A Thinking Reed

Worse than Death?

Written by

Lee M.

in

Why are we so squeamish about torture? More specifically, why do we think that torturing someone is worse than killing him?

My evidence that we do in fact think this is that there has been so much controversy over whether the government ever has the right to torture people, but there has been very little controversy over whether the government has the right, at least sometimes, to kill people. To make it more personal, as a non-pacifist I think that there are some cases, however rare, where the use of lethal force is justified. But I am very hesitant to admit that it would ever be okay to use torture. Why?

One possible answer is that we only kill when the stakes are extremely high, and that the stakes are never that high in situations where we might be tempted to resort to torture. But this seems clearly false; just consider the “ticking time bomb” scenario where people are going to die unless you find out where the bomb is. Those stakes are just as high as some cases where we think killing is permissible.

Maybe the difference lies in the fact that we only think it’s okay to kill an actual aggressor whereas it’s sometimes suggested that innocent people might be tortured to provide life-saving information. Okay, but let’s stipulate for the sake of argument that candidates for torture are only those directly complicit in the act of aggression we’re seeking to prevent (e.g. the ticking bomb).

It has been suggested that what makes torture wrong is that it dehumanizes its victims. For instance, Jonathan Schell says:

Torture is wrong because it inflicts unspeakable pain upon the body of a fellow human being who is entirely at our mercy. The tortured person is bound and helpless. The torturer stands over him with his instruments. There is no question of “unilateral disarmament,” because the victim bears no arms, lacking even the use of the two arms he was born with. The inequality is total. To abuse or kill a person in such a circumstance is as radical a denial of common humanity as is possible.

The implication, it seems to me, is that killing on the battlefield is less wrong because the other guy can at least shoot back! But then again, torture doesn’t necessarily (or even usually) lead to death, and isn’t death a greater harm? Don’t I deny someone else’s humanity in an even more radical way by literally reducing him to a thing (permanently)? Is it worse to torture a helpless person than to kill someone who can fight back?

It may be that someone who is an immediate threat (coming at me on the battlefield) seems more dangerous than someone I have tied up in a chair in front of me. But what if that person has planted a bomb that stands to kill hundereds of people? Then, despite his apparent helplessness, isn’t he just as much of a threat?

I don’t know what the right answer is here. It may be that I’m wrong about our moral intuitions and most people really don’t think torture is worse than killing. But if so, why do we countenance the latter fairly casually but not the former? Or maybe we just think it would be foolish to trust the government with the power to torture? But we trust it with the power to kill, and so we’re back to the question why torture is more dangerous.

Comments

3 responses to “Worse than Death?”

  1. Camassia

    Actually, I think the ability to shoot back is more important than you’re giving it credit for. It’s the old warrior idea that if you kill someone in battle you’re granting him an honorable death, because he was in control of himself and fighting for what he believed in. But if you torture him you’re trying to get him to dishonor himself by betraying his beliefs (or his country, or whatever). I think the feeling behind it is that everyone has to die sooner or later, so death isn’t inherently dehumanizing, but the manner of death is under our control somewhat. We don’t really talk in that language any more, but I think that’s a major psychological undercurrent here.

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  2. Chris T.

    I don’t think it has anything to do with shooting back—if someone is unarmed but holding a switch connected to a bomb that will kill a million people, I believe it is sinful to shoot that person in order to save lives, but it is more sinful to do nothing.

    Torture is more horrible and less justifiable than killing because it’s ineffective and it’s cruel. You shoot someone if they’re going to hurt someone else, and you hope they die right away. There’s generally no desire in a police officer to see his or her target suffer. But many of these folks torturing Iraqis and others seem to be enjoying their work. There’s no practical reason to be doing this, as the editorial I linked mentions, they’re just having fun causing pain. That’s sickening.

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  3. Marcus

    As to what most people really think, I suggest you consider the implications of the popularity of the Dirty Harry series of films.

    At the very least, many people favor using torture in the circumstances at issue.

    For that matter, many people would allow it as punishment. I am not thinking of pulling out fingernails or electrodes on the testes. I am thinking about corporal punishment.

    These days, it appears that many writers on the topic of torture by US forces in Iraq would likely insist that any form of physical abuse is torture, and hence that any form of corporal punishment is torture.

    All which fits right in with the inclination of many to regard physical punishment of children by parents as also always abusive and wrong.

    As for me, I think the Army custom of First Sergeant’s punishment was, at least sometimes, actually a kindness.

    I refer to a practise, probably now long gone, under which one or more sergeants would beat an enlisted man in punishment for something or other, quite unofficially, when the only officially allowed method of dealing with the infraction might have been a court martial, or a dishonorable discharge, or something clearly worse than a bloody nose, a split lip, and maybe a black eye.

    Further proof, no doubt, of what a wicked fellow I am.

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