Torture and Ethics

Introduction
Since the rise of terrorism in the wake of 9/11, numerous tactics have been tried in order to obtain information about where terrorists are hiding and where they might attack next. One of these methods is torture. From a utilitarian perspective, torture should be viewed as an unethical approach to problem solving. The main problem that can be identified from this approach is that it simply does not work. A person who is being tortured cannot be trusted to tell the truth. Confessions that are made under duress are not admissible in a court of law for the simple reason that when one is promised that the pain will stop if the individual will just “confess,” that confession cannot be counted on to be unbiased or objective. There is a clear incentive to “confess”—that is, to end the torture. Torture as a tool of procuring the truth, therefore, is a flawed approach to tackling the issue of terrorism, for which it has been re-introduced into the American playbook. If torture is not a useful device for obtaining information, then what is it useful at doing? This paper will answer that question by examining the issue using the ethical basis of utilitarianism. It will then identify the weaknesses in the utilitarian viewpoint and challenge this perspective from the standpoint of deontology. It will conclude with a defense of utilitarianism against the deontological counter-position with respect to torture.
The Utilitarian Position
The ethical basis of utilitarianism is that it is used to gauge the common good of society. In other words, ethical activity is predicated on whether or not it assists in obtaining the greatest good for the greatest number of people. While deciding on what this greatest good might be or who is to judge what the good is might require some considerable debate, the point to be made for now is that if something is not in the interests of the common good then it should it be avoided because it would be unethical from the utilitarian point of view, as Mill shows. Or, as Fox puts it: actions are “right in proportion as they tend to promote happiness, wrong as they tend to produce the reverse of happiness.”
For torture to be considered ethical from the standpoint of utilitarianism, it would have to be shown that the torture of captives can help procure the common good of all. And on the surface one might think that torture actually could work to achieve the common good: for example, the captive has information about a potential terrorist attack. He will not divulge what he knows. Torture is threatened and used and finally the captive confesses what he knows. The information is examined and acted upon and a terror attack is thwarted. Hundreds of lives may have been saved in comparison to one person being tortured. If one frames the issue in this manner it would appear that torture should be thought of as entirely ethical: after all, it helped to save hundreds of people—that is certainly for the greater, common good.
The problem with framing the issue in this way is that an assumption is underlying it: the assumption is that this is the only outcome of torture. In fact, it is not: there are many other consequences of torture. For example, the captive may not tell the truth. Countless man hours could be spent investigating a false story concocted by the captive in order to temporarily halt the torture. In reality, the captive may not even know anything but feel compelled to give up the names of other people—friends or family members who are not even connected to terrorists. This style of interrogation was employed by the Soviets in the 20th century. Kulaks were rounded up by the thousands and forced to “confess” under the threat of a variety of different forms of torture—and confess they did. They gave up the names of everyone they knew because no number high enough was every really enough. The Soviets wanted everyone—and they rounded up everyone and put them into their labor camps, all based on the lies of false confessions that were beaten out of people who felt they had no other choice. The entire nation suffered as a result. An entire generation of young men and women were poisoned by the Soviet government’s mentality that if people had nothing to hide, they would not confess to anything and therefore they could take a little torture. The truth is the opposite. No one wants to be tortured, and human nature being what it is, people will say just about anything to make it stop. Their “confessions” can ruin the lives of others; they can waste so much time and energy; they can run people in circles, and harm the minds of those who are trying to sift fact from fiction. Confessions that are tortured out of a person do not correlate with what it means to obtain information honestly and ethical—not from the utilitarian point of view.
There is also the issue of the captive’s family and friends or peers and colleagues knowing that their friend is being tortured—and that can cause them to want to seek revenge. In fact, if one’s aim is to stop terrorism, torture could be just about the worst method to try and stop it. Terrorists want to fight the West because they hate Western hypocrisy—the idea that whatever the West does is good, but if someone else does it, they are bad. Terrorists might torture prisoners—and that would be wrong—but if the West does it, it is okay because the West has the moral high ground. The impression that is given off to the enemy and to disinterested observers when the West engages in torture is just the opposite: it says that the West has no moral high ground, no sense of where to draw the line. It sees only its own objective and it will stop at nothing to achieve that objective.
It must be shown, therefore, that from the utilitarian perspective torture does not work because it is like throwing a monkey wrench into the social fabric. Nothing that people do exists in a vacuum. There are no bubbles to which torture can be confined. Engaging in torture is like taking a sewage line and pumping it straight into the public sphere. It is like opening the spigots of waste water and letting them rain down on all the people on their way to work. Torture is an ugly and cruel method of communicating with human beings and it adds a foulness to the air that cannot simply be ignored. So on top of the fact that it does not actually work, torture is like a pollutant. It pollutes the ethical foundations and moral framework of society—and everyone knows and everyone feels it, but they pretend that it is okay because they believe that it actually does work—and their beliefs are based on the assumption that torture is a simple process with a start point and an end point. The reality is that it is a complex process that is like opening a can of worms or like opening Pandora’s Box. Once it is opened, there is no way to get the evil that is unleashed back into the box. It is out there in the world now and people in the world will react to it—and it will not be for the common good of all. It is an action that leads to a reaction and so on. From the utilitarian perspective, torture is unethical because it leads to more tension in society, more conflict, more hostility and more harm: it does not lead to the good.
Counter-Position
The weakness with the utilitarian ethical position is that it actually does not know what the greatest, common good is. It has no way of measuring it, no way of identifying it. The discussions or debates that would be held as people try to settle on what is the greatest common good have been held for centuries. The fact is that people simply cannot agree on what constitutes the good let alone the greatest good for the greatest number of people. People’s sense of goodness is far too subjective for that to happen. That is why the utilitarian ethical perspective is flawed. It trusts too much to the notion that people can agree on anything. Mill himself admits as much when he writes that “if [society] issues wrong mandates instead of right, or any mandates at all in things with which it ought not to meddle, it practices social tyranny more formidable than many kinds of political oppression” (Mill 13). In other words, people getting together to try to establish what is in everyone else’s best interest will invariably lead to someone taking away another person’s freedom to choose—and that is what is known as tyranny. Utilitarianism is, in other words, a tyrannical approach to ethics. There is a better one—the deontological approach
From the position of deontology, ethics are based on the concept of duty. Today, a nation actually has a duty to protect its citizens and people from attack. If a person is arrested who is suspected of having information that will be of use to the state, torture is an effective means of procuring that information. Torture is a show of force—it is no different from using discipline with a child. A child will not pick up his room—he gets a spanking. He does not like spankings, so he will pick up his room. Is this offensive to the common good? The utilitarian might argue that it is because it sends an angry chord into the harmonious melody of nature—but from a deontological perspective the parent has simply done his or her duty by the child and instilled discipline.
Torture should be considered in the same light. Torture is effective because it is ugly—it works because it is painful. That is why it was conceived in the first place. It is based on the same concept of discipline that parents apply to children, just taken up a few dozen notches. A prisoner has information but will not talk—then torture must be an option that is placed on the table.
It must be placed on the table as an option because the state has a duty to place it there, just as the parent has a duty to discipline using the rod: spare the rod and spoil the child is the age-old maxim. Spare the torture and spoil the prisoner, should be the new maxim of the state that wants to protect its citizens and defeat terrorism.
Defense
Sandle notes that “the idea that justice means respecting freedom and individual rights is at least as familiar in contemporary politics as the utilitarian idea of maximizing welfare” (20). However, in the war on terror the deontologist forgets to point out that every human has rights and that justice has to be carefully considered before one can set about administering a kind of vigilantism—which is what torture really is. It is a style of persuasion that is used by gangsters and mobsters—brutes who do not stop to think about the repercussions of their actions. Both ideas and actions have consequences. Just because one’s duty is to protect one’s state and its citizens does not mean that one should pick up a brick and crush it against the side of the head of the first prisoner who refuses to talk in the hopes of obtaining some useful information. Useful information is not like a tap that you turn on and out comes the data like water from the sink—and the brick or whatever mode of torture is handiest is not like the handle of the spigot. It is more like a stick of dynamite in a crowded room. It sends a message, all right—but that message is as loud and angry and dangerous as the message of the terrorists themselves, which is why it fails to actually make anyone safe. The idea that bigger bombs must be built to counter the enemy’s big bombs is ludicrous: no one is safe in such a scenario because sooner or later those bombs will go off.
Justice has to be considered when one is discussing ethics and torture. Justice is the backbone of society. Without justice, society might as well cease to exist. To engage in torture is to throw justice out the window. The utilitarian framework for ethics is not incorrect in this matter—it is the best view of the issue because it urges restraint. It urges caution. It urges one to look both ways, which is also something that parents teach their young to do. Before you enter into the ring with the terrorist, you have to make sure that you are still fighting on the side of the right—and to make sure of that you have to continuously uphold the principles you profess to believe in. Justice is the biggest principle to maintain at all times. Engaging in torture is like saying you don’t need justice, all you need is something to beat the prisoner with—so that all their information spills out like water, and then all the problems will be solved. The truth is that then all the problems have been compounded and made worse for everyone. There is always blowback when justice is taken into one’s own hands—and it is never for the greater good.
In conclusion, one must see as Mill does that people must protect themselves “against the tendency of society to impose its own ideas and practices as rules of conduct on those who dissent from them” (13-14). Protecting people from torture is exactly the type of thing that Mill is talking about. That kind of practice is what leads to the greatest unhappiness of all.


Works Cited
Fox, James. “Utilitarianism.” The Catholic Encyclopedia. NY: Robert Appleton
Company, 1912.
Mill, J. S. On Liberty. London: John W. Parker and Son, West Strand, 1859.
Sandle, Michael. Justice: What’s the Right Thing to Do? NY: Farrar, Straus, Giroux,
2009.


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