Moral relativism and torture

I read an interesting opinion piece in the newspaper this week about torture. It was written by Grumpy Old Man Charles Krauthammer (and yes, that's his official title, hence the capital letters), who I often (almost always) disagree with, but who's still interesting to read.

Krauthammer begins by explaining that he wrote a column about the two exceptions to the no-torture rule. The first is the ticking-time-bomb scenario, the second is a less extreme variant, "in which a high-value terrorist refuses to divulge crucial information that could save innocent lives." He then writes that the column elicited spirited protestations. One response that he calls "stupid" came from a writer who claimed the "ticking-time-bomb scenario only exists in two places: On TV and in the dark fantasies of power-crazed and morally deficient authoritarians." Krauthammer, of course, has a real-life example to counter this, and follows up with:

One therefore has to think about what kind of transgressive interrogation might be permissible in the less pristine circumstance of the high-value terrorist who knows about less imminent attacks.

Of course, that's the crux of it. Krauthammer goes on to point out the "contemptible" hypocrisy of Nancy Pelosi. His critics, he says, reply that "her behavior does not change the truth about torture." "But it does," Krauthammer claims:

Our jurisprudence has the "reasonable man" standard. A jury is asked to consider what a reasonable man would do under urgent circumstances.

On the morality of waterboarding and other "torture," Pelosi and senior and expert members of Congress represented colleagues, and indeed the entire American people, in rendering the reasonable-person verdict.

And what did they do? They gave tacit approval. In fact, according to [then-House Intelligence Committee Chairman Porter] Goss, they offered encouragement. Given the existing circumstances, they clearly deemed the interrogations warranted.

Krauthammer points out that the "circle of approval" was wider than even Congress. Even liberals believed torture was warranted in the aftermath of September 11th. He writes:

The reason Pelosi raised no objection to waterboarding at that time, the reason the American people (who by 2004 knew what was going on) strongly re-elected [52% of the vote is "strongly"? Krauthammer is engaging in some revisionist history, methinks] the man who ordered these interrogations, is not because she and the rest of the American people suffered from a years-long moral psychosis from which they have just now awoken.

It is because at that time they were aware of the existing conditions - our blindness to al-Qaida's plans, the urgency of the threat, the magnitude of the suffering that might be caused by a second 9/11, the likelihood that interrogation would extract intelligence that President Barack Obama's own director of national intelligence now tells us was indeed "high-value information" - and concluded that on balance it was a reasonable response to a terrible threat.

They were right.

Krauthammer concludes:

[Y]ou can believe that their personalities and moral compasses have remained steady throughout the years, but changes in circumstances (threat, knowledge, imminence) alter the moral calculus attached to any interrogation technique.

On the one hand, Krauthammer raises some interesting points. The idea of torture, in whatever form, is repellent to civilized human beings (or ought to be) until it becomes the only way to save someone you love. There's also the question of what constitutes torture. According to some reports, three people were waterboarded, and very few were psychologically traumatized by the various methods we used. I have no idea about the absolute numbers, but it doesn't really matter. The question remains: What is moral, and is torture ever okay?

Krauthammer obviously thinks it's okay sometimes, and he claims that the American people think so too, because they re-elected the man who sanctioned it. Well, I would argue that most people in 2004 still didn't know what we were doing, and if people like Nancy Pelosi knew and didn't object, I blame her as well for not making more of a big deal about it. We heard rumors, of course, but when the president of the United States stands in front of the press and says emphatically that we do not torture, we tend to believe him. So Krauthammer's argument there is dumb, but the question of whether or not torture might be okay in some circumstances is a difficult one. We would like to say that it's never okay, but what if my daughter is kidnapped and she's going to be raped or killed soon and the only way to find her is by torturing a suspect? That's the moral conundrum Krauthammer brings up, and it's a tough one. Of course I would say, "Torture away!" Then it comes back to - how could I ever teach her to have moral principles if I betray my own? But I'm sure she would say that I couldn't teach her anything if she was dead. That's why we don't like to be put in those situations.

I have argued this point with Mia's PT, who's quite a bit more conservative than I am. He accuses Barack Obama of wanting to be "nice," meaning speaking to regimes like Iran rather than pre-emptively striking them, and he disagrees with this. He's also a Christian, and this is where the moral question becomes sticky. I have no idea if Charles Krauthammer claims to be a Christian, but considering something like 90% of Americans consider themselves to be, I'll go out on a limb and say Krauthammer does as well. Even if he's not, plenty of "good Christians" are on board with torture. I've written about how hard it is to be a "real Christian" - as in strictly following the words of Jesus as represented in the Bible - because it's practically impossible in today's world, but it would seem to me that a Christian wouldn't condone torture no matter what the circumstances, even to save a loved one. After all, if you're a true Christian, this world means nothing - you're focused on the next one. I'm not about to accuse Mia's PT of being a bad Christian, because he's a wonderful therapist and a very nice man, but unfortunately, I don't feel like I'm a close enough friend to him to ask him how he reconciles these two somewhat opposing viewpoints. I can't imagine someone being a Christian and condoning anyone who tortures. But maybe I'm just being naïve.

If we continue in this vein, I like how some self-professed Christians have come out in favor of torture "in extreme circumstances," meaning morality is relative to the situation. Yet these same people (usually) consider something like gay marriage the death knell of all civilization and claim that there's no gray area when it comes to homosexual unions or, say, abortion. Moral absolutism rules there, it seems, but when it comes to defending the fatherland (yes, I'm using that word very deliberately), nothing is too horrible. This is why I try to avoid using moral absolutist terms, because it will always come back to bite you in the ass. And yes, that includes torture.

I'm certainly against the concept of torture, but again, how would I feel if it was necessary to rescue someone I loved? The biggest problem I have with the Bush Administration using torture is that they always took the moral high ground and claimed that we didn't do it and that the United States remains a shining beacon of how things ought to be done. It's bullshit, but it's fancy-sounding bullshit, and Americans love to believe that we're better than everyone else. I honestly think that "torture" might have been more effective if Bush and his cronies had come out and said they were doing it. If Bush had come out and told the terrorists that they had forfeited any rights to be treated as humans and therefore we were going to do anything to extract information, not only would the American people have been on board (especially right after 11 September) and therefore these days we wouldn't have all this moral hand-wringing, but maybe potential terrorists might have thought twice about attacking us. Even if that didn't happen, at least we the people would have known where we stood. Another columnist I read today claims that we're already complicit, as we could have figured things out in 2004. Well, that's one of the reasons I didn't vote for Bush in 2004 - I was repulsed by what he was doing, and that included locking people up for no reason other than they looked funny. Had Bush been more forthright, he might have had to deal with a brief shitstorm, but according to him, he never cared what people thought of him, so why would he have cared then?

The fact that we tortured people, even if it was just three people, depresses me. Not because we did it, but because this is what the world has come to. However, it always makes me laugh a bit bitterly when the same people who refuse to compromise to allow two men or two women to get married twist themselves into knots to justify torture. The irony, I would imagine, is lost on them.

Post-Election Day thoughts

I don't know if Barack Obama will be a good president. Those who rail about his lack of experience ignore that this job is unique, and some people rise to the occasion and others don't. Theodore Roosevelt didn't have a lot of experience. Abraham Lincoln didn't have a lot of experience. Woodrow Wilson didn't have a lot of experience. Barack Obama might just have what is necessary to be a great president. Or he might not. We don't really know based on his previous political experience. I hope he'll be a great president, but pundits have no idea what kind of leader he'll be.

I mentioned this in the comments of a previous post, but I was disappointed by FOX News. They were deflated and a bit saddened by the results, but nobody went nuclear (or nucular, as our outgoing president might say) and ranted about how the country wouldn't exist in a year or two because of the president. Charles Krauthammer, whose columns are well written but often reflect the grumpiness of an old man, made a key point. Obama has a wide base of support, from moderately conservative independents to even hard core Republicans who are sickened by what Bush has done to their party. Because he has such a wide base, he can't implement a crazy left-wing agenda that (presumably) Congress will try to push now that they've gained seats. If he falls in line with Congress, he'll lose the support of a lot of people who want him to be something different than a traditional Democrat. I would love that, because I don't want government to be easy. I want it to be a struggle to get things passed, because that means they really have to think about it and make the legislation better. That's why I wouldn't really have minded if McCain won, even though I think McCain of 2008 is far less interesting as a candidate than McCain of 2000. McCain might have stopped the Democrats in Congress and forced them to write better bills. But maybe Obama will understand that he can't go completely ultra-liberal because he won't get re-elected. We'll see.

Here in Arizona, Sheriff Joe Arpaio got re-elected because all Arizonans care about is punishing people who cross the border illegally to work. Arizonans don't care about Arpaio raiding businesses and holding legal residents against their will without charging them with anything (which he's done more than once) on the off chance there might be illegal immigrants working there. Arizonans don't care about punishing employers who hire illegal immigrants, even though we passed a law against it two years ago. Andrew Thomas, the county attorney (who works closely with Arpaio and also won re-election), has prosecuted either no employers or one (I haven't checked, but Mia's PT thinks it's one, while I read last week that it was none). Arpaio doesn't seem concerned about shutting down these businesses when he actually does catch an illegal immigrant, even though they're breaking the law. Arizonans love Arpaio because he talks tough. Illegal immigration is a very tough thing to deal with, but most people want it to be simple. Arpaio doesn't do anything to solve it, but he makes it look simple. So he won. Again.

Arizona also passed Proposition 102, the amendment to the constitution that defines marriage as a union between a man and a woman. This depresses me, but doesn't surprise me. Mia's PT and I argued about this on Tuesday, because he's a conservative guy and voted for the proposition. He doesn't have anything against gay people forming domestic partnerships, but doesn't like applying the term "marriage" to it. This gets back to what a "marriage" is. To him, it's a traditional definition, and that tradition should be honored. I didn't get into the idea of marriage as a union between a man and a woman who love each other is a very modern phenomenon, but that's a point. He said that if you ask elementary students what a family is, they'll say a man, a woman, and children. I pointed out that in today's society, half of them will say mommy and a boyfriend or mommy for four days a week and daddy for three, but his point was that they'll say a man and a woman. But that's biology. The idea of "traditional families" is meaningless, because for centuries, illegitimate children were common among the upper class, as marriages were not love matches and the man went off and got a mistress. The wife was, if not happy with this arrangement, resigned to it. I honestly don't get the objections to two men or two women wanting the same recognition as partners that married people get. If you want to start talking about saving the children, that's a different thing. If you want to stop gay people from adopting, that's a whole different argument. It's still stupid, but it's a different argument.

The only thing it comes down to is that people, mostly men, think gay men having sex is disgusting and they don't want to think about it. That's a poor reason to enact laws. But that's what we do in America!

I am curious to live in the Obama United States. I don't think Obama will bring about a huge revolution, because I think he's a fairly typical Democrat. However, the fact that he's neither black nor white will help us get beyond those labels, including calling him "black." If he were light-skinned, would we call him "white" even though his father is black? I love how if you have a drop of "black" blood, you're black, no matter what your skin color looks like. How silly. But I think he will be more successful dealing with the problems the country faces, mostly because he seems, if not smarter than Bush (I think Bush is an idiot, but he could be empirically intelligent), than at least more thoughtful. In this world, you can't go into situations using your "gut." That's the biggest problem I have with Bush. Common sense tells us the sun rotates around the Earth. Your "gut" often gets you in a lot of trouble. Maybe Obama will be a failure. It won't be because he didn't think about things, though.

Is it Inauguration Day yet?

So much politics!

You know, I really should have posted about the Phillies winning the World Series. So here it is: YEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEHAAAAAAAAAAAAA!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Okay, that was fun. I'm certainly happy that the Phillies are the 2008 World Series Champions, but I haven't lived in Philadelphia for 15 years, plus I have a life (to some extent), so while I still want the teams I root for to win championships, it's not that big a deal. Let's move on!

Election Day is apparently Tuesday, and things are getting snippy in the presidential race. But there's plenty going on locally, as well!



Here in Arizona, as in other states (California for one), there's a proposition on the ballot to amend the state constitution banning gay marriage. I got this flyer in the mail imploring me to vote for Prop 102. I love how they ring the title with children. Who doesn't love children? If I don't vote for this proposition, my children will turn gay automatically! I bet you didn't know that.

I got a phone call earlier in the week from some dude asking me to vote for this proposition. I was impressed that it wasn't a robot, so I let him talk. When he asked if he had my support, I told him I was bisexual, living with two women and one man. He sounded completely taken aback, as if he hadn't considered someone saying this. I hung up because I didn't want to say anything else, and then thought I should have mentioned I was raising two children in this environment and trying actively to turn them gay. That would have been even awesomer. But I had fun for a time.

I get the idea of religious people wanting marriage to remain a union of a man and a woman. What I don't get is how gay marriage will destroy my marriage or even affect my children all that much (as this is all about protecting the children, as you see by the flyer). I have never read anyone giving a good reason why gay people can't get married. I hear the stupid reasons - the Bible doesn't like it, society will fall apart, gays are weird - but nothing really valid. I mean, will straight people stop marrying because gay people can? Straight people are already not marrying. I guess letting gay people marry continues the horrible moral decline of our wonderful American life. Boy, wouldn't that suck?

I'm a bit disappointed that the web site on the flyer doesn't seem to be viable anymore. That kind of stinks. I'm sure it was pretty neat-o.

Also in Arizona, Paul Newman is running for office. That's fairly impressive, given his current state of living. And the unfortunately named Frank Schmuck is also running for office. Man, that's a bad last name. Poor Frank.

Have fun voting! I'll be dropping off my mail-in ballot on Tuesday and won't have to wait in line. And remember - when I'm dictator, Election Day will be a federal holiday and take place on a Monday. It doesn't need to be on Tuesday anymore, people! (Of course I'll have elections when I'm dictator! They're cute like that.)