Too many words about Torture

Before I get down to the meat and potatoes of the arguments presented in this article, I  think its worth covering some of the premises of these arguments-premises that not all the authors of these articles agree on. The main area of disagreement seems to be on the efficacy of torture in extracting reliable information from victims (to show my hand with wording a bit). Bagaric is under the impression that torture can reliably produce good information, and Arar and Fernando think it cannot. Arar cites that America invaded Iraq on the basis of false information derived through torture and points to the case of El-Masri's abduction and torture for 5 months based on the mistaken notion that he was a terrorist as a way to degrade the CIA's skill for fingering terror suspects. Bagaric points to claims by Israeli authorities that they have foiled 90 terrorist attacks through coercive interrogation and an account by retired CIA agent John Kiriakou of the successful torture of one al-Qa'ida suspect. Considering much of the information relevant to this question is classified, I will rely only on the information given in the articles. Given the evidence provided by each side, I'm leaning more on the side of torture's inefficacy in extracting reliable information.

Bagaric's argument in his "Some Torture a Needed Life-Saving Tool" is pretty weak by my valuation. He uses quite a few analogies in this piece that I consider flawed or lead to conclusions that I find unacceptable. Bagaric says it is important to take responsibility for the things we fail to prevent as well as the things we do. I agree with this statement. However, the analogy he uses to illustrate this is that it is wrong to not throw a rope to a drowning person, and it is also wrong to not utilize torture to the end of saving innocents. This analogy is flawed, as the act of throwing a rope to a drowning man is not one that is in and of itself morally wrong, whereas the act of torture is in and of itself morally wrong. Another analogy Bagaric uses later in the piece is that life saving torture and tissue transplants are similar in the sense that they cause pain and discomfort in one person to the end of saving innocent lives. This analogy misses the key dissimilarity that tissue donation is done with the consent of the donator and the pain and discomfort is incidental to the tissue donation, whereas torture is done without the consent of the victim and the pain and discomfort is essential to the saving of lives. Bagaric also pre-empts an objection I have to torture (there is no way we can be sure the victim has relevant information) with a hand wave by saying we should only torture victims when we are sure the victims are certain to possess information that would save innocent lives. This standard is so restrictive as to be impossible to adequately fulfill in any but a very small number of cases, and this very small number is dwarfed by the number of cases in which torture is currently utilized. Referencing El-Masri, who clearly did not possess information that would save innocent lives, the man was tortured for almost half a year. If Bagaric's position is to tighten the standards for torture for the sake of interrogation, that would be one thing. Certainly if this was the position he held, he would express sympathies with the likes of El-Masri and others who were clearly not members of his group of acceptable targets, and make a point to acknowledge commonalities with those who believe torture is inhumane on these grounds. Yet Bagaric instead decries the views of those in opposition to his view as the "fanatical claims of libertarian groups," and his only mention of breaching the list of acceptable targets is to declare that situations in which there is "no evidence of an immediate risk to the life of an innocent person" are wrong, seemingly backing away from the stricter requirements of the victim absolutely possessing information that would save the life of this innocent. This claim is made in the other article by Bagaric.

I think torture is a deeply complex issue and I think that Bagaric's use of overly simple analogies in an attempt to de-nuance the issue does a disservice to the discussion and his own view. I think his attempt to pre-emptively distort the claims of his opposition as the "fanatical claims of libertarian groups" is in bad faith and it makes him seem more interested in making a political point than an ethical one. But I also think he makes some good points re: the moral responsibility of people to prevent harm and the necessity of sometimes committing small evils to prevent greater ones. Still, I am bothered by the need to posit hard choices as though they are no-brainers. I think we ought to treat hard problems as hard problems. Things are never so easy, and to claim they are denies issues their gravity and denies those who must answer these moral quandaries a great deal of credit.