Torture, traditional war, and terrorism
Marc Thiessen writes:
[T]his precisely what the Catechism of the Catholic Church asserts (emphasis added):
Legitimate defense can not only be a right, but a grave duty for one who is responsible for the lives of others. The defense of the common good requires that an unjust aggressor be rendered unable to cause harm.
In traditional war, when you capture an enemy soldier, once he is disarmed and taken off the battlefield he has been “rendered unable to cause harm.” But that is not true of senior terrorist leaders like KSM. They retain the power to kill many thousands by withholding information about planned attacks. A captured terrorist leader remains an unjust aggressor who actively threatens society — targeting innocent civilians in violation of the laws of war — even when he is in custody.
Is this true? I’m not so sure. If a German soldier or intelligence officer in WWII had been captured that soldier may have possessed knowledge of planned German offensives. Getting that information may indeed have saved thousands of American or Allied lives. A captured SS officer may have had information regarding death camps or other atrocities which would have led to increased support for the war effort. Countless scenarios, whether ticking-time-bomb or not, could be conceived wherein during the course of traditional warfare intelligence garnered from captured soldiers would lead to saving the lives of many on our side. Does this make torture or “enhanced interrogation techniques” any more viable or moral or practical?
In terms of Catholic teaching, I would say that this is absolutely not the case. And if it does not apply to traditional war, then I fail to see how it applies any more or less to terrorism. After all, does it apply to crime-fighting? That is not traditional warfare, but I imagine there are countless scenarios where criminals have information that could save lives. And can we not simply redefine all engagements that are traditional warfare as non-traditional and then change the rules accordingly. At what point does an asymmetrical conflict become non-traditional war by necessity? Does this increase in asymmetry justify torture – even though the asymmetry is skewed in our favor?
On a practical side, this makes no sense since it has been proven time and again that information gained through torture is unreliable. This is something that torture advocates continually gloss over, despite the evidence and broad consensus.
Either way, Thiessen’s use of the Catechism reveals how shallow his case really is. At a certain point I wonder how much this really is about information gathering, and how much this is about retribution. How much do we simply want to return the terror to the terrorists? And then, doesn’t torture simply become terror? Do we not become what we fear?
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ED, did you see this piece?
Found it over on Charles Johnson’s page
http://correspondents.theatlantic.com/mickey_edwards/2010/02/why_im_not_at_cpac.php
I don’t know much about Mickey, but it’s refreshing to hear someone say what he says.
I hadn’t seen that, but thanks! I think I may have to blog about it…great piece.
In response to another comment. See in context »Legitimate defense may be a grave duty, but that doesn’t mean that every means of fulfilling that duty is legitimate or morally licit. The very idea of just war theory is based on the truth that the presence of an aggressor isn’t enough to warrant war or war’s instruments.
Quite right, Kyle.
In response to another comment. See in context »Mr. Kain,
In response to your question, no it is not true, in several different ways.
1) Torture does not work, it does not get from its victims useful information. The purpose of torture is to get false confessions, not intelligence.
2) It is one of the basic principles of asymetric warfare is that if one of your operatives is captured, it must be assumed that any operations to which that individual is privy is compromised. Whatever intelligence that that individual may have possed, is rendered useless once it is known that he or she has been captured.
I would note that during WW II, the Fascist POWs captured by the Red Army were never tortured. The NKVD (predecessor to the KGB) preferred technique for interrogating “tongues”, as they were known, was the use of captured mail. They would sit the POW down, give them some coffee, and then produce some mail for that POW that the Red Army had captured. Soldiers everywhere live for letters from home. POWs are soldiers who are tired and scared. Give a recently captured POW a letter from home and he will tell you anything, which is exactly what happened. Of course recently captured mail was not always available so this technique was not always used, but you see the point.
Now, was Beria’s NKVD a bunch of bleeding heart liberals morally disgusted with the concept of torture? Hardly. When false confessions were needed, torture was right at the top of the list. However, the NKVD knew what worked for different situations and when actionable intelligence was needed, torture was not what they used.
I think the review Theissen posted harks back to a Catholicism that thought torturing Albigensians and burning them at the stake was a valid way of dealing with “enemies.” I thought that argument went out with Vatican II.
[...] been posting on the NRO torture dust-up. I talk about torture and traditional warfare here; torture and Catholicism here (see also Conor [...]
[...] E.D. Kain [...]