The Ethics of Torture
Remy Mauduit was an Algerian nationalist who suffered torture during his involvement in the 1954-1962 Algerian War. He later recalled being interrogated with waterboarding, stating, “In spite of my frenzied fight to survive, I prayed so many times for death and the deliverance from pain. Waterboarding is a controlled death; I died multiple deaths, three times each day, for seventeen days.”
The inauguration of our next president is imminent; Trump has promised to reinstitute the practice of waterboarding against prisoners, and “a hell of a lot worse”. Our President-elect is not alone in his stance. A recent Reuters/Ipsos poll found that approximately 63 percent of Americans believe torture is often or sometimes justified “against suspected terrorists to obtain information about terrorism”. Fortunately for torture proponents, the American justice system contains loopholes which make it possible to hold prisoners indefinitely without charge or trial. The Guantanamo Bay military prison is notorious for this unconstitutional system of detention, and conveniently, its “enhanced interrogation” program.
The US Reservations of the UN Convention Against Torture state that the term torture means “any act by which severe pain or suffering, whether physical or mental, is intentionally inflicted on a person for such purposes as obtaining from him or a third person information or a confession.” It’s obvious from this definition that terms such as “enhanced interrogation” to describe waterboarding are merely a more palatable way to refer to torture. Attempts to distance the practice of waterboarding from the label of torture are deceitful and serve only to distract from the greater ethical issue –whether torture is acceptable or not–at hand.
Stripped of its semantics, the question of waterboarding is more dependent on morals than politics. First of all, and regardless of political inclination, the American public should be outraged that anybody is being detained by the United States without trial, completely subverting the American justice system. It’s an abhorrent overreach of government power. Secondly, people who are in support of the United States practicing torture place far too much faith in their government. The recently published Committee Study of the Central Intelligence Agency's Detention and Interrogation Program (popularly the “CIA Torture Report”) made it abundantly clear that the federal government is not above human rights violations when given the privilege of a total lack of transparency.
Attorney General to-be Jeff Sessions surprised many when he contradicted Trump by stating that the law “absolutely bans waterboarding” and the use of other torture techniques against prisoners. Sessions, an early Trump supporter, has made a strong statement by saying he will prioritize upholding the nation’s laws over the whims of his Commander-in-chief.
The uncertainty surrounding Trump’s policies have the country on edge. The reassurance of Sessions vowing to uphold the rule of law is reassuring in this environment of chance. The practice of waterboarding is an ethical issue which should be reasoned outside of party lines. Torture is a topic with deep roots in personal morality which should be decidedly nonpartisan. As a firm believer in the moral reprehensibility of torture, I can only hope that the ban of waterboarding remains a virtuous victory