Torture is bad - killing innocent people is worse

Just as the US administration is recovering from the shock of Abu Ghraib, it is now involved in another torture scandal. CIA boss Michael Hayden chief is being grilled by US officials regarding recent revelations that the CIA has destroyed tapes depicting the coercive interrogation by his organisation of terrorist suspects.

No doubt this will lead to more fanatical claims by libertarian groups regarding the inappropriateness of torture. They are right that torture should never be used as a vehicle for punishment and domination. But different considerations follow when it is used for compassionate reasons - to save lives.

Paradoxically, people who propose an absolute ban on torture aren’t sufficiently repulsed by torture and are too willing to accept the murder of innocent people - either they lack compassion or have a warped moral compass.

Torture is bad. Killing innocent people is worse. Some people are so depraved that they combine these evils and torture innocent people to death. Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, who is still gloating about personally beheading American Daniel Pearl with his “blessed right hand”, is but just one exhibit.

Closing the door on torture involves abdicating a potential means of preventing the torture and killing of innocent people. Torture opponents need to take responsibility for the murder of innocent people if they reject torture when it is the only way to save innocent lives.

We must take responsibility not only for the things that we do, but also for the things that we can, but fail, to prevent. Thus, it is morally repugnant to not throw a life rope to a person drowing near a pier. That’s why as a society we need to leave open the possibility of using torture where it is the only means available to prevent the murder of innocent people.

Life-saving torture is not cruel. It is motivated by a compassionate desire to advert moral catastrophes and is morally justifiable because the right to life of innocent people trumps the physical integrity of wrongdoers.

Viewed in this way, torture has the same moral justification as other practices where we sacrifice the interests of one person for the greater good. A close analogy is life saving organ and tissue transplants. Kidney and bone marrow transplants inflict high levels of pain and discomfort on donors. But the world is a better place for them because their pain is normally outweighed by the benefit to the recipient.

Such is the case with life-saving compassionate torture. The pain inflicted on the wrongdoer is manifestly outweighed by the benefit stemming from the lives saved. The fact that wrongdoers don’t expressly consent to their mistreatment is irrelevant. Prisoners and enemy soldiers don’t consent to the pain inflicted on them either, yet we’re not about to empty our prisons or stop shooting enemy soldiers - this would be contrary to the common good.

There are four main reasons that have been advanced against torture. All are demonstrably unsound. First, it’s claimed that torture doesn’t elicit reliable information.

This is factually wrong. There are countless counter-examples. Israeli authorities claim to have foiled 90 terrorist attacks by using coercive interrogation.

Retired CIA Agent John Kiriakou has admitted to torturing an al-Qaida suspect, Abu Zubayday, in a bid to obtain life-saving obtain information. Agent Kiriakou said the technique known as “waterboarding” broke Zubaydah in less than 35 seconds and that the suspect answered every question from that day on. Kiriakou stated that he had no doubt that the information provided by Zubayday “stopped terror attacks and saved lives”.

In more mundane situations, courts across the world have routinely thrown out confessions which are demonstrably true (because they are corroborated by objective evidence) on the basis that they were only made because the criminals were beaten up.

The second common objection to torture is that we can never be sure that the suspect has the relevant information. If that’s the case, simply don’t torture - in the same way that we’re not permitted to shoot in self-defence until we’re sure that the proposed target is up to no good.

It is also contended that life saving torture will lead down the slippery slope of other cruel practices. This is an intellectually defeatist argument. It tries to move the debate from what is on the table (life-saving torture) to situations where torture is used for reasons of domination and punishment - which is never justifiable.

A further common argument against torture is that it is inhumane and undemocratic. These are not reasons - just displays of venting. There could be nothing more inhumane than doing nothing as innocent people are being tortured to death.

Fanatics who oppose torture in all cases are adopting their own form of extremism. It is well-intentioned, but extremism in all its manifestations can lead to catastrophic consequences. Cruelty that is motivated by misguided kindness, hurts no less.

In order for the anti-torture extremists to move from the base of the moral mountain they need to accept that sometimes the only way to deal with evil is to hurt it and that evil is not transmittable. In the end, we must always act in a manner which maximises net flourishing and inform our moral choices by reason, not reflexive emotion - that is the closest it comes to an absolute moral principle.

Agent Kiriakou concedes that it was a tough call deciding that Zubayday should be tortured. But in the end he reasoned that he could not forgive himself if the CIA didn’t use torture on a suspect and therefore didn’t get “the nugget of information, and there was an attack”.

If agents in Australia refused to torture a suspect when it was apparent that it was the only means possible to save innocent lives, I don’t think we could forgive them either.