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thanks for that cyn...i'll probably make something else tonight when i've the leisure to think more expansively, but for the moment a couple quick points. first, i don't think that will and i are arguing in the same way---this is more a question of emphasis i suppose than anything else--but in my view this is a political & legal issue that has its force because it involves an ethical problem..but most of what i've been arguing sits on the first two levels moving into the third. where i take will to be arguing most from the second two and occaisonally sliding into the first.
it seems to me will engages more on the "how could you think that?" level where i see what i've been doing here working mostly along the lines that there are absolute prohibitions agreed to internationally against this kind of action because there's a history of proof that people can do horrific things to each other and that some of these things are simply unacceptable. so conventions were drawn up that define torture as a crime against humanity and outlaw it. because people in particular situations, locked into particular interests, can put aside nicities like the fact that the people they take to be threats are human beings and can treat them as if they were things, but things that can feel pain...there's abundant historical proof that torture degrades, dehumanizes BOTH the victim and the torturer--and what's worse that a political system capable of rationalizing torture itself can become inhuman. secondly, we live in an environment that calls itself civilized in part because it operates within sets of laws--the international ban on torture was in part passed as an indication that "we" desire a certain level of "civilization" and that this desire leads to renouncing certain actions as being antithetical with that idea. this is a political decision. so that's one point. there may be more to say about it, i dunno.
second point: the end justifies the means argument simply does not hold water. check out the ny times article from this morning's international edition i posted just a bit above here. the fact is that torture elicits one kind of information consistently--the desire that the torture stop. it is not an effective intelligence gathering tool--and the military knew as much, historians know as much--anyone who has looked into the sue of torture in a legal context knows as much. you have the history of the inquisition as a good, extended other example---know why there were no witch prosecutions in spain? because there was no agreement about a legal standard that would enable to court to determine whether the crime actually existed. but in other areas, thousands were executed as witches. how did that happen? you might wonder about the role of torture, which was part of the inquisitorial interrogation process, in generating the answers that the people applying the torture wanted to hear--not what happened, but what they wanted to hear. why? because in many cases, continuing the torture made death seem like a fine alternative.
so there is no utility argument to be made for using it.
the political Problems that are generated by a nation-state government prosecuting itself for using torture are of a different order---i think they're serious---but you can already see that the cat's out of the bag and i now doubt very seriously that it will be possible to NOT prosecute at least the people who developed this fucked up guidelines. and if that happens, i hope they are convicted.
but this is a real Problem. i find it interesting to watch the theater surrounding it. but think about the situation: the use of torture, the arguments which justify it, the fact that the bush administration undertook such a policy in ignorance of history, in ignorance of efficacy---it generates really big problems of legitimacy for the american state itself. how can that be justified on grounds of utility?
and trust me, if the legitimacy of a state is undermined adequate, it won't necessarily take some armed force to topple it. there are any number of instances of a state simply imploding. think the french revolution for one.
anyway, i have to stop there.
interesting stuff. difficult things to remain dispassionate about enough to make clear arguments.
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a gramophone its corrugated trumpet silver handle
spinning dog. such faithfulness it hear
it make you sick.
-kamau brathwaite
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