Abstract
Torture is one of the central evils of the world. It has all the characteristics of evildoing set out in Chapter 5. Torture violates any standard of moral decency, is unjustifiable and lacks mitigating or exculpating excuses. The torturer inflicts harm on his victims. Torture inverts civilization and disfigures life (from the Latin tortus, having been twisted).
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Notes
- 1.
Or the helpless animal.
- 2.
Not all violence against a person is torture. Contrary to what Card seems to hold, most domestic violence is not torture. The victimized spouse or other family member is often not helpless. That person may typically leave, have the abuser jailed, or obtain a restraining order. Family members may be tormented by abuse, but not tortured.
- 3.
Card holds that stress is the major component in the torture victim’s experience. Surely stress does not capture the experience of the victim. A person who is having his fingers crushed by pliers is not experiencing stress, but pain and distress. Card, 218: “…harmful stress is more basic to torture than pain.”
- 4.
Jennifer Harbury, Truth, Torture, and the American Way: The History and Consequences of U.S. Involvement in Torture (Boston: Beacon Press, 2005), 146.
- 5.
Elaine Scarry, The Body in Pain: The Making and Unmaking of the World (New York and London: Oxford University Press, 1985).
- 6.
Ibid., 55.
- 7.
Ibid., 55. She quotes Silas Weir Mitchell, Injuries of Nerves and Their Consequences (Philadelphia: Lippincott, 1872), 196.
- 8.
Scarry, 41 and 56.
- 9.
Jean Amery, At the Mind’s Limits, 32.
- 10.
Aleksandre I. Solzhenitsyn, The Gulag Archipelago 1918–1956: An Experiment in Literary Investigation I–II (New York, Evanston, San Francisco, London: Harper & Row, 1974), 130.
- 11.
Jean Maria Arrigo, “A Utilitarian Argument Against Torture Interrogation of Terrorists,” Science and Engineering Ethics, 10 (2004), 543–572.
- 12.
Arrigo, 547–548.
- 13.
The American Medical Association adopted this ban in June, 2006: “Physicians must neither conduct nor directly participate in an interrogation because a role as physician-interrogator undermines the physician’s role as healer …” In May 2006 the American Psychiatric Association stated: “No psychiatrist should participate directly in the interrogation of person[s] held in custody by military or civilian investigative or law enforcement authorities, whether in the United States or elsewhere.” Both cited by psychiatrist Stephen Soldz, “Psychology and Coercivie Interrogations in Historical Perspective,” https://www.CommonDreams.org. Both quotes should read “substantially participate” to account for a psychiatrist designing torture to be used by others at black sites or elsewhere. I owe this comment to Dr. John Hofer.
- 14.
John W. Schiemann, Does Torture Work? (New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2016), 223ff.; United States Senate, 2014, “Select Committee on Intelligence Study of the Central Intelligence Agency’s Detention and Interrogation Program, Minority Views, Additional Minority Views,” Washington, DC: United States Senate, Approved December 13, 2012, Updated for Release April 3, 2014. Available at: http://fas.org/irp/congress/2014_rpt/ssci-rdi-min.pdf.
- 15.
Schiemann, 245.
- 16.
Schiemann, 227–228; U.S. Senate Select Committee…, 95–99.
- 17.
Schiemann, 211.
- 18.
Darius Rejali, Torture and Democracy (Princeton and Oxford: Princeton University Press, 2007).
- 19.
Rejali’s Appendix A offers a summary list of 15 types of clean torture. These are electrical, beating (with a telephone book, or on soles of feet, etc.), beating using hands (pressure on eyeballs, slapping, etc.), water (choking, pumping, ice, etc.), dry choking, air (refrigeration), exhaustion, positional (forced standing, crawling, etc.), positional devices (straight jacket, sweatboxes, etc.).
- 20.
Rejali, 35. His definition mentions only police. But it should include any government agency as well as torture by ethnic groups. Also, it is possible to torment someone without physical contact. For example, pictures of the detainee’s imprisoned family may produce profound worry and grief on the part of the detainee.
- 21.
Rejali, 482.
- 22.
Ibid., 454.
- 23.
Quoted by Rejali, 456.
- 24.
Rejali, 457.
- 25.
Jane Goodman-Delahunty, Natalie Martschuk, and Mandeep K. Dhami, “Interviewing High Value Detainees: Securing Cooperation and Disclosures,” Applied Cognitive Psychology, 28 (2014), 892; U. Holmberg and S. Christianson, “Murderers’ and Sexual Offenders’ Experiences of Police Interviews and Their Inclination to Admit or Deny Crimes,” Behavioral Sciences & the Law, 20 (2002): 31–45.
- 26.
Robert T. Muller, “CIA Torture Techniques Harm Interrogators As Well,” Psychology Today, August 18, 2016.
- 27.
Shane O’Mara, “The Interrogator’s Soul,” Aeon, Newsletter online at: https://aeon.co/essays/an-ordinary-person-becomes-a-torturer-with-surprising-ease; O’Mara is the author of Why Torture Doesn’t Work: The Neuroscience of Interrogation (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2015).
- 28.
Henry Shue, “Torture,” Philosophy and Public Affairs, 7, No. 2 (1978), 124–143.
- 29.
Alan M. Dershowitz, Why Terrorism Works (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2002).
- 30.
Henry Shue, “Torture in Dreamland: Disposing of the Ticking Bomb,” Case Western Reserve Journal of International Law, 37, No. 2 (2006).
- 31.
Ibid., 231–232.
- 32.
Ibid., 231.
- 33.
Why have a timer on the bomb? The expense, the difficulties of getting a bomb into a foreign country, and the massive number of deaths that would result, would make it unlikely that a bomb be used just for some political concession or to free fellow terrorists. But if this were a religiously motivated form of terrorism then the bomber would not use a timer. He or she would just detonate the bomb.
- 34.
The Fourth Amendment refers to the right of the people to be secure in their homes, papers, persons, and effects. To search requires evidence of probable cause and an oath or affirmation as to the necessity of a search and the location and scope of the search.
- 35.
Alan M. Dershowitz, Why Terrorism Works (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2002), 137.
- 36.
Rejali, 507.
- 37.
Dershowitz, 158.
- 38.
Matthew Alexander, How to Break a Terrorist (New York, London, Toronto, Sydney: Free Press, 2008), 149–167.
- 39.
The International Criminal Court in the Hague is charged with investigating and prosecuting the crime of genocide, crimes against humanity, and war crimes. The Court has three components: the Prosecutor, the Chamber of 18 judges, and the Registrar. Reports of violations in these areas by a state, Amnesty International, other NGOs, or even individuals should trigger investigation by the Prosecutor’s office. The U.N. Security Council can also refer a violation of one of these three crimes to the Prosecutor. Torture is one of the crimes against humanity that falls under the jurisdiction of the Court. Crimes against humanity are “committed as part of a widespread or systematic attack directed against any civilian population.” See online: https://www.icc-cpi.int/ and https://www.hrw.org/legacy/backgrounder/africa/icc0904/2.htm.
- 40.
Elizabeth Evenson, “The International Criminal Court at Risk,” Human Rights Watch, May 6, 2015, Access online at: https://www.hrw.org/news/2015/05/06/international-criminal-court-risk.
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DeArmey, M.H. (2020). Torture and Torment. In: Cosmopolitanism and the Evils of the World. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-42978-2_11
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