Torture or not torture, cont.
Though I think we’re quickly approaching the land of diminishing returns, this is my response to John Schwenkler’s response to my response to his criticism of my argument that segregating violent prisoners for the safety of everyone at Gitmo doesn’t constitute torture. I say that we’re running into diminishing returns because John and I share a fundamentally different view of what constitutes torture. I simply don’t believe that segregating violent prisoners in a vaguely unpleasant manner lives up to the standard of torture. Would I want to be stuck in a 3×3x6 foot box for hours on end? Of course not. But then again, I also wouldn’t pick fights with guards at Gitmo, threaten my fellow prisoners with violence, or try to commit suicide as an act of protest.
Again: If we called practices like this “torture,” then we’d have to shut down half of the max security prisons in this country, and probably 90% of fraternities. (I knew of a guy who, along with his pledge class, was forced to crawl into a chimney and spend the night there. That sounds about 10 times worse than spending 12 hours in one of those segregation crates.) The reason I find this so frustrating, I think, is that to call this torture demeans actual torture. Getting your knees broken or your fingers cut off while being questioned is torture. Getting beaten with bamboo rods in order to induce a false confession is torture. Getting put in a box because you’re a threat to yourself and those around you is unpleasant (and it should be unpleasant because it’s a punishment). But it isn’t torture, and hyperbolically calling it torture because you hate the people in charge doesn’t help anyone.
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2 Comments - add your own
Will — August 19, 2008 at 3:22 pm
I think Schwenkler raises two valid points:
1.) Torture goes beyond brutal physical punishment. Subjecting someone to psychological torment or physical discomfort over an extended period of time (”stress positions”) can also be plausibly described as torture.
2.) Free will matters. Your friend who crawled up a chimney in college was there because he wanted to be there. Incidentally, he also retained the option of crawling out at any time. Volunteering for mistreatment is quite different from being coerced into solitary confinement.
Given the awful state of the US prison system (a situation, I would note, that has attracted the concern of conservative stalwarts like Brownback), I don’t find your second paragraph all that compelling. I also think that demeaning long-term physical and psychological stress is an extremely blinkered position. Cutting off someone’s fingers is viscerally repulsive, but the after-effects of subjecting a person to stress positions and psychological torment can be comparable to more violent physical abuse.
Finally, I’d note that totalitarian regimes like the Soviet Union frequently went to great lengths to ensure their victims didn’t retain any visible signs of mistreatment so they could be presented at show trials. That’s a pretty compelling rejoinder to the notion that only violent physical abuse constitutes torture.
Sonny Bunch — August 19, 2008 at 5:35 pm
Addressing your second note first: that’s exactly the point. If people I know would willing subject themselves to behavior that is, arguably, worse than being put in a box in Gitmo, it makes me hard to classify that activity as torture.
And I’ll agree that torture can go beyond simple brute force being applied to break a man’s will. I simply don’t think this qualifies. We’re at a point where people are arguing that any punishment that makes a captured terrorist uncomfortable, regardless for the reason that it’s being done, is now classified as “torture.” I find this absurd on its face.