MsTriangulation

Rosa Brooks at the Los Angeles Times via Common Dreams:

Has Hillary Clinton been watching too many episodes of "24," or is she just determined to prove that she really is entirely without principles?

Whichever it is, Clinton hit a new low last week, telling the New York Daily News that the president should have "some lawful authority" to use torture or other "severe" interrogation methods in a so-called ticking-bomb scenario.



These comments appear to directly contradict her previous statements on the Military Commissions Act, which President Bush signed into law Tuesday. In late September, Clinton objected that the bill "undermines the Geneva Conventions by allowing the president to issue executive orders to redefine what are permissible interrogation techniques. Have we fallen so low as to debate how much torture we are willing to stomach?"

It sure looks that way.



The ticking-bomb scenario has routinely been used to justify the legalization of torture in exceptional circumstances. This is how the argument goes: You capture the terrorist who has just placed a nuclear bomb somewhere in a major American city. If you can't locate and disarm the bomb, millions of people will die. If the terrorist won't talk, should you torture him until he tells you what you want to know?

When you put it that way, of course, few of us would decline to torture the terrorist...

As one of the few, let me point out, what you want to know would in all likelihood not be what you need to know in such a circumstance.

That's because suicidal mass murderers don't care, and torture only confirms their hatred.

That's an incredibly stupid straw man of a scenario, and every time we accept it as an argument, we argue about a fallacy.



But back to our post:

...Clinton ought to know better. Plenty of immoral things might conceivably be justified in far-fetched hypothetical situations, but that doesn't mean the law should bless those exceptions in advance.

Take treason. Is it possible to construct far-fetched hypothetical situations in which treason might be justified? Sure. If one were faced with a choice between betraying one's country and allowing the Earth to be destroyed, treason might well be morally justified. But that doesn't mean we should pass laws laying out the conditions under which treason would be permissible.

Or how about rape? If torture can be justified by utilitarian principles, then in some "very, very limited circumstances," rape can presumably be justified as well. Would Clinton — would any American — truly want to see legislation laying out the unique circumstances in which rape should be permitted?

No. We really, really don't want to go there.

Agreed.

Jim Henley has a good take on this point [thanks, Avedon]:

Let’s say you’ve caught a suspect and you’re sure that he’s a terrorist, and you’re sure there’s a nuclear bomb planted somewhere in Manhattan, and you’re sure that he knows where the nuclear device has been planted in Manhattan, and you’re sure that this particular terrorist has been trained to resist torture just long enough that you could never get the true location of the bomb out of him in time. But you’re also sure that this particular terrorist is a pervert! And he tells you that if you’ll let him watch you rape your own child in front of him, he’ll tell you exactly where the bomb is and how to disarm it. And you’re sure that he will, because your intelligence is that good in exactly that way.

Wow! What a fascinating hypothetical, huh? And really, no less unlikely than the ticking bomb scenario you’re more familiar with, when you consider just how precisely the foundation of that dilemma has to be laid. So how come we hear so much about the other one and nothing about mine?

The answer is simple: State agents don’t have any ambition to rape their own children...

Good Occam's Razor, Jim.

Back to Rosa Brooks:

...Clinton was right about one thing: When you start to contemplate writing those "very, very narrow" exceptions into law, you've fallen as low as it's possible to go.

Once again, we Democrats misjudge the depths to which people can fall.



Rosa Brooks has no idea how low it can get.