WALLACE: I’m not asking you why it was OK to shoot Usama bin Laden. I fully understand the threat. And I’m not second-guessing the SEALs.
DONILON: Right.
WALLACE: What I am second guessing is, if that’s OK, why can’t you do waterboarding? What can’t you do enhanced interrogation of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, who was just as bad an operator as Usama bin Laden?
DONILON: Because, well, our judgment is that it’s not consistent with our values, not consistent and not necessary in terms of getting the kind of intelligence that we need.
WALLACE: But shooting bin Laden in the head is consistent with our values?
DONILON: We are at war with Usama bin Laden.
WALLACE: We’re at war with Khalid Sheikh Mohammed.
In the light of our prior debate on waterboarding and current debate on gun control, I have two questions, #1 what do you think about the SEALS shooting Osama? FYI: I have no problem with it. #2 if that’s OK, why can’t you do waterboarding? What can’t you do enhanced interrogation of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, who was just as bad an operator as Usama bin Laden?(stolen from Chris Wallace)
The details surrounding the killing of Osama Bin Laden remain somewhat murky, and my response to this query is dependent on those details, so I apologize in advance for what will be a qualified response.
ReplyDeleteOsama Bin Laden, up to the point when he was killed, constituted an active threat to the security of the United States of America. I believe that removing that threat justified the use of violence. Kalid Sheikh Mohammed constituted an active threat to this country until he was apprehended. I want to state in no uncertain terms that I consider apprehension of these criminals to be preferable to killing them; however, I view killing them as an acceptable alternative in the circumstance where apprehension is impracticable.
So there remain serious questions as to whether or not the apprehension of Osama Bin Laden was something that could have been accomplished with anywhere near the degree of certainty with which his killing could. If we feel confident we could have taken him into custody and chose rather to kill him, I view that decision as not only morally indefensible, but also strategically foolish.
None of us know all of the details of what happened in the compound. That is one factor to consider in this question. Others include that the Navy Seals are not cops. Their training is primarily for combat, not apprehension. Considering we were operating in a foreign theater and with a great deal of uncertainty regarding what would happen inside the compound, I think they were the appropriate choice to accomplish this mission, despite the trade off that their involvement increased the likelihood of a fatal outcome. Finally it should be noted that we were operating, illegally, in a foreign country. All prisoners that were taken in the raid were turned over to the Pakistani Government. If the decision to kill Bin Laden was made because we were uncertain as to whether we’d be able to maintain custody of him after apprehension, that is a reasonable consideration.
Actions taken to remove an active threat to our security have no bearing whatsoever on those taken with an individual who is already in custody. The question which prompted this discussion is a comparison of apples to oranges.
Suppose a known murderer were to break into your house, and you were to come from behind level your gun at his head and shout, “Freeze!” Now in one scenario, the culprit drops his weapon, puts his hands on his head and falls to his knees at which point you shoot him. In the other scenario he spins to try to shoot you, at which point you shoot him. Are these situations morally equivalent? Obviously not. In the first instance you’re carrying out vigilante justice, in the second you’re acting in self defense, removing an active threat.
The focus of Mr. Wallace is to ask who the target is, hence his emphasis on Mohammed’s being “just as bad an operator” as Bin Laden. The problem with this approach, in my opinion, is that I have no power over who Kalid Sheikh Mohammed or Osama Bin Laden are. I can only answer the question of who I am and by extension, in a government of the people, by the people and for the people, who my nation is. Thus the important question is, under what circumstances will I deprive a man of his liberty or of his life? The answer is only in self defense. When will I torture a man who has already been neutralized as a threat? Never.
DAN - if I'm understanding you correctly, you are saying it is appropriate for the U.S. to use violence as long as it is in self-defense to remove an active threat to its security, and not to enforce vigilante-style justice.
ReplyDeleteI agree with your statements in the case of Kalid Sheikh Mohammed and Osama Bin Laden, but I see a hypothetical problem with this position.
Consider the following scenario: National security forces have located a dirty bomb in a large city and the clock is ticking. The bomb will detonate in approximately 1 hour, and it will be detonated immediately if any attempt is made to move it. If it explodes, thousands of lives will be lost. A suspected terrorist has been caught and agents are about 75% certain that the suspect has information that will allow them to disarm the bomb.
In this instance, couldn't we argue that it would be morally permissible for the U.S. to use violence (torture) in its self-defense to remove an active threat? If killing a man is a morally permissible use of violence in a nation's self-defense, wouldn't torture be a permissible use of violence as well?
What if the government were 99% sure the suspect could provide information that would disarm the bomb?
If violence (torture) is morally permissible in the either of the above situations, why wouldn't it be permissible in the case of Kalid Sheikh Mohammed, to find out what he knew about probable threats against America? Is it merely a question of how certain we are that the suspect has information vital to the safety of the U.S.?
I honestly don't know what the correct response would be to the clock-is-ticking situation above. I don't know what I would do if I were the agent in charge.
In addition to the reasons you put forth in your December 2010 response to water-boarding, I consider torture to be morally impermissible because it presupposes that the victim has committed a crime, and therefore is a subversion of the judicial system and due process. It is a guilty verdict and a cruel punishment before or in lieu of a trial. This may seem insignificant in the face of an immediate nuclear threat. On the other hand, we would be remiss to disregard this principle of justice on which our freedom is based and for which American patriots have sacrificed their lives.
RONALDUS – I appreciate the complexity of the question you put forth. Isn't it a major contradiction for a nation to justify its use of lethal force (or the death penalty for that matter), and yet claim that the use of torture is never justified?
I agree with you that the U.S. was justified in taking out Bin Laden. And yet, I'm decidedly against using torture.
While this is an interesting question, I have to point out that you haven't yet countered any of Dan's rebuttal points from December, which I believe include the following:
Using torture as an interrogation approach does not yield reliable information. Subjects who are tortured will say whatever they think the torturer wants to hear to make the pain go away.
False information can be more harmful than no information at all.
The use of torture was abhorred by the founders of our nation and is disallowed by the Eighth Amendment to the US Constitution.
Maintaining a higher moral standard and refraining from using torture in times of conflict has served as a protection to our troops, caused other nations to be sympathetic to the American cause, and has made it easier for the US to rebuild ties with former enemies.
Using torture will increase the probability that American soldiers and citizens will be subjected to torture by other countries, and will likely result in sympathy for terrorist organizations who oppose the U.S.
How are Dan's arguments flawed, invalid, or misrepresentations of reality, or not pertinent to the debate?
The ticking time bomb scenario is interesting as a thought experiment. I apologize for not writing a personal response to it. Here's the Wikipedia article on it http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ticking_time_bomb_scenario
ReplyDeleteI'll quote the section of the article with which I am most sympathetic.
Some human rights organizations, professional and academic experts, and military and intelligence leaders have absolutely rejected the idea that torture is ever legal or acceptable, even in a so-called ticking bomb situation.[1][5] They have expressed grave concern about the way the dramatic force and artificially simple moral answers the ticking bomb thought-experiment seems to offer, have manipulated and distorted the legal and moral perceptions, reasoning and judgment of both the general population and military and law enforcement officials. They reject the proposition, implicit or explicit, that certain acts of torture are justifiable, even desirable. They believe that simplistic responses to the scenario may lead well-intentioned societies down a slippery slope to legalised and systematic torture. They point out that no evidence of any real-life situation meeting all the criteria to constitute a pure ticking bomb scenario has ever been presented to the public, and that such a situation is highly unlikely.[6]
As well, torture can be criticised as a poor vehicle for discovering truth, as people experiencing torture, once broken, are liable to make anything up in order to stop the pain and can become unable to tell the difference between fact and fiction under intense psychological pressure. Additionally, since the terrorist presumably knows that the timer is ticking, he has an excellent reason to lie and give false information under torture in order to misdirect his interrogators; merely giving a convincing answer which the investigators will waste time checking out makes it more likely that the bomb will go off, and of course once the bomb has gone off not only has the terrorist won, but there is also no further point torturing him.
Others point out that the ticking-bomb torture proponents adopt an extremely short-term view, which impoverishes their consequentialism. Using torture—or even declaring that one is prepared to accept its use—makes other groups of people much more likely to use torture themselves in the long run. The consequence is likely to be a long-term increase in violence. This long-term effect is so serious that the person making the torture decision cannot possibly (according to this argument) make a reasonable estimate of its results. Thus the decision-maker has no grounds for certainty that the value of the lives saved from the ticking bomb will outweigh the value of the lives lost because of the subsequent disorder. She or he cannot arrive at a successful accounting of consequences.
This anti-torture argument, in fact, works by positing that human knowledge has intrinsic limits. An analogous argument holds that human decision-makers are fundamentally prone in certain situations to believe that their judgment is better than it is, and that, to be ethical, they must pre-commit themselves to a particular course of action in those situations. Knowing that, under stress, they will never be able to accurately assess the likely success of torture in obtaining information needed to prevent an attack, humans thus pre-commit to not torture. In general, this family of arguments faults the "ticking-bomb" scenario for implicitly including an incorrect presumption that the decision-maker can know in advance the outcome of torture, either in the short run (likelihood that it will prevent an attack) or the long run (likelihood that it will not set off a general increase in human violence.) If this presumption is always wrong, then the scenario is always misleading.
I am positing this question not to argue for torture. I have to admit that some of the lengthy postings that Dan has put us through have made me think a bit different about torture. I put this forth because it shows the ridiculous double standard of those that have no problem with or celebrate the death of Bin Laden but yet continue to prosecute people and decry the means of finding him and killing him. Thanks for the response, as always entertaining and informative.
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ReplyDelete"to prosecute people and decry the means of finding him and killing him."
ReplyDeleteCan you provide even the smallest shred of evidence that enhanced interrogation techniques had anything to do with finding or killing Bin Laden. It should be noted that he was killed four years after all water boarding was halted (at least according to official reports). I'm not an expert, but my impression has always been that four year old intelligence isn't particularly useful in the apprehension of fugitives.
Can you provide me with the smallest shed of evidence that enhanced interrogation techniques didn't lead to some of the intelligence that lead to the killing of OBL
ReplyDeleteand dick cheney saying that enhanced interrogation lead to the capture of OBL doesn't prove that it didn't.
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ReplyDeleteDan, I'm not sure which specific sections of the Wikipedia article you are sympathetic to, so I'll just address the parts I take issue with.
ReplyDeleteI understand the concern that the ticking bomb thought experiment could lead to (and may have already led to) justification of torture on a broader scale based on “artificially simplistic” moral conclusions. I don't offer this hypothetical situation to suggest that if torture is morally permissible in the most extreme conditions then it must also be permissible in less extreme scenarios as well. I believe the value of the ticking bomb thought experiment is two-fold:
1. It allows for the development of a contingency plan. I think it is highly likely that government officials have constructed a plan on how to respond to this specific hypothetical scenario, even though we have never faced this situation before, and even if they believe such a scenario is highly unlikely. Regardless of what the conclusion is, I think it would be prudent to determine how our country would respond to such a drastic predicament beforehand, rather than risk facing an unresolved moral dilemma when a decision must be made immediately.
2. When trying to figure out what is ethically, morally, and/or legally permissible, it can be very helpful to consider hypothetical problems, even if those hypothetical problems are highly unlikely and overly simplistic. The simplistic nature of such analogies is often what makes them so useful in cutting to the core issue of the problem.
Lastly, I disagree with the part that says, “The ticking-bomb torture proponents adopt an extremely short-term view, which impoverishes their consequentialism.” I think that from a consequentialist perspective, the use of torture would be morally permissible in the ticking-bomb situation, assuming a very high level of confidence that the person being subjected to torture would provide useful information. The short-term benefits (tens of thousands of innocent lives saved) would be practically guaranteed, whereas the long-term drawbacks (possibility of increased violence and use of torture against American citizens and military personnel, etc.) can only be guessed at. None of us can fully understand the long-term effects of our moral choices, and the further into the future we try to foresee, the hazier our understanding becomes. Thus from a consequentialist perspective, the highly likely short-term outcomes must be given greater weight than the possible long-term outcomes.
Therein lies the problem for me. I think that if we are to conclude that torture is absolutely never morally permissible under any circumstances, then that conclusion cannot be reached from a solely consequentialist perspective.
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ReplyDeleteHere's a link to an article that addresses the role waterboarding played in the finding of Osama Bin Laden:
ReplyDeletehttp://www.nytimes.com/2011/05/04/us/politics/04torture.html
As I understand it, the article basically says:
Khalid Shaikh Mohammed – who was waterboarded 183 times beginning in March, 2003 – intentionally misled his interrogators regarding the identity and importance of an Al Qaeda courier referred to as Abu Ahmed al-Kuwaiti. He said this al-Kuwaiti was “retired” and of little significance.
Another Al Qaeda operative, Hassan Ghul, was captured in Iraq in 2004, and told interrogators that al-Kuwaiti was close to Bin Laden. The CIA says Ghul was not waterboarded, but we don't yet know whether other harsh interrogation techniques may have been used on him.
In May, 2005, Abu Faraj al-Libbi, who had become the operational chief of Al Qaeda, was captured. He denied knowing al-Kuwaiti, and he gave another name for Bin Laden's courier in an attempt to mislead his interrogators. We know al-Libbi was not waterboarded, but don't know what other interrogation techniques were used on him.
Because both Khalid Shaikh Mohammed and Abu Faraj al-Libbi steered interrogators away from al-Kuwaiti, CIA officials concluded they must be protecting him for an important reason. The CIA then decided to stay on al-Kuwaiti's trail, which eventually led to Bin Laden's hideaway six years after the capture of al-Libbi.
So although Khalid Shaikh Mohammed was waterboarded, he did not give any information leading to the whereabouts of Bin Laden as a result of being waterboarded. In fact, he intentionally misled interrogators in spite of being waterboarded. The CIA guessed he was intentionally misleading them only after corroborating his story with two other Al Qaeda operatives, one of whom also tried to mislead them, the other whom told the truth, and neither of whom were waterboarded. It is probable that Khalid Shaikh Mohammed would have given the same answers in regard to al-Kuwaiti regardless of whether or not he was subjected to waterboarding.