While it's nice that numbers are coming out about the egregious acts performed by the US government, and while it's a shame that the numbers are inconsistent because one side of the government doesn't actually know what the others are doing, and while it's disgusting that the media has abrogated their role as watchdog, and while the government does have a duty to set up a consistent and credible system by which we are informed about the actions they are undertaking, there are no situations in which government should be doing things that are against the law even if they are impeccable about documenting it and no matter how good their system for releasing the information is... or their reasons for doing it at all.

I'm extremely uncomfortable with your equivocation between "interrogations" in a "generally principled way" and "harsh interrogation and other nasty business." If "[h]arsh interrogation and other nasty business is something we simply collectively do as a culture" I want no part of it - there is a reason that the Geneva Conventions were drafted and signed into law. Generally principled? At the end of the day it's not enough to be different from the bad guys, we have to be better, even if that means we're at a disadvantage. We don't have to be "tougher" than warlords, that is a false argument. There are more than those two options. It is not our duty to be worse than Pol Pot; that is not a sound basis on which to build a country or a civilization.

And it is not a majority of people, it is a plurality of people who support "harsh interrogation," whatever that means - that still doesn't make it right, or wise. You can't torture people in a principled way. You can possibly do it in an authorized way... which is what we call a "war crime." I'm not sure that torturing people should be something that is determined by how comfortable a population is with it. The number of things we have done to one another even in the last 100 years (and I don't mean the Holocaust, I mean Sudan and Cambodia and Haiti and...) tells me that culture is not the thing we should be depending upon for this determination.

But that aside, do note that any time harsh interrogation and other nasty business has been used it has failed to yield any usable intelligence; because it is torture, people will say anything to make it stop. Even top CIA interrogation experts know this, and have admitted this.

See, I didn't say I like torture. I indicated we westerners are users of violence whether the army in Afghanistan or the interrogators or the bombing of Germany. We fail and we don't fail at doing the best we can but international duties and human rights allow for these things when they are principled and authorized. That is what "principled" means. I think it is an easily made distinction that Nazis and the Khmer Rouge were not principled even if they were authorized by their own terms.

That being said, I think you need to support your assertions "any time harsh interrogation and other nasty business has been used it has failed to yield any usable intelligence" or that being tougher is a false argument as I cannot imagine how that might be true. You may not like it but that is another thing. I would be happy for you to set out a series of links supporting your proposition so that it can be bandied about just as I expect my ideas get the firm taste of a boot when necessary.

Yes, it's an easily made distinction that the Khmer Rouge was not principled, but my point is that your example of nasty is fairly nasty, so how nasty do we have to be exactly, collectively, as a culture? Is "walling" principled? - they developed it by using concrete walls and discovered that those caused too much damage, see. Or is putting bug-phobic people in coffins with bugs "principled" ? Does that fall under the "nasty but necessary" heading? The problem is that the US government is claiming that it is, despite the large body of international law that has already been over this stuff and is pretty clear about it all. The 1984 convention on torture specifies physical and psychological distress... there is no principled interrogation that does either of those things. I think it's incumbent upon you to define what you mean by "harsh" in the context of discussions of nastyness.

Being tougher is a false argument because it assumes there are two things we can do: be stronger or weaker! That frames the debate in a way that legitimizes the premise that a certain kind of strength - nastiness on a scale of 0 to nasty - is the only solution to national security issues. Military force may be necessary in these cases, but military action against armed combatants is not the same as torture and what the memos are talking about is torture.

Re: the efficacy of torture, author of "Torture and Democracy" Darius Rejali:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/12/13/AR2007121301303.html
http://dir.salon.com/story/opinion/feature/2004/06/21/torture_algiers/index.html

* Reporter Michael Isikoff: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9UfCoC4ETRQ
* CIA Director William Colby: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DkanFveaCn0
* A statement by a bunch of guys who know what they're talking about: "Top Interrogators Declare Torture Ineffective in Intelligence Gathering."

As Megan McArdle points out, though, the argument that torture doesn't work is not all there is to it, because we don't want to imply that we should find a way to make it work; the real key is that it is wrong on its face.

Ooh! This is what I was really looking for: Jack Cloonan former CIA Interrogator. Excellent interview. He even uses the words "harsh interrogation techniques" and discusses why it's not necessary.

Thanks for that but can you also provide counter-point that sets out how effective principled harsh treatment is, too? I am not suggesting that you believe it or collect it but I would expect you understand this is a debatable topic. You are not suggesting that we would be never nasty for principle, are you?

Also, can you describe your basis for "it is wrong on its face." That is a "natural" argument which is of the slipperiest kind. You may be right but I need to know why you think this.

Just to be clear, I am not suggesting that any western country is not a participant in the "nasty but necessary" principle. Having attended at a county jail or two to attend to a beaten up client, I am aware that there is a pervasive and multi-level approach to "nasty but necessary" that we Canucks seem to rely on as much as we rely on as JTF 2.

1. There is no such thing as "principled" harsh treatment. That's my point. It's debatable in the way that habeus corpus is debatable; it's debatable in the way that the abolition of slavery is debatable. It may be effective at extracting information, just as slavery was effective at getting the cotton crop picked. So what? It's just all the worse in terms of human frailty for not being very effective at all. Can I provide counter-point that it is effective? No, because most academics - philosophers and military historians - agree that it isn't (there are a few who make exceptions for "ticking bomb scenarios," for instance), and I am on my lunch break.

2. An ethics based on respect for human liberty = torture is wrong on its face. We can start with Kant or with Jesus, either works. Even utilitarianism generally comes down to the view that it would take an unreasonably large number of lives to ever justify torture. Mistake me not: Dershowitz is full of shit.

This paper sums it up well.

Alan,

I am trying to figure out your statement:

"Sure, it is done in a generally principled and authorized way and it is something that I and the majority of people in the western world support"

Specifically "principled and authorized". Authorized it seems to have been, since the President seems to have authorized it, and that in itself is one principle - though if the only one it is not very good.

However, what is principled about this? How do we engage in torture in a principled way? I think to say, "it is an easily made distinction that Nazis and the Khmer Rouge were not principled even if they were authorized by their own terms," sounds a lot like it is principled when we do it but not when the Nazi's do it?

What are the criteria that makes our torture principled?

Isn't the argument whether we do or do not want torture to be one of our principles?

Summary: I think we do a lot of harsh, horrible and nasty stuff as a society. We do it under law. We do it in accordance with fundamental principles of justice. Those are principles. Note in comment #2 above what I said about not supporting torture but keep in mind that torture is a conclusion about an action, not the action itself. If it is principled and authorized, is it not by definition not torture? It maybe nasty, horrible and harsh.

You may consider this circular but in a free and democratic society we have standards which include no cruel and unusual punishments. These are contextual. What happens in a time of crisis and fear of imminent peril is different, is it not?

And I mean that we generally support it as we do not act against it and enjoy any benefits that can be ascribed to it. So, jail becomes a source of civil peace in the same way that meat processing is a source of food. Yet some rally against conditions in jail and conditions in meat processing plants. But not most of us. So, similarly, does not the lack of general outcry against nasty harsh tactics of those authorized to use them in accordance with principles provide us with security and does not the lack of general outcry implicitly support their cultural acceptability?

While I do not advocate torture though I recognize the value of the sub-category of nasty and harsh, here is a book that actually defends its use by western nations. It is copyrighted and carefully protected by Google books so you will only get snippets.

This is an interesting observation. I have no idea if it is true or not:

"The belief that torture is always wrong is, however, misguided and symptomatic of the alarmist and reflexive responses typically emanating from social commentators. It is this type of absolutist and short-sighted rhetoric that lies at the core of many distorted moral judgements that we as a community continue to make, resulting in an enormous amount of injustice and suffering in our society and far beyond our borders."

Here's another interesting observation, wrt that article:

"...disgusting in the extreme, and symptomatic of a failure of contemporary legal ethics".

Dr. Justin Clemins, another prof at Deakin Law.

"It's the most extreme argument that I've seen for torture, and at many levels it's the shallowest."

Paris Aristotle, Director of the Victorian Foundation for Survivors of Torture

Good for you. Can you find other opposing arguments but this time in relation to those you have referenced?

Like this, this or this. It does seem to be a discussion out there. Challenging discussion appears to be a good thing.

I'm still not sure why the fact that there is discussion about something makes it somehow more credible (see: slavery) nor why I should find opposing arguments for my position, since we never even got around to figuring out what you consider to be "harsh" interrogation and what differentiates it from regular interrogation or torture.

"What happens in a time of crisis and fear of imminent peril is different, is it not?"

If you mean what actually happens, yes. If you mean what should happen, no. Again, how does what we are willing to accept make something more acceptable?

(By the way, Charles Krauthammer is far-right apologist, and has been known to be little free with the facts when it comes to defending the Bush administration.)

See, I wrote a post about record keeping and public disclosure but you decided it was more about your feelings about torture and yet never seemed to get much traction in the realm of authority for your propositions, none which related to records keeping. And, well, I suppose when you assert an absolute truth with a relatively weak hand of sources not deeply cited I expect you to realize you are doing just that. So I think that when one goes off on a tangent it is reasonable to asked a number of questions to figure out how the tangent connects. I am still not sure.

Hmm. You claimed that it's important for us to know what kind of things our governments are doing so we can decide whether or not it's OK that they do it. True to a point. But then came the assertion that agreement about the morality of an action, and action being common to a culture, somehow determines the moral correctness of that action, which I can't support. A group of people deciding something is OK doesn't make it OK. All the information in the world won't make harsh interrogation somehow objectively alright.

That's how it relates.

You asked me to back up the assertion that torture is ineffective; sure. I sourced people who interrogate for a living who say that it is ineffective. I linked to a very thorough paper discussing the pros and cons of the major positions on the topic, which appeared in J. International Affairs written by a credible political philosopher who does a good job of listing the various arguments and recent case studies, opening with the Maher Arar case and ending with Abu Graib. I can point you towards a few great papers that discuss why torture is wrong in the specifically Kantian framework of Western ethics, too, say, because I've recently written a paper about that, but I figured a document that took a case-study approach would be more pertinent, given your comments that you think that the limits of interrogation should be culturally determined, within certain limited but nevertheless unclear boundaries of the definition of torture which we never nailed down. If I need to cite the authority for my propositions I can safely stick with the conventions on torture, the Geneva Conventions, and the body of ethical literature surrounding the liberty of man - Bibliography being a first-year ethics text - and be pretty sure that I'm not treading uncertain ground wrt the credible thinkers in the field. This debate has been had by greater people than us, and most of the civilized nations came to a fairly solid consensus about it, and that consensus was that certain nasty things are NOT something that we simply collectively do as a culture.

It wasn't my feelings about torture that were at issue, it was my feelings about your feelings about torture. I asked if you would unpack some troubling assertions in your argument - an argument whose basics I agreed with at the start, that consistency and credibility of information about a government's actions is imperative if we wish to have a meaningful discussion about the moral implications of said action. While the morality of any situation is certainly "debatable," my claim is that argumentum ad popularum is not the way we should frame a debate about the acceptability of torture tactics, of all things. Regardless of the quality of information we get about what the government is doing - the point of your post - we don't actually need that information to tell us that torture is wrong, or to have a debate about it that determines law or policy. Then it is up to the government to prove that it is hewing to said laws or policies - and that is where information and its quality enter into it.

You ended your post with a "that being the case;" I just didn't agree that it is. It's not a tangent so much as a deeper analysis of issues than the post was perhaps written to address.

Well, no. You made a more structured analysis for a bit of it now but only now and only to a degree. You were up top being a good bloggery comment maker and added a bunch of links including one to a key article that invited me to buy it - which I didn't because it's not like I am going to spend money to have a discussion on a blog, even my own. But identifying people who express the same conclusion as you is not the same for me as backing up the assertion - that's just oath bolstering. I wanted you to explain the argument not tell me how many are on your team.

I think you got hung up there on a middle point which you characterize as "all the information in the world won't make harsh interrogation somehow objectively alright" which I am not sure I believe or disbelieve. I don't yet know if you think that undoing all arguments to the contrary of your position is possible, that the people you cited are the only people who discuss the idea, whether their point of view is better because of a reason (except for popular = suspect) or that you are saying it is never effective, relatively ineffective or so morally objectionable that even if it did have an effect that you would reject it in any event.

If you are saying that torture is never ever right, that is really a belief which is hard to refute. But that is not what I wrote about. I think I stated that there is a difference in my mind between harsh interrogation or other rough dealings on one hand and torture on the other (as do all the laws and treaties) but that other things in society make that line a difficult one - context of the act, the general principles under which we live and, yes, the pervasive nature of violence as at least a mechanism for some of the things we value in society. Look, I will admit this isn't one of my finest bits of writing but if I am seeing all this sliding scale around an issue of serious government action, isn't the observation valid that botching the rolling out of information in relation to it?

But maybe you are saying I am a knucklehead and I should be satisfied in being told that a bunch of clever experience people would agree that I am a knucklehead. Sadly, until I know what it means to be a knucklehead or what the other people think, those who say I am not a knucklehead, I can't know which point of view is right.