First things first: according to virtually every real expert you can
find on the subject, torture does not work. That’s according to CIA veterans, retired military intelligence officers, and even the U.S. intelligence people privy to the waterboarding of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed.
The US Army Intelligence Field Manual on Intelligence Interrogation has made this clear for years, incidentally:
may damage subsequent collection efforts, and can induce the source to
say whatever he thinks the interrogator wants to hear.
This is not secret. This is not difficult to find out. It is extremely public and extremely clear: torture does not work.
It is also counterproductive in terribly obvious ways. False information will be produced,
wasting vast amounts of time and resources. Torture also radicalizes
people, creating even more enemies. It will unavoidably be used
against people with no information (remember, most prisoners in
Iraq were found to have been arrested by mistake); and the use of torture obliterates any future claim to moral credibility.
Not to pretend that moral arguments ever work, but also: torturing
another human being is wrong. Period. If you’re a Christian, as the
saying goes: what would Jesus do? I’m no expert, but my guess he
probably would not hold a blowtorch to anyone’s genitals, no matter how many episodes of 24 you’ve seen. Either you believe your damn religion or you don’t.
I bring up the torture thing today because of this new BBC survey
on attitudes toward torture in 25 countries around the world. About
27,000 people were asked if they (a) opposed all use of torture, (b)
would consent to the use of torture "if it may gain information that
saves innocent lives," or (c) had no clue.
Given the vividly public position of experts in the field and the
absolute unambiguity of every major religion on the topic, the question
really amounts to little more than asking if you’re (a) well-informed,
decent, and sane, (b) willing to compromise your morals on a false
premise, or (c) unable to distinguish between the two.
Here are the results by country, arranged in descending order of basic
goddam human decency, using the "against all torture" position as the
index:
And here are the same results, rearranged in descending order of moral
and pragmatic incompetence, using the "I’m frightened, amoral, and
woefully uninformed" position as the index:
There’s actually a great deal of good news here. For one, in not one country on earth was acceptance of torture the
majority position. Even people in active war zones don’t seem to lose their bearings that badly. And here in the U.S., even after 9/11 and the steady drumbeat of
pro-torture crap from the lunatic right, Americans still oppose torture
by a wide margin, roughly near the global average.
One puzzling note: what’s up with India? It’s the only country where
"don’t know" outperformed the other two positions. How is that even
possible? My only theory is that the BBC guy there stammered a lot.
Weird.