Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Dedication
- Contents
- Preface
- Acknowledgments
- I Downgrading rights and expanding power during post-9/11 panic
- II The ticking bomb as moral fantasy and moral fraud
- 3 Liberalism, torture, and the ticking bomb
- 4 Unthinking the ticking bomb
- III The evils of torture
- IV Complicity in torture
- Main index
- Index of legal authorities
- References
3 - Liberalism, torture, and the ticking bomb
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 September 2014
Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Dedication
- Contents
- Preface
- Acknowledgments
- I Downgrading rights and expanding power during post-9/11 panic
- II The ticking bomb as moral fantasy and moral fraud
- 3 Liberalism, torture, and the ticking bomb
- 4 Unthinking the ticking bomb
- III The evils of torture
- IV Complicity in torture
- Main index
- Index of legal authorities
- References
Summary
Preface
This chapter was published concurrently in its present form and in a more extended version that appeared in Karen Greenberg’s collection The Torture Debate in America (Cambridge University Press, 2005). The latter version included a longer and fuller analysis of the torture memos; I have used the shorter version here because other chapters of this book go into the torture memos in greater detail. The chapter received wide circulation: in March 2006 it was excerpted in Harper’s Magazine and published in translation in the German cultural magazine Die Zeit Kursbuch. Together with the following two chapters, it represents the philosophical core of this book’s analysis of torture and its critique of discussing torture through ticking-bomb hypotheticals.
I began writing the chapter when the Bybee–Yoo torture memo became public in the summer of 2004, shortly after the sensational Abu Ghraib revelations. It needs only slight factual updating. At the time I finished it, only two of the torture memos were public. It was not until April 2009 that the Obama administration released the remaining torture memos, all but one of which were shortly republished by David Cole in The Torture Memos: Rationalizing the Unthinkable (New York Review of Books, 2009). The existence of CIA “black sites” – secret prisons in Poland, Romania, and Thailand – had not yet emerged, nor was it clear what interrogation techniques the Justice Department had approved for CIA use. I also wrote before the issue of nonaccountability for torture became salient. By the time the smoke had cleared, only a handful of low-level enlisted personnel had been punished for Abu Ghraib, and, ultimately, none of the 101 potential torture cases investigated by a special prosecutor resulted in criminal referrals. I discuss the issue of nonaccountability in this book’s final chapter.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Torture, Power, and Law , pp. 43 - 73Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2014
References
, “At Colleges, Students Are Facing a Big Test,” Washington Post, Sept. 17, 2001, p. B1.
, “Silence of 4 Terror Probe Suspects Poses Dilemma for FBI,” Washington Post, Oct. 21, 2001, p. A6.
, “Torture Seeps into Discussion by News Media,” New York Times, Nov. 5, 2001, p. C1.
, “How Far Americans Would Go to Fight Terror,” Christian Science Monitor, Nov. 14, 2001, p. 1.
, “Seizing Dictatorial Power,” New York Times, Nov. 15, 2001, p. A31.
and , Eds., The Torture Papers: The Road to Abu Ghraib (Cambridge University Press, 2005)CrossRefGoogle Scholar
, Torture and Truth: America, Abu Ghraib, and the War on Terror (New York Review of Books, 2004).Google Scholar
, “Of Cruelty” [first published in 1580], in The Complete Essays of Montaigne (, Trans.) (Stanford University Press, 1958), pp. 306, 316.Google Scholar
, On the Genealogy of Morals [first published in 1887], in , Ed. and Trans., Basic Writings of Nietzsche (New York: Random House, 1968), pp. 439, 501–3Google Scholar
, Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison (, Trans.) (New York: Vintage Books, 1979), p. 8Google Scholar
, “Torture,” Philosophy and Public Affairs, 7(2), (1978), 124–43, at 124, 125, 129–30.Google Scholar
, “What’s Wrong with Torture?”, Philosophy and Public Affairs, 1(4) (2005), 1–33, at 33.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
, Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus [first published in 1921]( and , Trans.) (London: Routledge Classics, 2001), p 87.Google Scholar
’s chief points in The Body in Pain: The Making and Unmaking of the World (Oxford University Press, 1985), p. 33Google Scholar
, “Questions Left by C.I.A. Chief on Torture Use,” New York Times, Mar. 18, 2005, p. A1
to CIA head Porter Goss and his evasive answer); Editorial, “Torture Showdown,” Wall Street Journal, Jan. 6, 2005, p. A16
, The Human Condition, 2nd edn. (University of Chicago Press, 1998), p. 129, n.78.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
, On Crimes and Punishments [first published in 1764](, Trans.) (Cambridge, MA: Hackett, 1986), pp. 8–9.Google Scholar
and , The Hanging of Ephraim Wheeler: A Story of Rape, Incest, and Justice in Early America (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2003), pp. 192–4, 260–1, 264, 278Google Scholar
, The Rise of the Penitentiary: Prisons and Punishment in Early America (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1992), p. 26Google Scholar
, Torture and the Law of Proof: Europe and England in the Ancien Regime (University of Chicago Press, 1977), pp. 4–5, 45–69;CrossRefGoogle Scholar
, “Torture and Plea Bargaining,” University of Chicago Law Review, 46 (1978), 3–22, at 4–5.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
, “The Right Not to Incriminate Oneself,” Social Philosophy and Policy, 1(02) (1984), 137–48, at 143–4.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
and , “New F.B.I. Files Describe Abuse of Iraq Inmates,” New York Times, Dec. 21, 2004, p. A1.
and , “C.I.A. Expands Its Inquiry into Interrogation Tactics,” New York Times, Aug. 29, 2004, p. A10;
, “CIA Puts Harsh Tactics on Hold,” Washington Post, June 27, 2004, p. A1;
, “Disclosure of Authorized Interrogation Tactics Urged,” Washington Post, July 3, 2004, p. A3.
, “Navy Charges 3 Commandos with Beating of Prisoners,” New York Times, Sept. 25, 2004, p. A7.
, “Charges Urged in Deaths of Detainees,” Baltimore Sun, Sept. 16, 2004, p. A1.
and , “U.S. Military Says 26 Inmate Deaths May Be Homicide,” New York Times, Mar. 16, 2005, p. A1.
, “Time to Think About Torture,” Newsweek, Nov. 5, 2001, p. 45.
, Philosophical Investigations (, Trans.) (3rd edn., Oxford: Blackwell, 1958), pp. 47e–48e.Google Scholar
et al., “Borderless Network of Terror: Bin Laden Followers Reach Across Globe,” Washington Post, Sept. 23, 2001, p. A1.
and , Under the Crescent Moon: Rebellion in Mindanao (Manila: Ateneo Center for Social Policy and Public Affairs, 2000), p. 223.Google Scholar
, “Are Torture Warrants Warranted? Pragmatic Absolutism and Official Disobedience,” Minnesota Law Review, 88 (2004), 1481–51, at 1501–3.Google Scholar
, “The Dark Art of Interrogation,” Atlantic Monthly, Oct. 2003, pp. 51, 65–8.
, “A Critique of Utilitarianism,” in and , Utilitarianism: For and Against (Cambridge University Press, 1973), pp. 77–150, at pp. 75, 93.Google Scholar
, “The Torture Wars,” New Republic, Apr. 22, 2002, p. 40;
, “Professional Detachment: The Executioner of Paris,” Harvard Law Review, 109 (1995), 458–86, at 459–60, 475.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
, “U.S. Instructed Latins on Executions, Torture,” Washington Post, Sept. 21, 1996, p. A1.
, “A Utilitarian Argument Against Torture Interrogation of Terrorists,” Science and Engineering Ethics, 10 (2004), 543, 548.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
, Mass Atrocity, Ordinary Evil, and Hannah Arendt: Criminal Consciousness in Argentina’s Dirty War (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2002), p. 40.Google Scholar
and , The Disappeared and the Mothers of the Plaza: The Story of the 11,000 Argentinians Who Vanished (New York, St. Martin’s Press, 1985), p. 109.Google Scholar
and , The Interrogator’s War: Inside the Secret War Against Al Qaeda (London: John Murray, 2004), pp. 479–83.Google Scholar
, “Welcome to the CIA’s Hotel California,” Daily Telegraph (London), Mar. 4, 2003, p. 11Google Scholar
, Moral Mazes: The World of Corporate Managers (Oxford University Press, 1988), p. 20.Google Scholar
, Chain of Command: The Road from 9/11 to Abu Ghraib (New York: HarperCollins, 2004), p. 30.Google Scholar
, “The Ethics of Wrongful Obedience,” in , Ed., Ethics in Practice: Lawyers’ Roles, Responsibilities, and Regulation (Oxford University Press, 2000), pp. 94–120, at pp. 101–3;Google Scholar
, “Integrity: Its Causes and Cures,” Fordham Law Review, 72 (2003), 279–310, at 293–8.Google Scholar
et al., “Interpersonal Dynamics of a Simulated Prison,” International Journal of Criminology and Penology, 1 (1973), 69–97, at 94;Google Scholar
et al., “The Mind Is a Formidable Jailer: A Pirandellian Prison,” New York Times Magazine, Apr. 8, 1973, pp. 40–2,
, “Simulated Prison in ’71 Showed a Fine Line Between ‘Normal’ and ‘Monster,’” New York Times, May 6, 2004, p. A20;
and , “The Socialization into Criminality: On Becoming a Prisoner and a Guard,” in and , Eds., Law, Justice, and the Individual in Society: Psychological and Legal Issues (New York: Holt, Rinehart, and Winston, 1977), pp. 198–223, at p. 209.Google Scholar
, Ed., The Torture Memos: Rationalizing the Unthinkable (New York Review of Books, 2009).Google Scholar
, General Counsel, Department of Defense (Jan. 9, 2002), in Torture Papers, above, p. 38;
to the Vice President et al. (Feb. 7, 2002), in Torture Papers, above, pp. 134–5.
, Counsel to the President (Aug. 1, 2002), in Torture Papers, above, pp. 172, 176
, Staff Judge Advocate, to Department of Defense Joint Task Force (Oct. 11, 2002), in Torture Papers, above, pp. 229, 235.
and , “Bush’s Counsel Sought Ruling About Torture,” New York Times, Jan. 5, 2005, p. A1;
and , “Gonzales Helped Set the Course for Detainees,” Washington Post, Jan. 5, 2005, p. A1.
and , “Law and Torture,” Wall Street Journal, June 28, 2004, p. A10.
and , “Memo Lists Acceptable ‘Aggressive’ Interrogation Methods,” USA Today, June 28, 2004, p. A5.
and , “White House Fought New Curbs on Interrogations, Officials Say,” New York Times, Jan. 13, 2005, p. A1.
, Counsel to the President (Mar. 19, 2004)
, “Outsourcing Torture,” New Yorker, Feb. 14 and 21, 2005, p. 106.
- 2
- Cited by