Speechless
Andrew Sullivan has a quote from John Yoo on the subject of torture. Yoo is the man who made torture the done way of things in the Bush administration. His argument takes this form:
1. The intentional killing of an other is the highest moral evil.
2. There are circumstances where the intentional killing of another is morally permitted - war, capital punishment etc.
3. If you accept (2), then you have to accept that an absolute moral rule against intentional killing of another is impossible.
4. Since we can not defend an absolute moral rule against intentional killing of another, any absolute moral rule is out of the question and has to be rejected.
Yoo’s argument doesn’t work though. There is a leap of logic from point three and four. His appeal to “moral common sense” lacks a certain something. I certainly don’t think that an absolute moral rule against intentional killing of another is justifiable - there are too many cases where that rule falls apart. I think that war can be justified, as can killing another in pursuit of self-defence.
On the other hand, there are things which I do see an absolute moral prohibition against. Rape, for instance. I can not think of any circumstance in which rape can be justified. Under Yoo’s argument, I am not entitled to hold an absolute moral position at all.
Yoo’s argument fails for other reasons too. It fails to take in to account the difference between action and intention - which is where the sphere of morality is most important. Actions and intentions are important in moral consideration. Snatching a child can be a moral or immoral act - are you snatching it in order to kidnap it or to save it from being run over by a train? Yoo’s argument does not take account of the intention of the action.
With torture, the intention is completely different from the intention of war. The intention of war may be noble - to protect the human rights of a group of people or to topple a brutal dictator. I am not cynical enough to believe that Bush, Blair et al. set out to kill Iraqis. Instead, that is a tragic consequence of the war. The moral issue with war is whether it is entered in to honestly and justifiably, and whether the war is undertaken in a fashion that minimizes the harm done to others. With torture, the intention can never truly be noble.
Yoo also ignores the fact that torture doesn’t actually work very well. It is quite easy to lie or give misinformation to a torturer, especially if you do not actually know the information that the torturer thinks you know. He also fails to take account of the fact that evidence obtained by torture doesn’t hold up in court.
