Of Course Brutal Interrogation Works

If it didn't, there would be no moral courage in opposing it.

Because I choose my words very carefully I'm making the distinction between torture and brutal interrogation. Just as I make the distinction that many people choose to ignore, between immigration and illegal immigration, between gay marriage and civil union you'll find many people with bashing conservatives on their mind pretending that I don't. So here we go again.

To make things clear, the difference between torture and brutal interrogation in my mind is that torture is aimed at destruction of the subject. Interrogation is aimed at gaining information. I make the distinction along the same lines as I make the distinction between individual citizens shooting each other in the streets and police officers shooting in the streets. Simply because an officer shoots someone dead in the line of duty does not make them a murderer. They are authorized to use deadly force under circumstances laid out in policy. They are proxies for the people. Likewise our military and spy agencies are proxies for the people. In our defense, we burden them with doing things that we are incapable or unwilling to do.

I will stipulate that waterboarding is not torture but that it is brutal. I would call it a brutal interrogation. On a scale of brutality, I don't find it particularly high, but that's enough mincing of words. The moral distinction between torture and interrogation is the intent and the proxy as well as the degree. I don't find it immoral for a police officer to kill a human being in his line of work, which can be admittedly brutal. That is the nature of a proxy. A proxy gets an immunity based upon the service rendered on behalf of society. The suspect is certainly just as dead as if he were murdered in cold blood, but it doesn't make the cop a murderer. Similarly, someone who is interrogated using brutal methods - say cigarette burns, suffers the same amount of pain as someone who is tortured for the purposes of terrorizing a community, but there is a distinction based upon the license an individual is given by society to do so.

The point is that because we know that brutal interrogation works, it is a tool that can be used in defense of society. It is part of a structured defense, it is not an ad-hoc act of desperation, it is a rationalized and calculated act whose aim is the protection of society. In this regard it is not whether or not the act itself is brutal then therefore to be avoided as a moral hazard, but the circumstances under which it is deployed. Brutal interrogation is a defensive weapon. And because it is an effective weapon, we understand how its use by the enemy compromises our position.

Here's the quote of the day from Belmont.

Nobody I know, or have heard of who has had experience in real-life situations has ever said, “our cell should continue as usual and the safehouse should remain open, despite the fact that one of our own is being tortured by the secret police, because I read in the New York Times that coercion never works.” The probability is that torture works and that is for that reason its use constitutes a moral dilemma; and the reason why Jacoby believes he is expressing a noble sentiment when he forswears it even as “a last and desperate option” in the War on Terror.

So there's this dilemma. All of those disclosed brutal interrogations which have taken place under the authority of the US Government was done for national security reasons.  Since 9/11 there have been three captives subjected. There is a certain moral consistency in the pacifist argument against the Long War or any war. The objection against brutal interrogation on principle which is based not on degree but on proxy is the same as one of disarming police officers on principle. It is the zero-tolerance argument, and I find it morally sound. However, as this objection comes from citizens who benefit from the 'ill-gotten gains' all the same as those who support it, there are no clean hands. We all live in a society whose policy it is to allow immunity for brutal interrogations. Whether or not we actually do interrogate brutally, the moral burden of that brutality is shared by all citizens, in the same way as the fact that we have nuclear weapons. The immoral gravity of that burden depends upon the conditions under which this weapon has been deployed.  In the same way that any state with police can become a police state, any state with brutal interrogations can become brutal. It is a matter of corruption. But the mere deployment of police or brutal interrogations does not automatically push us over the brink. Rather, it is when we push the system towards a lack of restraint when we jeopardize legitimate rule.

Here's what I said about the consequences of pushing the envelope in 2004:

I think that the Administration has every right to push the envelope as regards immunity [of interrogators]. To the extent that we are sovereign and we have to fight dirty the President ought to have the leeway to do so. Absolutely. But the inevitable consequence of crossing over that grey area is rooted in the implication of reserving the right. That is that you cease to respect your enemy, and that is the thing that obliterates the possibility of an honorable peace.

This is very likely America's intent in the WOT. There seems to be no question that this Administration wants to give no quarter to terrorists. Our aim is not an honorable peace with them, but their total destruction. I think also that American are fairly united in that sentiment. I believe GWBush's term 'bringing them to justice' is something of a euphemism. 'Capture or Kill' is more the sentiment, and my reading of 'capture' absolutely means interrogation to find the rest of the AQ gang.

It is not entirely clear to me that the sentiment in the current Adminstration is to reach an honorable peace with Al Qaeda, although there are surely people on my side of the aisle who find the President to be an appeaser of the first order. If there is any consequence to the splitting of hairs between citizens who like the current policy over the prior policy (if there is one), it doesn't matter much to Al Qaeda. Then exactly to whom does it matter? 

I happen to be skeptical in general but sanguine in particular that probable excess in the liberalization of the use of brutal interrogations will be restrained in our current political environment. Outside of the pacifist principle, I would find it difficult to believe that any nation among our allies would find our brutal interrogations of AQ members to arouse a diplomatic row. They are not afraid America has turned irrevocably for the worse. We are not turning into a police state. We are not making a mockery of our justice system.

All that said, it is clear that our use of this brutal interrogation has exceeded the boundaries apparently set for its preauthorized use. Depending on the nature of the legal machinations invoked to circumvent these rules I would make the call. If, for example, I were to discover that there were some dozen others who were waterboarded in addition to the three captives disclosed, I would call the system into greater question if their interrogations also exceeded the pre-approved guidelines. However if they were waterboarded according to those guidelines set forth, I would have less concern.

That's all I have to say on the matter at this point. I am interested in knowing some example in which my framework of pre-authorized brutal interrogation used like a tool, or a defensive weapon violates some moral immunity given for other weapons of war and in what way.

But I also understand the degree argument and find it respectable. If you simply say that waterboardning, without regard to its effectiveness is simply intolerably brutal I can respectfully disagree. I would say rape or dismemberment is simply intolerably brutal, but not waterboarding. I think it is clear again in the disclosed cases of 266 waterboardings that the guidelines were abused, but I am also relying on a kind of gut measure of proportionality...