Ticking time bombs, slippery slopes
I notice that we are apparently having a minor debate about whether the intelligence which led to the mission to kill Osama bin Laden was obtained by torture. More worryingly, we are having this debate in terms which imply that some moral conclusion one way or another might be established if it was; that if waterboarding prisoners led us to being able to kill bin Laden, this might go some way toward justifying waterboarding. We're quite a long way from imminent nuclear explosions here aren't we?
I suppose that there might be utilitarians who might swallow the bullet and say that there might be occasions on which it was morally right to torture a prisoner if doing so could produce information which might lead to a really good party for a sufficiently large number of people. But I don't think it's the mainstream position.
Edit: Furthermore, in my opinion, if you've taken ten years to find a guy hiding in plain view, you've got a bit of a bloody brass neck trying to claim "my finding technique is unstoppable!" and demanding that nobody ask questions about your methods because dammit you get results!
Well leaving aside the question of whether the end justifies the means the US has been using torture, either directly or by proxy, on AQ suspects for ten years and only now has it (possibly) led to the discovery of OBL's whereabouts. I can't quite think of an expression to describe the opposite of a ticking bomb but this is it.
ReplyDeleteto torture a prisoner if doing so could produce information which might lead to a really good party for a sufficiently large number of people.
ReplyDeleteA CIA project along these lines, codenamed KU-OMELAS, was funded from 1971 to 1976 but failed to produce conclusive results.
On the other hand I think it does justify those creepy adverts suggesting you dob in your neighbours for the contents of their bins.
ReplyDeleteThere's a paper on prioritarianism by Richard Arneson somewhere which argues that "in principle" a lifetime of screaming agony for a single unfortunate can be offset by a large enough number of pleasurable licks of ice cream by comfortably off people.
ReplyDeleteWhat do you mean by "plain view"? He might never have left the place in all that time. I'd imagine there'd be plenty of houses with heavy security in the local area, so from the outside there'd be nothing particularly suspicious about his hideout.
ReplyDeleteAlso, hiding where people would least expect you to be i.e. on the doorstep of the Pakistani military is the oldest trick in the book.
Other information obtained through torture led to an invasion of Iraq (wasting enormous amounts of money, time, lives and goodwill) and to similar counter-productive military adventures in Afghanistan and Waziristan. The cost-benefit ratio of this method is not looking good.
ReplyDeleteThe main reason that OBL was found was that Obama came into office and said "Let's find this guy" while Bush's attitude was to use OBL's existence as an excuse to start a couple of wars.
Guano
I think Le Guin's "The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas" is relevant here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Ones_Who_Walk_Away_from_Omelas
ReplyDelete