Jack Bauer 2008: What Fourth Amendment?

I recently responded to someone's questions about torture, using Jack Bauer as an example. More recently, I ran across my friend's blog post about the exact same thing. It is just so eloquently written that I had to repost it. Alden Utter, you rock.

Want to feel shivers up and down your spine?

Read:

So, here's what I would do. First I would google waterboarding to understand the basic concepts than I would try it on myself. First, self inflicted and then, if necessary, inflicted by my wife.(she has no problem torturing me. We've been married almost 15 years.)These are the results of my research and experience:

We can talk all we will about torture; for example, Mitt Romney, Rudy Giuliani, and Tom Tancredo have expressed support varying degrees for waterboarding. McCain, naturally, is against all tortures on principle.

But Scylla has walked the walk. And the results... Well, back to the text

It took me ten minutes to recover my senses once I tried this. I was shuddering in a corner, convinced I narrowly escaped killing myself.

... If I had the choice of being waterboarded by a third party or having my fingers smashed one at a time by a sledgehammer, I'd take the fingers, no question.

So, let's talk Kant and Mill. Briefly.

There are, for the sake of this discussion, two kinds of moral/ethical viewpoints: Utilitarianism, and what Kant called the Categorical Imperative. In Utilitarianism, the best actions are those which do the most good to the most people, and the least bad to the least people. The Categorical Imperative, on the other hand, is a philosophy whose two central calls are that we must "Act only according to that maxim whereby you can at the same time will that it should become a universal law," and that we must treat all other people as ends into themselves, rather than as merely means. These two philosophies are both reasonable positions which almost instantly become contentious.

And both of them, interestingly, are against the use of torture in almost all applicable circumstances.

The Categorical Imperative rationale is the most obvious: we wouldn't want to live in a world where it is universally agreed that "Torture is a legitimate tool for gathering information", and you inarguably treat the torturee as a means for learning where the bomb is. But the utilitarian angle is a little fuzzier. The most obvious reasons are that the torture of alleged terrorists weakens the US resolve (or if it doesn't, it should), ensures the continued torture of US prisoners without our having the right to complain, and leads to further terrorism as the US becomes viewed an immoral, power-loving oppressor (which the fact that it engages in torture supports). But there's a better reason:

Torture does not work as advertised.

This isn't obvious, in part because of shows like 24, which portray the Ticking time bomb scenario as a constant, real-life event along the lines of rainstorms, rather than a thought experiment, nice to think about but having no relation to the real world, along the lines of Schrödinger's cat. And in the Ticking time bomb scenario, the terrorist is known, and the information he will give you is true. 24, in it's way, is as divorced from reality as Buffy the Vampire Slayer is: torture on the show is a magic rite which can only be performed on the guilty, and will conjure information that no other spell could summon.

But here, in Earth-Prime, torture doesn't produce information. Torture destroys the individual, causes the community to fear the government, and degrades any nation which practices it. Those are what torture accomplishes; if that is your goal, mission accomplished. But to think that someone willing to die blowing up the Sears Tower would tell you the bomb was in the Sears Tower when telling you it was in the Chase Auditorium would stop the torture just as swiftly is a level of cognitive dissonance normally reserved for cdesign proponentsists.

Jack Bauer is a protagonist, a main character. And, to an extent, he can be viewed as a hero—an anti-hero, but a hero. But the ideas he holds, effective as they are in the universe he inhabits, do not work in the real world; his ideals are not ones America can, or should, embrace. If we want to model our society on a character from fiction, let's chose one isn't an anti-hero.

I suggest Bilbo.

Don't board me, bro.

It was supposed to be the Spanish Casual Chat!

The debate over water boarding has come back into the headlines with the erasure of certain CIA interrogation tapes, and so I feel compelled to write about it again.

Facts on Torture

The Methods Under Scrutiny

Water Boarding: From the BBC, "Water-boarding involves a prisoner being stretched on his back or hung upside down, having a cloth pushed into his mouth and/or plastic film placed over his face and having water poured onto his face. He gags almost immediately."

additionally from ABC news, "Unavoidably, the gag reflex kicks in and a terrifying fear of drowning leads to almost instant pleas to bring the treatment to a halt. According to the sources, CIA officers who subjected themselves to the water boarding technique lasted an average of 14 seconds before caving in."


Belly Slaps: From ABC news, "A hard open-handed slap to the stomach. The aim is to cause pain, but not internal injury. Doctors consulted advised against using a punch, which could cause lasting internal damage."

Long Time Standing: From ABC news, "This technique is described as among the most effective. Prisoners are forced to stand, handcuffed and with their feet shackled to an eye bolt in the floor for more than 40 hours. Exhaustion and sleep deprivation are effective in yielding confessions."

The Cold Cell: From ABC news, "The prisoner is left to stand naked in a cell kept near 50 degrees. Throughout the time in the cell the prisoner is doused with cold water."

Is this against international law?

Yes. The UN definition of torture states that,

"torture means any act by which severe pain or suffering, whether physical or mental, is intentionally inflicted on a person for such purposes as obtaining from him or a third person information or a confession, punishing him for an act he or a third person has committed or is suspected of having committed, or intimidating or coercing him or a third person, or for any reason based on discrimination of any kind, when such pain or suffering is inflicted by or at the instigation of or with the consent or acquiescence of a public official or other person acting in an official capacity. It does not include pain or suffering arising only from, inherent in or incidental to lawful sanctions."

As for the American legal code, it defines torture as:

"an act committed by a person acting under the color of law specifically intended to inflict severe physical or mental pain or suffering (other than pain or suffering incidental to lawful sanctions) upon another person within his custody or physical control;(2) "severe mental pain or suffering" means the prolonged mental harm caused by or resulting from - (A) the intentional infliction or threatened infliction of severe physical pain or suffering;(B) the administration or application, or threatened administration or application, of mind-altering substances or other procedures calculated to disrupt profoundly the senses or the personality;(C) the threat of imminent death; or (D) the threat that another person will imminently be subjected to death, severe physical pain or suffering, or the administration or application of mind-altering substances or other procedures calculated to disrupt profoundly the senses or personality."

These "enhanced interrogation techniques" are absolutely banned by international law, the U.S. government does not consider them torture. However, it is illegal for the U.S. military to use water boarding, but this is not the case for the CIA. In an executive order, President Bush declared that the CIA must adhere to Geneva conventions and listed many different torture methods that were to be banned. There was an addendum to the order listing the allowed techniques, but not all of these were made public.

Effectiveness

Former CIA agent John Kirikau opposes the decision to erase CIA interrogation tapes and while he agrees that water boarding does indeed work, he no longer supports its use. Interestingly, he was subjected to the method during his training. He tells the story of breaking Al-Qaeda suspect Abu Zubayda, who had been uncooperative for weeks. Minutes after the technique was used, Zubayda started giving information that led to the arrest of another suspect, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, in Pakistan in 2003. Zubayda also gave the interrogators information on the organizational structure within Al Qaeda.

"Now after all these years, time has passed, and we're more on our feet in this fight against al Qaeda, and I think it's unnecessary," he said.

In a separate CNN interview, Kiriakou said the Justice Department and National Security Council reportedly approved waterboarding and other "alternative" interrogation techniques in June 2002.

"It was a policy decision that came down from the White House," he said.

Despite the executive blessing, Kiriakou and other agents were conflicted over whether to learn the technique, he said.

"One senior officer said to me that this is something you really have to think deeply about," the former agent said, adding he "struggled with it morally."

Kiriakou conceded his position might be hypocritical and said that the technique was useful -- even if he wanted to distance himself from it.

"Waterboarding was an important technique, and some of these other techniques were important in collecting the information," he said. "But I personally didn't want to do it. I didn't think it was right in the long run, and I didn't want to be associated with it."

My conclusions

I found Kiriakou's testinmony to be very compelling. Enhanced interrogation techniques may very well be unnecessary. Currently, CIA director Michael Hayden has declared that the CIA no longer uses water boarding, also suggesting that it's unnecessary. A good question to ask, and I doubt if it could ever really be answered, is whether the technique has helped the CIA in fighting terrorism in the long run, or harmed it. We all know the case for weapons in Iraq was faulty, whether it was due to executive pressure of just poor gathering of information, is this the same for counter terrorism?

While you're pondering that, please enjoy a musing from one of the 21st century's greatest thinkers, Eddie Izzard, with some leggo animation. I couldn't find his full bit on the spanish inquisition, but this one should do just fine.

Jack Bauer Fails the Efficiency Test

"so, the situation presented in the show is possible. granted that information gathered from torture is usually unreliable and the use of the practice does serve to create martyrs however this would be an example of an extreme circumstance and ALL circumstances must be examined. so the question in this example is do you stick to rigidly-defined morals or do situational ethics apply when this is your only option and the consequences of failure are as high as possible?

while you may think you know my answer. really, i dislike conjecturing what i might do in a high pressure situation. im leaning towards psychological interrogation approaches. but i dont know what i would do if there were only 5 minutes left."

This is a scenario I’ve heard posed by a lot of people for pro torture in extreme cases. First, I’d like to say that if you want to use physical torture in an “extreme” case, you should legally allow physical torture where terrorist attacks are concerned, because the extremity of the case may not be immediately clear. Also, from a legal stand point, IF I supported physical torture in terrorist cases, I would want the law to provide the interrogators with enough freedom to use their own judgement.

To back track a little, I am against the use of torture not only because of ethical considerations but because torture is an ineffective method for obtaining information. This has been proved throughout history again and again. In every era, in every location, torture has never proven to extract accurate information with any kind of consistency. You may very well get the suspect to talk if you torture him in the last five minutes, but humans in these circumstances will tell their captors what they think they want to hear in order for the pain to stop. It may be emotionally satisfying to the interrogator to cause physical pain to the suspect when the pressure for results is on, but that is the only thing this method will actually achieve.

re: Bah, I say! Bah!

Response to television and global unity:

"bah! i get knocked down for referencing television yet you believe it can save the world! you are not being a very good student of philosophy- the principle of charity is essential.

but more seriously, to use television in that fashion would most likely mean control of its use on a level close to fascism. otherwise how do you insure that its sending the "correct" message?"

You referenced the content of a fictional television series as an example of a real world situation.

I believe that the spread of media from different cultures helps in the peace process by exposing more people to positive images of the rest of the world. I mentioned nothing about controlling the content of the media, only encouraging diversity.

A good example of this can be seen in the show Heroes. Heroes, in my opinion, is groundbreaking in that it features characters of different ethnicities and languages prominently in their episodes. The message just happens to be very progressive, encouraging others to be heroes and even promoting the one laptop per child campaign amongst their fans.

Its not about passing legislation to make these things happen, but to build a demand for programs like this in the market and reward those who take these kinds of initiatives. The exposure is what I’m talking about, not the content.

There are other progressive American programs like The Axis of Evil Comedy Tour and Aliens in America.

Notice, I will never EVER list Mind of Mencia in this category.

The Crystal Ball Says Torture is Dumb

This inquiry is from my smarty pants friend Joe.

“Is torture really that bad when we consider the national security implications? Or, is there some way to get around the information impasse?”

Oddly enough, I was asked the same question at an indie rock show. How cool am I?

I am opposed to torture, and when I say torture, I mean bodily harm. Its morally wrong and completely inefficient. Look here for some information on current methods of torture and what we can learn about them from history.

For every terrorist you catch, you’re making about ten more. Those who have been tortured and then released are now your enemy. Their social networks, even if they aren’t released, are now your enemy.

Counter-terrorism is a very emotional business, and the most instinctual reaction is to come down with force. But that doesn’t mean it’s the best decision to make.

Check here to see Amnesty International’s campaign against torture.

“If fate exists in more than just a word, but as a true concept, what is its manifestation and how do you recognise it?”

This is a blog, Joe. Not the Oracle of Delphi. No cookie for you!


Allright, you can have a cookie. But not a chocolate chip one.