The depths of congressional stupidity truly astonishes.
Wednesday, April 22, 2009
It Can't Be Excused
One of the main arguments for torture is that it works and has saved lives. Dick Cheney:
For the sake of argument, let's say that torture is effective and has saved lives. The conclusion of torture supporters is that since torture works, the US must do it. They see it as a regrettable necessity. Sure, they'd like to not torture, but how do you deal with people that cut off the heads of our citizens and drag the bodies of our soldiers through the streets? And, what about the ticking time bomb scenario?
There is a kind of teleological suspension of the ethical in this argument. Instead of Kierkegaard's duty to God, this argument supposes a duty to protect Americans. The President, and spy agencies, can do what is unethical to perform their duty of protecting American citizens. This reasoning is used in regard to domestic wiretapping and murdering someone who was going murder someone else, as well. Essentially, torture, wiretapping, and murder all involve protection if they are to be excused. However, murder is conceptually different than torture or wiretapping. Murder is a single act which cannot be expanded or furthered. Whereas, torture and wiretapping require programs, methods, and rules. Torture is not a singular act, but a technique that is necessarily continuous and expandable. The ethics of torture are measured by its efficacy, meaning that there is no limit to what torture may involve as long as information is extracted. Indeed, there is an incentive to escalate the terror and pain induced by torture if lesser means are not effective. The appeal to the teleological suspension of the ethical in regard to torture is simply not a sufficient argument. Only single, limited acts can be excused. A program that implies a multitude of acts against more than one person cannot be. A program is not limited because it necessarily cannot be.
The ticking time bomb scenario, while having never happened once, is also not a sufficient argument because the only factor that is different is time. What that change does, however, is make the situation appear more desperate and put more pressure on torturers to use methods beyond whatever rules a torture program may have. Suppose a CIA torturer is told that Penn Station will be blown up at the end of the day and that a captured terrorist knows where the bomb is. Do you think the CIA torturer will stop at waterboarding to obtain that information? No, the torturer will continue escalating to torture methods that do leave lasting marks. Otherwise, the ticking time bomb scenario is no different than the normal circumstances of torture.
There is no sufficient ethical argument for torture. None. It cannot be excused, only denied. The question demanding to be asked: is there no limit to the lengths the US may go to to defend US citizens? I have no doubt there are people on the right and even the left that would say that there is no limit. This disturbs me like those who gleefully defend the death penalty. The most visceral argument that fills my head when some asks "why don't we respond in kind to those who mutilated American soldier?" is we are better than them. We do not sink to their level. We do not do what they do. We are better than them. Or, at least, we should be.
For the sake of argument, let's say that torture is effective and has saved lives. The conclusion of torture supporters is that since torture works, the US must do it. They see it as a regrettable necessity. Sure, they'd like to not torture, but how do you deal with people that cut off the heads of our citizens and drag the bodies of our soldiers through the streets? And, what about the ticking time bomb scenario?
There is a kind of teleological suspension of the ethical in this argument. Instead of Kierkegaard's duty to God, this argument supposes a duty to protect Americans. The President, and spy agencies, can do what is unethical to perform their duty of protecting American citizens. This reasoning is used in regard to domestic wiretapping and murdering someone who was going murder someone else, as well. Essentially, torture, wiretapping, and murder all involve protection if they are to be excused. However, murder is conceptually different than torture or wiretapping. Murder is a single act which cannot be expanded or furthered. Whereas, torture and wiretapping require programs, methods, and rules. Torture is not a singular act, but a technique that is necessarily continuous and expandable. The ethics of torture are measured by its efficacy, meaning that there is no limit to what torture may involve as long as information is extracted. Indeed, there is an incentive to escalate the terror and pain induced by torture if lesser means are not effective. The appeal to the teleological suspension of the ethical in regard to torture is simply not a sufficient argument. Only single, limited acts can be excused. A program that implies a multitude of acts against more than one person cannot be. A program is not limited because it necessarily cannot be.
The ticking time bomb scenario, while having never happened once, is also not a sufficient argument because the only factor that is different is time. What that change does, however, is make the situation appear more desperate and put more pressure on torturers to use methods beyond whatever rules a torture program may have. Suppose a CIA torturer is told that Penn Station will be blown up at the end of the day and that a captured terrorist knows where the bomb is. Do you think the CIA torturer will stop at waterboarding to obtain that information? No, the torturer will continue escalating to torture methods that do leave lasting marks. Otherwise, the ticking time bomb scenario is no different than the normal circumstances of torture.
There is no sufficient ethical argument for torture. None. It cannot be excused, only denied. The question demanding to be asked: is there no limit to the lengths the US may go to to defend US citizens? I have no doubt there are people on the right and even the left that would say that there is no limit. This disturbs me like those who gleefully defend the death penalty. The most visceral argument that fills my head when some asks "why don't we respond in kind to those who mutilated American soldier?" is we are better than them. We do not sink to their level. We do not do what they do. We are better than them. Or, at least, we should be.
SCOTUS Stupidity
Dahlia Lithwick has a both hilarious and horrifying account of the Supreme Court's naivete and downright stupidity. While hearing arguments about whether it was an invasion of privacy to make a 13 year old girl, with no prior disciplinary problems, take off her clothes and then have her underwear searched in an effort to find...what for it...ibuprofen. Lithwick reccounts the proceedings:
I used to oppose the idea of putting a female justice on the court simply because her distinguishing feature is her genitalia. I used to believe that finding the best justice that reflected the President's constitutional perspective was all that mattered. I now see the value of taking sex into consideration, because the only justice that seemed to appreciate the nature of this case was justice Ginsberg. And, it'd also be nice to have a justice young enough to know teenagers sniff markers to get high.
Adam Wolf, the ACLU lawyer who represents Redding, explains that "the Fourth Amendment does not countenance the rummaging on or around a 13-year-old girl's naked body." Wolf explains that he is arguing for a "two-step framework," wherein schools can use a lower standard to search "backpacks, pencil cases, bookbags" but a higher standard when you "require a 13-year-old girl to take off her pants, her shirt, move around her bra so she reveals her breasts, and the same thing with her underpants to reveal her pelvic area." This leads Justice Stephen Breyer to query whether this is all that different from asking Redding to "change into a swimming suit or your gym clothes," because, "why is this a major thing to say strip down to your underclothes, which children do when they change for gym?"
This leads Ginsburg to sputter—in what I have come to think of as her Lilly Ledbetter voice—"what was done in the case … it wasn't just that they were stripped to their underwear! They were asked to shake their bra out, to stretch the top of their pants and shake that out!" Nobody but Ginsburg seems to comprehend that the only locker rooms in which teenage girls strut around, bored but fabulous in their underwear, are to be found in porno movies. For the rest of us, the middle-school locker room was a place for hastily removing our bras without taking off our T-shirts.
But Breyer just isn't letting go. "In my experience when I was 8 or 10 or 12 years old, you know, we did take our clothes off once a day, we changed for gym, OK? And in my experience, too, people did sometimes stick things in my underwear."
Shocked silence, followed by explosive laughter. In fact, I have never seen Justice Clarence Thomas laugh harder. Breyer tries to recover: "Or not my underwear. Whatever. Whatever. I was the one who did it? I don't know. I mean, I don't think it's beyond human experience."
I used to oppose the idea of putting a female justice on the court simply because her distinguishing feature is her genitalia. I used to believe that finding the best justice that reflected the President's constitutional perspective was all that mattered. I now see the value of taking sex into consideration, because the only justice that seemed to appreciate the nature of this case was justice Ginsberg. And, it'd also be nice to have a justice young enough to know teenagers sniff markers to get high.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
