Ethics: principles, concepts, and applications

Criminal Justice - Ethical Issue

RECONSIDERING the ETHICAL ISSUE of TORTURE

After the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, U.S. President George W. Bush announced the Global War on Terror as a national priority. Since then, egregious abuses of detainees and prisoners, such as reported in connection with the Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo Bay facilities (among others) have highlighted the difficulties of prosecuting the War on Terror without violating traditional ethical standards that have always restricted the conduct of U.S. military and law enforcement actions in modern times.

Many commentators have suggested that certain specific elements of those traditional standards be reevaluated in light of contemporary issues. One of the most controversial concerns the proposal of torture warrants often advanced by Harvard Law School professor Alan Dershowitz.

The Ethical Issue of Torture Warrants:

In general, the use of torture for punishment and interrogation is strictly prohibited both by U.S. And international law. The U.S. has traditionally refrained from such practices and strongly encouraged other nations to do the same. However, since September 11, 2001 and the inception of the Global War on Terror, the prohibition of harsh interrogation techniques have been challenged, and in some cases, relaxed substantially.

Captured al Qaeda terrorists and others apprehended in connection with suspected terrorism have been transferred to allied nations, specifically because those nations use interrogation techniques prohibited by U.S. law; likewise, U.S. government officials at the highest level authorized techniques like "water boarding" and prolonged "stress positions" that have been criticized as forms of torture. In addition to the obvious human rights and constitutional legal issues, torture has also been criticized as an ineffective interrogation technique that produces as much fabricated information as genuine intelligence information. On the other hand, even some of those opposed to the general use of torture support the concept of torture warrants in the case of the so-called "ticking time bomb" scenario (Dershowitz, 2002).

Professor Dershowitz (among others) have suggested that the ethical arguments against torture may be outweighed where: (1) the magnitude of harm at issue is great enough, (2) the suspect is known to be in possession of the information necessary to neutralize that harm, and (3) the use of torture is absolutely restricted to those cases. The ethical justification is that in the modern age of, biological, chemical, and nuclear weapons of mass destruction (WMD), the safety of millions of civilians threatened by the use of WMDs outweighs any moral obligation to a single individual involved in such attacks (Dershowitz, 2002).