Pro-torture, anti-civilisation
The Independent's article sanctioning torture is built on logical flaws, grotesque views and a contempt for democracy
The columnist Bruce Anderson runs up the flag for torture in today's Independent with a column that does no credit to the paper.
Anderson makes much of the ticking bomb dilemma – the idea that it is morally preferable to torture someone who can tell you where and when a dirty bomb might go off rather than allowing thousands of innocent people to be killed. He recalls that before 9/11, he debated the issue in front of some lawyers and argued that the government would not only have a right to use torture: it would have a duty to use it.
The liberal lawyer Sydney Kentridge got up and challenged Anderson with this: "Let's take your hypothesis a bit further. We have captured a terrorist, but he is a hardened character. We cannot be certain that he will crack in time. We have also captured his wife and children."
Anderson happily admits that he could not think his way round this. "I have come to the conclusion that there is only one answer to Sydney's question. Torture the wife and children. It is a disgusting idea. It is almost a tragedy that we even have to discuss it, let alone think of acting upon it." -So Anderson appears to recommends torturing innocent women and children to make a man talk.
Perhaps we should probe the hypothesis a bit further because for one thing, it makes the assumption that the authorities know for certain that the suspect has definite knowledge about an imminent attack. How? By intelligence produced from other torture sessions, in which men say anything to stop the pain? And where does the collateral torture stop? Would Anderson torture the suspect's parents and friends? Perhaps he would round up entire communities of people who are deemed to have some slight knowledge of the ticking bomb, or whose screams might induce the suspect to talk?
At what stage would the state decide to resort to torture? After a secret panel was convened? Or would it just occur as part of an interrogation, sanctioned by nothing more than the suspicion of the interrogating officer's mind? Presumably if a ticking bomb is thought to exist, there would be no time to outsource the torture to a place such as Morocco, so somewhere must be found in Britain to torture children. Do we appoint state torturers (who would obviously be excused from the government's vetting and barring scheme for those working with the vulnerable), or do we allow ad hoc and deniable procedures to develop without formal scrutiny.
In these circumstances, how does Anderson guarantee that this system will be restricted to terror suspects? How long is it before we become the Chile of the northern hemisphere, a place where broken students are buried in unmarked graves after suffering unimaginable pain?
You see, once you start seriously contemplating torture, there are no end of knotty problems, but then these would hardly concern a man who alights on Elizabethan England to find some kind of historical precedent to justify the behaviour of the Pakistani government in the face an extremist religious insurgency. We may not think any less of Shakespeare and Donne because of Walsingham's pursuit and torture of Catholics, but the Elizabethans lived before the great concept of the rule of law was born, so it is preposterous for him to suggest that Elizabethan society has anything to tell societies that come after the enlightenment and the birth of the age of universal rights. It's as stupid as citing the Vikings or Visigoths to excuse behaviour in the 21st century.
This deranged piece of journalism stumbles to an end with an attack on the judges in the Binyam Mohamed case:
"But there is nothing to be gained from refusing to face facts, in the way that the master of the rolls, Lord Neuburger, did last week. His Lordship wrapped himself in a cloak of self-righteousness, traduced an entire security service, showed no understanding of the courage which its officers routinely display: no understanding, indeed, of anything beyond courtroom niceties. There is a threat not only to individual lives, which is of minor importance, but to our way of life and our civilisation. Torture is revolting, but we cannot substitute aesthetics for thought. Anyway, which is the greater aesthetic affront: torture, or the destruction of the National Gallery?"
Courtroom niceties? Cannot substitute aesthetics for thought? This sort of stuff might just have got onto Fox News, but it is surprising to read it in a newspaper that was founded 24 years ago to promote a liberal agenda and manifest a reverence for the rule of law.
Compare Anderson's piece to the staunch and clear-eyed way the Daily Mail has treated the allegations of MI5 involvement in Mohamed's case. On 11 February last year the editorial read:
"Let it be said loud and clear: Mr Mohamed may be as guilty as sin. But that doesn't negate the fact that he is entitled to justice and the British people need to know the truth about these disturbing allegations."
The Mail has been consistent throughout the Mohamed case. A year ago (February 6 2009) Paul Dacre's leader said:
"We have the unedifying spectacle of a foreign government bullying our courts into suppressing the truth and our own ministers conniving with them, perhaps in the hope of covering up Britain's complicity in torture. This is not how democracies should behave."
The editor of the Independent Roger Alton, who happens to be a close friend of mine, is known to favour a diversity of views in his pages, which is certainly the right way to edit. As everyone knows in the newspaper trade, he does it brilliantly, but I have to say I was surprised to read Anderson's piece, less because of his grotesque views than the numerous and obvious logical flaws.
In the final analysis, I am glad it was published because it exposes Anderson for what he is. He says there is a threat to civilisation. Indeed there is. It comes from people who are prepared to sanction the use of torture.
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Source: http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/henryporter/2010/feb/15/pro-torture-human-rights
Photo: http://www.independent.co.uk/multimedia/archive/00320/92477338_320861t.jpg
