of any moral calculus, cannot be right. There must be exceptions. The real argument should be over what constitutes a legitimate exception.
Our holier-than-thou moral "relativists" on the left often try to lecture moralists on the right on their "black and white" views. Well the same "relativism" they use so often to justify betraying their own country also applies to men and women trying to prevent a nuclear holocaust. The sooner that civilization recognizes--that for some ends, extraordinary means must sometimes be employed--the better for all of us.
[...]
Krauthammer then distinguishes between three classes of prisonor: 1) the battlefield capture 2) the captured terrorist, and 3) the captured terrorist presumed to have information useful to those who captured him (or her).
Of the first of these, Krauthammer writes:
There is no question that he is entitled to humane treatment. Indeed, we have no right to disturb a hair on his head. His detention has but a single purpose: to keep him hors de combat. The proof of that proposition is that if there were a better way to keep him off the battlefield that did not require his detention, we would let him go.
Because the only purpose of detention in these circumstances is to prevent the prisoner from becoming a combatant again, he is entitled to all the protections and dignity of an ordinary domestic prisoner--indeed, more privileges, because, unlike the domestic prisoner, he has committed no crime. He merely had the misfortune to enlist on the other side of a legitimate war.
Of the second group, captured terrorists, Krauthammer argues:
A terrorist is by profession, indeed by definition, an unlawful combatant: He lives outside the laws of war because he does not wear a uniform, he hides among civilians, and he deliberately targets innocents. He is entitled to no protections whatsoever. People seem to think that the postwar Geneva Conventions were written only to protect detainees. In fact, their deeper purpose was to provide a deterrent to the kind of barbaric treatment of civilians that had become so horribly apparent during the first half of the 20th century, and in particular, during the Second World War. The idea was to deter the abuse of civilians by promising combatants who treated noncombatants well that they themselves would be treated according to a code of dignity if captured--and, crucially, that they would be denied the protections of that code if they broke the laws of war and abused civilians themselves.
Breaking the laws of war and abusing civilians are what, to understate the matter vastly, terrorists do for a living. They are entitled, therefore, to nothing [...] Even though terrorists are entitled to no humane treatment, we give it to them because it is in our nature as a moral and humane people. And when on rare occasions we fail to do that, as has occurred in several of the fronts of the war on terror, we are duly disgraced.
...Which brings us, finally, to the third class of detainee: the terrorist with information. Krauthammer trots out the familiar hypothetical of the nuclear device and only five minutes to find where it is to be detonated. But he puts a philosophical spin on what proceeds from the premise that it is important to underscore:
even if the example I gave were entirely hypothetical, the conclusion--yes, in this case even torture is permissible--is telling because it establishes the principle: Torture is not always impermissible. However rare the cases, there are circumstances in which, by any rational moral calculus, torture not only would be permissible but would be required (to acquire life-saving information). And once you’ve established the principle, to paraphrase George Bernard Shaw, all that’s left to haggle about is the price. In the case of torture, that means that the argument is not whether torture is ever permissible, but when--i.e., under what obviously stringent circumstances: how big, how imminent, how preventable the ticking time bomb.
That is why the McCain amendment, which by mandating “torture never” refuses even to recognize the legitimacy of any moral calculus, cannot be right. There must be exceptions. The real argument should be over what constitutes a legitimate exception.
Our holier-than-thou moral "relativists" on the left often try to lecture moralists on the right on their "black and white" views. Well the same "relativism" they use so often to justify betraying their own country also applies to men and women trying to prevent a nuclear holocaust. The sooner that civilization recognizes--that for some ends, extraordinary means must sometimes be employed--the better for all of us.
