Michael Levin argues for the use of torture on terrorists.
1 It is generally assumed that torture is impermissible, a throwback to a more brutal age.
Enlightened societies reject it outright, and regimes suspected of using it risk the wrath
of the United States. I believe this attitude is unwise. There are situations in which
torture is not merely permissible but morally mandatory. Moreover, these situations are
moving from the realm of imagination to fact. 5
2 Suppose a terrorist has hidden an atomic bomb on Manhattan Island which will
detonate at noon on July 4 unless… – here follow the usual demands for money and
release of his friends from jail. Suppose, further, that he is caught at 10 am of the fateful
day, but – preferring death to failure – won’t disclose where the bomb is. What do we
do? If we follow due process – wait for his lawyer, arraign him, taking several months in 10
the process – millions of people will die. If the only way to save those lives is to subject
the terrorist to the most excruciating possible pain, what grounds can there be for not
doing so? I suggest there are none. In any case, I ask you to face the question with an
open mind.
3 Torturing the terrorist is unconstitutional? Probably. But millions of lives surely outweigh 15
constitutionality. Torture is barbaric? Mass murder is far more barbaric. Indeed, letting
millions of innocents die in deference to one who flaunts his guilt is moral cowardice, an
unwillingness to dirty one’s hands. If you caught the terrorist, could you sleep nights
knowing that millions died because you couldn’t bring yourself to apply the electrodes?
4 Once you concede that torture is justified in extreme cases, you have admitted that the 20
decision to use torture is a matter of balancing innocent lives against the means needed
to save them. You must now face more realistic cases involving more modest numbers.
Someone plants a bomb on a jumbo jet. He alone can disarm it, and his demands
cannot be met (or if they can, we refuse to set a precedent by yielding to his threats).
Surely we can, we must, do anything to the extortionist to save the passengers. How 25
can we tell 300, or 100, or 10 people who never asked to be put in danger, “I’m sorry,
you’ll have to die in agony, we just couldn’t bring ourselves to…”
5 Here are the results of an informal poll about a third, hypothetical, case. Suppose a
terrorist group kidnapped a newborn baby from a hospital. I asked four mothers if they
would approve of torturing kidnappers if that were necessary to get their own newborns 30
back. All said yes, the most "liberal" adding that she would like to administer it herself.
6 I am not advocating torture as punishment. Punishment is addressed to deeds
irrevocably past. Rather, I am advocating torture as an acceptable measure for
preventing future evils. So understood, it is far less objectionable than many existing
punishments. Opponents of the death penalty, for example, are forever insisting that 35
executing a murderer will not bring his victim back (as if the purpose of capital
punishment were supposed to be resurrection, not deterrence or retribution). But
torture, in the cases described, is intended not to bring anyone back but to keep
innocents from being dispatched.
7 The most powerful argument against using torture as a punishment or to secure 40
confessions is that such practices disregard the rights of the individual. Well, if the
individual is all that important, and he is, it is correspondingly important to protect the
rights of individuals threatened by terrorists. If life is so valuable that it must never be
taken, the lives of the innocents must be saved even at the price of hurting the one who
endangers them. 45
8 Better precedents for torture are assassinations and pre-emptive attacks. No Allied
leader would have flinched at assassinating Hitler, had that been possible. Americans
would be angered to learn that Roosevelt could have had Hitler killed in 1943 – thereby
shortening the war and saving millions of lives – but refused on moral grounds.
Similarly, if nation A learns that nation B is about to launch an unprovoked attack, A has 50
a right to save itself by destroying B’s military capability first. In the same way, if the
police can, by torture, save those who would otherwise die at the hands of kidnappers
or terrorists, they must.
9 There is also an important difference between terrorists and their victims that should
mute talk of terrorists’ ‘rights’. The terrorist’s victims are at risk unintentionally, not 55
having asked to be endangered. But the terrorist knowingly initiated his actions. Unlike
his victims, he volunteered for the risk of his deed without compunction. By threatening
to kill for profit or idealism, he renounces civilised standards, and he can have no
complaint if civilisation tries to thwart him by whatever means necessary.
10 Just as torture is justified only to save lives, not extort confessions or recantations; it is 60
justifiably administered only to those known to hold innocent lives in their hands. Ah, but
how can the authorities ever be sure they have the right malefactor? Isn’t there a
danger of error and abuse? Won’t We turn into Them?
11 Questions like these are disingenuous in a world in which terrorists proclaim
themselves and perform for television. The name of their game is public recognition. 65
After all, you can’t very well intimidate a government into releasing your freedom
fighters unless you announce that it is your group that has seized its embassy. ‘Clear
guilt’ is difficult to define, but when 40 million people see a group of masked men seize
an airplane on the evening news, there is not much question about who the
perpetrators are. There will be hard cases where the situation is murkier. Nonetheless, 70
a line demarcating the legitimate use of torture can be drawn. Torture can only be used
on the obviously guilty and only if necessary, and only for the purpose of saving
innocents. This way, the line between Us and Them will remain clear.
12 There is little danger that the Western democracies will lose their way if they choose to
inflict pain as one way of preserving order. Paralysis in the face of evil is the greatest 75
danger. Some day soon a terrorist will threaten tens of thousands of lives, and torture
will be the only way to save them. We had better start thinking about this.
Adapted from The Case for Torture by Michael Levin
In his article, Levin argues for the use of torture in order to curb the rise of terrorism and
terrorist activities.
Do you think torture is the most effective weapon against terrorism?
You should use material from the passage and justify your answers with your own
examples and observations.
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