In thinking about torture and the thought that torture is only guaranteed to produce false results, there is something that seems self-evident about this whole conundrum about torture and human rights:
Individuals who have pertinent information that any group would want are most likely trained to resist torture methods by governments and groups that use torture tactics in their own systems. Thus, it serves to support the above statement that results are only guaranteed to be false, to some degree. Consider yourself in the situation as a trained agent that holds a secret. You have been trained to separate yourself from pain and threats against family and friends. The torture begins. What do you do? If you are me or Farrel, for example, you would merely give up the secret immediately because you do not do well with the idea of unnecessary pain. If you are said trained agent, however, you resists. Then you provide false leads to temporarily relieve the pain. Then, when agents-of-pain return to torture you again (as trained agent), you retreat into your mind as one would with advanced meditation, a form not dissimilar to the unnatural/natural response to rape: to retreat to a place in the mind before the psyche is broken by a breaking experience. Thus, individuals who would generally have important information will be trained to resist torture methods. For those that torture would work with, I wager that they would not have any secrets worth having.
Walter asked us to consider a scenario in which humans could contract their human rights away. Is this possible? The Pseudo-Dionysius and Agustine of Hippo covered this issue, for me, in a construct evil and creation. They basically state that everything in creation contains some ousia (be-ing) and it cannot degrade itself to a point where it contains no ousia, otherwise it ceases to exist. That is something I ascribe to, personally, and it leads me to believe that all humans, so long as they live, contain the ability to learn and to become better individuals. Human rights cannot be taken away, ever, so long as a human lives. We are born into them and must demand that they stay with us until death. Torture is a fickle thing, able to produce shoddy results only some of the time. If we are so ready to torture individuals, why not use a polygraph? It is faulty, just like torture, but does not violate a human right.
I would rather be killed instantly and without pain for any crime I commit that would merit torture. I believe that imprisonment or death should be the choices in extreme situations of violence or acts against the state, not torture. On the farm, when animals turn on humans, such as in the instance of a stray, rabid dog, farmers shoot the animal- they do not torture it. We should treat humans with the same dignity, at the very least, as we would animals. Everyone begins to ask me, at this point, what would I say if someone had planted a bomb that would kill 200 people and torture could extract that information. I reply with the following: could it, with certainty, provide information? And are 200 lives not a price worth paying to maintain human rights for billions around the world? We must uphold the standard of human rights in ever circumstance or risk losing all human rights in the future.
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I love reading your posts. :)
ReplyDeleteI believe that torture is allowed to continue because it produces information. However, as you and many others have said, it does not always elicit truthful information. I remember in class when Farrel said how quickly he would give up the information, and someone told him that he was someone that would not need to be tortured. People who torture is meant to break are the kind of people who know how to handle the extreme amounts of pain, and would also know how to lie, and say the sorts of things that their torturers would want to hear.
I agree with you that human rights (such as human dignity, which torture takes away) are things that cannot be taken away, and they cannot be given up, so long as we are alive, they are ours simply because we are living. I rembember in class someone called torture "uniquely dehumanizing" and I cannot think of a better way to describe it.
We have a justice system that I believe should punish people for crimes and wrongdoings, and may even limit peoples freedom in the cases of solitary confinement and prison life sentences. But for torture, which inflicts the highest amount of pain possible, just for the sake of information, stripping people of their human rights in the meantime, and ultimately yielding false information, must be seen as unjust.
Interesting post.