Torture is a Ticking Bomb

I am currently writing an essay about the use of torture during the 'war on terror' and, in particular, the ethics of the 'Ticking Bomb' (TB) scenario as a moral thought-experiment.  What follows is just some general thoughts and musings on the issue.

 For an overview of the TB scenario as an ethical dilemma look here.  Read first otherwise what I am talking about makes no sense. (Not to say it will make sense in any case but here's to hope!)  

It seems that nowadays having any kind of opinion on torture is somewhat controversial, because there are different arguments from all sorts of angles.  Some take the view that torture is never justifiable in any situation (http://www.amnesty.org/en/detention), no matter whether millions of lives are at stake, thus firmly refuting the TB scenario as a justification for torture.  Conversely there are those who argue that certain exceptional situations exist where torture is justifiable, as in TB situations.  There are a myriad of views between these two points, but, thankfully, there seems to be few people who outright condone the general use of torture as a state practice.  However, there is still alot of debate about when torture might be justified, and how such a justifiable situation should be defined (both legally or more generally in a moral sense).

It seems a very difficult debate to take a stance on without being controversial, but it is a debate on which the very notions of liberty, justice and freedom that are so upheld in Western society begin to be called into question.  Perhaps the most interesting thing I have come across is this excerpt from a piece by Slavoj Zizek entitled 'Are We In A War? Do We Have An Enemy,' which can be found here.  I think there is one section that deserves particular note when it comes to Ticking Bomb Scenario's and I will quote from it later.

Taken as a whole, the TB moral scenario tends to lead us to a position where we must either accept that torture is justified in certain situations OR that it is still never justified even if it would allow us to save hundreds, thousands or even millions of lives; lives that we may well identify strongly with i.e. they are friends, fellow citizens, fellow humans etc.  To me, this 'choice' is a problem of the scenario itself.  Firstly, there are many  assumptions that the TB scenario makes that try to remove all sorts of political, ethical, temporal and spatial elements from the equation.  See chapter in this book for excellent overview of this point.  The TB scenario divorces practice from theory, and then reconciles them in a way that is hugely problematic and symptomatic of many 'positivist' ways of thinking about the world.  However, notwithstanding the problems of thought-experiments in this sense, there are other things that are also really problematic within the moral dilemma presented in TB scenarios.   One is the 'choice' it asks 'us,' the moral decider, to make.  A 'choice' between millions of lives on one hand and torture on the other.  The more I think of it, the more I see this choice as the main problem of the scenario as well as a dire reflection of the post-9/11 world we live in.  In fact it barely deserves to be called a choice at all.  We live in a world where this, the decision or choice to torture, has become a serious area of debate that influences policy (think Guantanamo) and moral reasoning.  Yet it seems to me that there is something hugely unethical about being asked to give an answer to the TB scenario.  How fucked is it that our world imagines that someone might one day have to make that choice, a choice between torture and saving innocent lives.  Yet this is a choice that the 'war on terror' is forcing us to think seriously about.  The U.S. tortured, at least to some extent, detainees in Guantanamo in order to save the lives of US citizens threatened by terrorist activity, or so the argument goes.  It is clear how the appearance of TB scenarios illustrates the logics going on in the 'war on terror'.  In this sense, it is the very presence of TB scenarios which is perhaps most disturbing.

I think Zizek gives a really interesting look at these issues in the article and, in relation to ticking bombs, put it perfectly when he says:


‘I can well imagine that, in a particular situation, confronted with the proverbial 'prisoner who knows', whose words can save thousands, I might decide in favour of torture; however, even (or, rather, precisely) in a case such as this, it is absolutely crucial that one does not elevate this desperate choice into a universal principle: given the unavoidable and brutal urgency of the moment, one should simply do it. Only in this way, in the very prohibition against elevating what we have done into a universal principle, do we retain a sense of guilt, an awareness of the inadmissibility of what we have done.’


It is not then just the TB scenarios assumptions that are problematic, but also the choice it forces one to make between universal principles on one hand and exceptional situations on the other.  I certainly agree with Zizek that torture should never ever be a universal principle, and that torture is wrong, but I also agree that TB situations might force me to make a decision to torture.  It is the problem of liberalism that it's own points of principle, like freedom and liberty, are brought increasingly into a moral discussion of rights vs. security that then legitimises the very negative of the things it pretends to stand up for.  So by positing an absolute right to not be tortured against condoning torture in exceptional circumstances to provide security, liberalism ends up in the moral mess of TB scenarios where I have to choose what is right between two oppositely posed wrongs, largely because they are the only options that are on offer to a liberalist morality in the 21st century.  The logic of the 'war on terror,' in a very real sense, is asking us to choose between two wrongs: to torture on the one hand or allow a terrorist act killing thousands of people on the other.  What I want to do is refute the choice it is offering me.      


This is because I think we are being forced to be absolute on the issues of torture, of rights, of war and of violence in modern society to such an extent that they become the way we relate to right and wrong i.e. in absolute terms.   (Please note I am not saying that having strong moral principles is not a good thing).  We are told acts like torture must be wrong absolutely.  But then someone comes up with the TB scenario and shows that is not always the case.  Torture must be ok then? At least sometimes? What bollocks.  What sort of a choice is it that asks if torture ok!  It is sad that we cannot have a situation in modern society where we just know that torture is wrong.


 Lets take another common liberal claim - for instance, the claim killing is wrong.  On the surface, fine.  Yet soldiers kill and we don't seem to mind so much.  We bombed Dresdan to pieces in WW2, killing thousands of German civilians, but is that ok as part of the wider war against the evil Nazis? Suddenly we have a problem with the absolute claim that killing is wrong.  So is killing ok? And what about those that aren't even given life to kill? Millions starving around the globe because of the capitalist machine that works through helping us in the West and depriving and extorting those who can barely eat.  Do they get the same access to life as me and you? When they die do we even see that as killing? Can we kill what is a non-life? Again these problems are what are hidden when thinking in absolute terms.  I do not know what questions we should be asking, but they should not be: "is torture right/wrong?" Because torture is wrong.  It should not be "is killing right/wrong?" Because killing is wrong.  We should not need to debate it.  But killing and torture are not wrong absolutely.  Nor are they right absolutely.  At least in the sense that liberalism wants.  Ethics does not work like that in my eyes, and our morality should not have to be based on these absolute 'principles' that distort and hide the realities of life rather than reveal them.  Why do people need a rationality of absolute ethics that can justify what to think about killing, torture, etc. rather than people just 'knowing' it?   We always ask the absolute questions like 'is killing wrong?' as if it is the normal question.  If killing was truly an exception to the norm then we would not have to ask the question.  To ask the question would be exceptional.  Unfortunately, the world revolves around killing, our world revolves around this very question, and any absolute answer to it is to invite more trouble.  To ask the question is to beg for an unintelligible answer, and to me this is half the reason why the world is so fucked up most of the time.  We do not need new answers to these questions all the time, we need new questions, and quickly.  


Sorry, rant over. 


Well done if you read this far.  The fact that you are reading this and I am writing it shows how difficult it is to escape the net that the torture debate leads us into.  I have been writing how the very fact we can debate torture is part of problem while simultaneously discussing the debate again, and thereby legitimating it to a certain extent.  Apologies.  Torture is wrong, and we should not need to debate it - perhaps unless we ACTUALLY WERE in a ticking bomb scenario.  But we are not, despite what America might want us to think.  And in fact, the world is far messier and complicated than any TB scenario can grasp, and rightfully so.