Whenever the “debate” over U.S. torture policies (that there even is a debate sends a chill down my spine) comes up, it’s generally unhelpful to focus the discussion on efficacy. We know torture is morally indefensible, which is why advocates prefer to move the goalposts — if we know whether torture works in acquiring valuable information, moral ambiguities aren’t as significant.
With that stipulation in mind, it’s worth remembering that torture fails on both counts.
As the Bush administration completes secret new rules governing interrogations, a group of experts advising the intelligence agencies are arguing that the harsh techniques used since the 2001 terrorist attacks are outmoded, amateurish and unreliable.
The psychologists and other specialists, commissioned by the Intelligence Science Board, make the case that more than five years after the Sept. 11 attacks, the Bush administration has yet to create an elite corps of interrogators trained to glean secrets from terrorism suspects.
While billions are spent each year to upgrade satellites and other high-tech spy machinery, the experts say, interrogation methods — possibly the most important source of information on groups like Al Qaeda — are a hodgepodge that date from the 1950s, or are modeled on old Soviet practices.
Nothing says “American values” like “old Soviet practices,” right?
The experts advising the intelligence agencies prepared a 325-page initial report that, the NYT noted, pressed a practical reality: “there is little evidence, they say, that harsh methods produce the best intelligence.” One of the study’s contributors told the Times that there’s “an assumption that often passes for common sense that the more pain imposed on someone, the more likely they are to comply.”
The assumption, leading Republican presidential candidates notwithstanding, is wrong.
I know it’s inevitable that too many on the right will respond to reports like these by suggesting naive liberals just want to coddle terrorists. This is more than just silly, it misses what’s supposed to be the point — acquiring valuable information. Put simply, we already know what works, and Bush’s “enhanced” techniques don’t.
[S]ome of the experts involved in the interrogation review, called “Educing Information,” say that during World War II, German and Japanese prisoners were effectively questioned without coercion.
“It far outclassed what we’ve done,” said Steven M. Kleinman, a former Air Force interrogator and trainer, who has studied the World War II program of interrogating Germans. The questioners at Fort Hunt, Va., “had graduate degrees in law and philosophy, spoke the language flawlessly,” and prepared for four to six hours for each hour of questioning, said Mr. Kleinman, who wrote two chapters for the December report.
Mr. Kleinman, who worked as an interrogator in Iraq in 2003, called the post-Sept. 11 efforts “amateurish” by comparison to the World War II program, with inexperienced interrogators who worked through interpreters and had little familiarity with the prisoners’ culture.
The Intelligence Science Board study has a chapter on the long history of police interrogations, which it suggests may contain lessons on eliciting accurate confessions. And Mr. Borum, the psychologist, said modern marketing may be a source of relevant insights into how to influence a prisoner’s willingness to provide information.
“We have a whole social science literature on persuasion,” Mr. Borum said. “It’s mostly on how to get a person to buy a certain brand of toothpaste. But it certainly could be useful in improving interrogation.”
Well, with this wealth of knowledge in improving interrogation methods without torture, surely the Bush administration would want to invest time and energy into the field of study, right? Not so much — “Robert F. Coulam, a research professor and attorney at Simmons College and a study participant, said that the government’s most vigorous work on interrogation to date has been in seeking legal justifications for harsh tactics. Even today, he said, ‘there’s nothing like the mobilization of effort and political energy that was put into relaxing the rules’ governing interrogation.”
I shudder to ask, given what I expect in response, but why on earth is this debate still ongoing? The very first hurdle for torture advocates is efficacy. Unable to clear it, the discussion effectively ends.
Except it doesn’t. They continue to point to fictional Jack Bauer scenarios, or engage in parsing the meaning of the word “torture,” or fall back on the demagoguery of insisting that real opponents of terrorism will do anything to protect Americans.
It’s a morally and intellectually bankrupt approach. Hilzoy explained this perfectly.
[Y]ou can tell who is serious and who is not by noticing who actually stops to think about whether torture is effective. People who don’t bother to ask that question are not serious about winning; they’re in love with a fantasy of themselves as the person who is tough enough to do all those dirty things that have to be done while other people just wring their hands and whimper.
If you’re serious about war, you should ask yourself, at every juncture, what will best achieve your objectives, rather than embracing some sort of Rambo fantasy.
Any questions?