Many people abhor the idea that torture is in anyway a bad thing and would happily preach that we, as a society, have a right, indeed a duty, to torture any enemy of the state for information and punishment. I would like to spend some time attacking this conviction.
Support for torture can be attacked on three basic grounds, purely legal, practical and moral. We respect laws because they protect us against chaos or tyranny. If we break laws when it suits us we will end with no laws and we will be back to beginnings of humanity, living according to the will of the strongest bully. According to all international laws, from Geneva Conventions (Common Article 3), to UN Convention against Torture and International Convention on Civil and Political Rights, torture is banned under all circumstances. UK and all EU nations (both of which I am a citizen of) have interpreted these international conventions into their domestic laws as have most other countries. Indeed English common law has banned all forms of torture for half a millennium prior to this plethora of conventions and treaties. One of the Law Lords, Lord Hoffman, recently said "English common law has regarded torture and its fruits with abhorrence for 500 years". One must remember that "under any circumstances" provision of these treaties describes wars, big wars, wars such as the two World Wars. So to say that the current threat from Islamic extremists is in anyway greater than the threat from a World War and thus current times demand the use of torture is simply nonsense. We, as a society, have faced far greater threats and judge that even in those, much darker, situations, torture was still unjustified and unwanted.
There is a case to be made by the proponents of torture, under the practical argument. Torture does sometimes yield some important information. Guy Fawkes, for example, gave the names of his co-conspirators. However, most of the time torture does not provide any valuable information. Any rational person will say anything to end severe pain, be it truth or a lie. If the victim of torture has a choice between a lie and telling the truth to the torturer, why not lie?! This line of thought robustly disarms the 'ticking-bomb scenario'. If one is a terrorist who planted a bomb in some city, why tell the tortures where it is? Why not send them to the wrong part of the city looking for the bomb, save oneself the painful experience of torture and still accomplish one's deadly mission?!
Still one may argue that torture ought to be used in some rare cases, where there simply is no alternative. Such arguments were used to justify torture in French Algeria in the 1950s, and in Israel in the 1980s. This led to a slippery slope to systematic torture used on all prisoners and the escalation of the actual torture techniques. Torture became so rampant that the Israeli Supreme Court ruled in 1999 that all forms of torture are to be banned, under any circumstances, without exception. History makes it clear, without a clear ban on all torture, torture will simply be used more and more until it becomes a method of choice under all circumstances.
This leads onto the final pillar of my argument. Fundamentally, torture is a punishment of someone who usually has not been found guilty. It is also discriminatory because today's victims of torture (at least in Europe, if torture was allowed here, and in USA whose current administration currently seems to tacitly support torture) will predominantly be a male in his 20s, 2nd or third generation immigrant from an Arab country and Muslim. In UK in the recent past they have been Northern Irish.
Ultimately the 'war on terror' is the war on an idea that terror and violence can achieve a political goal or at least that such methods are justified. Thus this war begins and ends in the hearts and minds of people, all people, including people on 'our' side. If we use torture we are not only like 'them' but we become the actual enemy we are fighting. Torture at the end of the day does more harm than good. It encourages people to adopt terrorist tactics. For example, how many Palestinians were convinced that Israel was evil and must be destroyed after they heard the horrors of torture committed by Israeli security forces on captured Palestinian militants?! We must not hand another propaganda victory to the terrorists as we have done with Guantanamo Bay and Abu Ghraib. We must not harm our main weapon in the fight, our moral position. Torture is more damaging to us in the long term than to our enemies. The vast majority of people are against all torture, and for good reason.
Support for torture can be attacked on three basic grounds, purely legal, practical and moral. We respect laws because they protect us against chaos or tyranny. If we break laws when it suits us we will end with no laws and we will be back to beginnings of humanity, living according to the will of the strongest bully. According to all international laws, from Geneva Conventions (Common Article 3), to UN Convention against Torture and International Convention on Civil and Political Rights, torture is banned under all circumstances. UK and all EU nations (both of which I am a citizen of) have interpreted these international conventions into their domestic laws as have most other countries. Indeed English common law has banned all forms of torture for half a millennium prior to this plethora of conventions and treaties. One of the Law Lords, Lord Hoffman, recently said "English common law has regarded torture and its fruits with abhorrence for 500 years". One must remember that "under any circumstances" provision of these treaties describes wars, big wars, wars such as the two World Wars. So to say that the current threat from Islamic extremists is in anyway greater than the threat from a World War and thus current times demand the use of torture is simply nonsense. We, as a society, have faced far greater threats and judge that even in those, much darker, situations, torture was still unjustified and unwanted.
There is a case to be made by the proponents of torture, under the practical argument. Torture does sometimes yield some important information. Guy Fawkes, for example, gave the names of his co-conspirators. However, most of the time torture does not provide any valuable information. Any rational person will say anything to end severe pain, be it truth or a lie. If the victim of torture has a choice between a lie and telling the truth to the torturer, why not lie?! This line of thought robustly disarms the 'ticking-bomb scenario'. If one is a terrorist who planted a bomb in some city, why tell the tortures where it is? Why not send them to the wrong part of the city looking for the bomb, save oneself the painful experience of torture and still accomplish one's deadly mission?!
Still one may argue that torture ought to be used in some rare cases, where there simply is no alternative. Such arguments were used to justify torture in French Algeria in the 1950s, and in Israel in the 1980s. This led to a slippery slope to systematic torture used on all prisoners and the escalation of the actual torture techniques. Torture became so rampant that the Israeli Supreme Court ruled in 1999 that all forms of torture are to be banned, under any circumstances, without exception. History makes it clear, without a clear ban on all torture, torture will simply be used more and more until it becomes a method of choice under all circumstances.
This leads onto the final pillar of my argument. Fundamentally, torture is a punishment of someone who usually has not been found guilty. It is also discriminatory because today's victims of torture (at least in Europe, if torture was allowed here, and in USA whose current administration currently seems to tacitly support torture) will predominantly be a male in his 20s, 2nd or third generation immigrant from an Arab country and Muslim. In UK in the recent past they have been Northern Irish.
Ultimately the 'war on terror' is the war on an idea that terror and violence can achieve a political goal or at least that such methods are justified. Thus this war begins and ends in the hearts and minds of people, all people, including people on 'our' side. If we use torture we are not only like 'them' but we become the actual enemy we are fighting. Torture at the end of the day does more harm than good. It encourages people to adopt terrorist tactics. For example, how many Palestinians were convinced that Israel was evil and must be destroyed after they heard the horrors of torture committed by Israeli security forces on captured Palestinian militants?! We must not hand another propaganda victory to the terrorists as we have done with Guantanamo Bay and Abu Ghraib. We must not harm our main weapon in the fight, our moral position. Torture is more damaging to us in the long term than to our enemies. The vast majority of people are against all torture, and for good reason.
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