TERRORISM & TORTURE THROUGH THE MARITAL PARADIGM

INTRODUCTION:

Growing up in an Irish Catholic household, the son of a seldom-working, alcoholic father and an underappreciated mother, life was sometimes quite hard. As the oldest, I was well aware that his well-acclaimed labor aversion assured our impecuniousness — but due mostly to the indefatigable efforts of my mother, my siblings were oblivious. She would beg, borrow or steal to properly attire all of us in the best accouterments, and assured us of a quality education by sending all four of us to the preferred Catholic schools. In hindsight, she was a saint. But each and every Saturday, the “dole” check, that work- inhibiting gift from the government, would be delivered through our mailbox, and the battle for subsistence would begin. My mother would rush with the check back to the post office to exchange the £32.91 paper-promise for cash lest my father grabbed it first. She would then hurry next door to Spar to purchase as much as she could for the £15 she knew it would be permissible to spend — eggs, milk and white bread were therefore staples of our diet. Anything over, she knew, would assure her fate — for in truth, the only energy my father ever enjoyed expending was the physical exertion with which he would beat my mother or his children. She would endure this, and we would be subjected to this, until finally I was old enough to assure it never happened again. Yet today, 32 years after the last beating, my mother wears the emotional scars as vividly as the physical ones were so long ago. A shell of what she once was, a shadow of the strong woman who raised four children alone, she is absent the capacity for rational thought and has indeed struggled for years with alcoholism, even though she has been removed from that bereft environment from so long ago. I absolutely believe that she was a victim of torture, unable to remove herself from the abhorrent station she was in for many reasons — love of her children, fear of the unknown, but most relevant to this forum, believing that this was normal. She too had been the child of an abusive parent and thus her frame had been shaped years before, branding the abuse was a true norm. So am I against torture? Absolutely, categorically and unconditionally. For once we accept torture as normal, just as my mother had accepted her beatings so long ago, then each act of torture will make it easier to accept the use of torture in the future — and that is just, to me, unacceptable.

DEONTOLOGICAL ETHICS:

“A dutiful action’s moral worth is not found in the purpose or end or consequence aimed at or achieved. Moral worth is in the maxim by which the action is determined.” Immanuel Kant

While intentions are important, they are not themselves the ethical justification for ANY action. That is, one cannot say that one was doing the right thing simply because one meant well or intended to do the right thing by doing it. Deontology is not subjective — we cannot decry an action as our duty just because we think it is, or that such action is okay because our intentions are good. No, deontological moral systems are characterized primarily by a focus upon adherence to independent moral rules or duties. Thus, in order to make the correct moral choices, we simply have to understand what our moral duties are, and what correct rules exist that may regulate those duties. When we follow our duty, we are behaving morally. When we fail to follow our duty, we are behaving immorally. But in making correct moral choices, we must understand what our moral duties are and what correct rules exist to regulate those duties. Then when we follow our duty, we will be behaving morally. Conversely when we then fail to follow our duty, we are behaving immorally.

Typically in any deontological system, our duties, rules, and obligations are determined by God. Being moral is thus a matter of obeying God. As a parent of five daughters, I have not raised them Catholic simply because I think that one day they shall raise their children the same; no instead, the only intent I have had in introducing them and raising them within my religion is that hopefully, within the system of beliefs that is Catholicism, they in turn may form a moral compass that will direct their lives and project whatsoever ethics and morals they glean from this Catholic upbringing…and that shall be their life’s guide.

Therefore, within the frame of “Deontological Ethics”, if I condone torture then I must agree that it is acceptable for anyone to torture at any time. As I am unwilling to do so, I therefore cannot ascribe to the premise of condoning the practice.

SOCIETAL PERSPECTIVE:

“Today we are engaged in a deadly global struggle for those who would intimidate, torture, and murder people for exercising the most basic freedoms. If we are to win this struggle and spread those freedoms, we must keep our own moral compass pointed in a true direction.” Barack Obama

From a societal perspective I think we need to look beyond the three normative ethical frameworks and consider the use of the pragmatic theory, which focuses on society instead of the individual. In doing so it also considers all moral criteria as having the potential for revision and allows for spatial and temporal dispersion, i.e. allows that a society’s moral judgment today may not be appropriate in a contemporary culture, or even in the same society ten years from now. At the very least, adopting this structure affords the opportunity to place our use of EIT (aka torture) in context and offers the hope that we will evolve to a point where such tactics receive no consideration, when our country will not “do a host of things that the individual would never countenance”. It also seems to be a logical approach that allows for subjectivity about a topic of questionable worth in obtaining information and a history from Algiers in the 1950s to the present-day Arab world.

LEGALITY OF TORTURE:

“Once you have been tortured, you can never belong in this world. There is no place that ever be your home.” Roma Tearne, Mosquito

In 1992 Congress passed the Torture Victim Protection Act (TVPA). The bill opened U.S. courts to civil claims made by victims who had been tortured “under actual or apparent authority, or color of law, of any foreign nation.” That sounded really promising. On U.S. soil, you were protected from torture under the Eighth Amendment’s prohibition on cruel and unusual punishment and the Fifth Amendment’s prohibition on cruel, inhumane or degrading treatment. If you were tortured abroad, regardless of your citizenship, you could bring a civil claim in the U.S. under the TVPA. Nowhere could torturers commit their crimes and enjoy complete impunity.

But then 9/11, and somehow our moral compass changed. A nonpartisan, independent review of interrogation and detention programs in the years after the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks concluded that “it is indisputable that the United States engaged in the practice of torture” and that the nation’s highest officials bore ultimate responsibility for it.

The censorious, 600-page report says that while brutality had occurred in every American war, there never before had been “the kind of considered and detailed discussions that occurred after 9/11 directly involving a president and his top advisers on the wisdom, propriety and legality of inflicting pain and torment on some detainees in our custody.”

CONCLUSION:

“Let us thank every good and noble man who stood so grandly, so proudly, in spite of opposition, of hatred and death, for what he believed to be the truth.”

Robert G. Ingersoll, The Liberty of Man, Woman and Child

While we were then indeed a nation aflame with a wanton desire for retribution, weshould always remember our history and be cautious of our place in posterity — what can once be taken to be an understandable and justifiable behavior can later become a case of historical regret. Let us never regret. Let us not condone torture. We must never abdicate our individual ethical responsibility just for the sake of convenience. Let us always be guided by the moral compass that has kept, and should forever keep, our great nation aloft as that shining city on the hill.